figures of speech in hamlet

serene syeda! · #1 Friday, March 04, 2011

can anyone plz highlight the use of figures of speech in the play hamlet? which figures of speech are used in it..define them with examples from hamlet particularly. what is the sgnificance of figures of speech?

help me out!

thanks!

mosvi · #2 Saturday, March 19, 2011

Be patient my friend, this drama is also included in my MA English and I will prepare it after few days than I promise you I will answer at my best. For mean time consider following link I hope it will help you alot.
SparkNotes: Hamlet: Context

unsolved_Mystery · #3 Sunday, March 20, 2011

http://www.enotes.com/hamlet/q-and-a/tell-me-about-use-figures-speech-hamlet-give-247990

Oxymorons in Hamlet

Act 3, Scene 4
I must be cruel only to be kind: Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

paradox:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife.

Simile & Metaphor

Hamlet. O! that this too solid flesh would melt, Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitableSeem to me all the uses of this world.Fie on't! Ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,That grows to seed; things rank and gross in naturePossess it merely. That it should come to this!But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:So excellent a king; that was, to this,Hyperion to satyr; so loving to my motherThat he might not beteem the winds of heavenVisit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grownBy what it fed on; and yet, within a month,Let me not think on't: Frailty, thy name is woman!A little month; or ere those shoes were oldWith which she follow'd my poor father's body,Like Niobe, all tears; why she, even she, - O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,Would have mourn'd longer, - married with mine uncle,My father's brother but no more like my fatherEre yet the salt of most unrighteous tearsHad left the flushing in her galled eyes,

Simile. Bernardo is talking to Horatio, and he says,
~~~
Ber. Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
~~~
Bernardo is saying that Horatio's ears are like a fort, that his story has to attack, to get through. Saying that one thing is like another, is simile.

Metaphor. Marcellus says,
~~~
Mar. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him
~~~
Marcellus is speaking as though "belief" had hands or claws that could grab a person. That's a metaphor. It isn't simile, because he isn't saying "belief" is like a person, or like a lion or some animal. He's just saying "belief" can grab. That puts it in the more general category of metaphor.

===
Personification. Marcellus says,
~~~
Mar. ...
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day?
~~~
He's talking as though "day" and "night" were people who were at work. (Actually, of course, it's the people themselves who are working.) He's describing non-human things as though they were persons, doing what a person does, working as laborers. So, personification.

===
More metaphor. Horatio says,
~~~
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't;
~~~
He's speaking as though "enterprise" had a stomach, that things could be fed to. People have stomachs, but we know this isn't personification, because he mentions a shark. But he isn't really saying it's like a shark. The "enterprise" is some kind of aggressive thing with a stomach, is all he's really saying. Not personification, and not simile, so that leaves it as metaphor.

But if a person takes it as "like a shark" that would put it into the category of simile. Even the experts could get into argument over this. Go by your teacher and textbook as to what you can call it. You'll probably need to call it metaphor.

===
Idiom. Polonius says,
~~~
Pol. Marry, well bethought!
~~~
"Marry" is idiom. It's a reference to the Virgin Mary, and people in those days used it the way we'd use "my goodness" or "golly." The different sort of expressions that people use, in different places and times, are idioms.

===
Alliteration. There's isn't much alliteration in Hamlet, but here's one.
~~~
Ghost. ... With witchcraft of his wit,
~~~
The repetition of the "w" make it alliterative.

ACT 1

Sibilance (can also be an apostophe):

O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

Auxesis:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!

Oxymoron:

Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,--

Paradox:

With one auspicious and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--

Repetition:

Seems, madam? nay, it is, I know not 'seems.'

ACT 2

Alliteration:

That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure

Parenthesis:

Polonius
And in part him: ' do you mark this, Reynaldo?
REYNALDO
Ay, very well, my lord.
LORD POLONIUS
'And in part him; but' you may say 'not well:
But, if't be he I mean, he's very wild;
Addicted so and so:' and there put on him
What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank
As may dishonour him; take heed of that;
But, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.

Macrologia:

My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time;
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.

Epistophe:

You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except
my life, except my life.

Hendiadys

the whiff and wind of his fell sword
(also "knotted and combined locks" at 1.5.18
"shot and danger of desire" at 1.3.35 and so on... there are 66 in all)

ACT 3

Epizeuxis:

Mother, mother, mother!

Apostrophe:

Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.

Eulogia:

Once more, good night:
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you.

Simile:

be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
nunnery,

Allegory:

(Rosencrantz' "massy wheel" speech)
The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

ACT 4

Metaphor:

Besides, to be demanded of a sponge!

Synecdoche:

I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a
foolish ear.

Ear as synecdoche and metonymy is used quite often throughout the play, example:

so the whole ear of
Denmark Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused

(and here "buzzers" can be an Onomatopoeia):

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Her brother is in secret come from France;
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear

Ellipsis:

She speaks much of her father; says she hears
There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,

Personification:

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
"Fate cries out" on line 690 and "Nature cannot choose his origin" on line 628 are examples of PERSONIFICATION, giving humanlike characteristics to non-human opjects, ideas, or foriegn entities.

"...and makes each petty artery in this body as hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve." on lines 691-692 is an example of a SIMILE, a comparison of two different things using like or as.

(I have searched this stuff from different sites, unable to quote because could not copy the link, as the light had gone. However, I hope it'll help you)

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The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to unsolved_Mystery For This Useful Post:
Dazling (Thursday, April 07, 2011), mosvi (Sunday, March 20, 2011), serene syeda! (Sunday, March 20, 2011), Tooba Malik (Sunday, March 20, 2011)