Examples Of Figurative Language In Romeo And Juliet

Carson Hamman
Mr. Drayer
English 9B
21 March 2023
Title
People say there is love at first sight. I do not think they mean you should get married at 13 only twenty four hours after meeting each other, this occurs in the world-famous play Romeo and Juliet, where William Shakespeare uses figurative language to develop the characters of Romeo, and Mercutio. He uses figurative language to make the reader feel as if they are in the story rather than reading it. The use of figurative language allows a deeper dive into the emotional thinking of the characters in this story. Shakespeare furthers the development of the characters in the story creatively and realistically rather than using bland and strict direct characterization. Figurative language

While speaking with Romeo and Bonvolio the Nurse of Juliet walks into the room of the 3 men attending to give the news to Romeo. After the Nurse asks her servant Peter for a fan Mercutio decides to make a snarky comment by saying, “Good Peter, to hide her face, for her fan’s the fairer face” (2.4.109-110). This comment is a metaphor that compares the fan’s beauty to the Nurse’s, he attempts to state that the fan has more beauty on it than the Nurse so she needs to hide her face beneath the fan. Although a heavily disrespectful comment it has a serious first impression and impact on the Nurse. Mercutio is an impactful character, especially with comments such as that which give him the impression that he is disrespectful and sets an impact on the person he is speaking to. Also, after Mercutio gets into a fight with Tybalt and takes a deathly blow to the heart he lies in pain in the streets of Verona where he announces to everyone, “I am hurt. A plague o’ both houses! I am sped” (3.1.93-94). This is an idiom meaning that his death is both the fault of Romeo and Tybalt and that Mercutio will not take any sides. The words of this idiom may seem as if Mercutio’s death is going to cause a plague among the family when it is referring to how his death is caused by a worthless feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. This reveals the characteristic trait of being impactful as even in his death he is attempting to show the people of Verona that this feud will cause nothing but death and more death and the need to work their differences and come together or else more innocent lives will perish. By showing both the negative and positive influences that Mercutio has on the people he is around and that he is a very impactful human being Shakespeare is showing to the audience that