Romeo & Juliet – Figurative language in Act 2 Scene 2

"It is the east, and Juliet is the sun" (2.2.3).

metaphor – it compares Juliet to the sun

"Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon" (2.2.4).

personification – gives human qualities to the moon. It is envious (jealous).

"Who is already sick and pale with grief
that thou, her maid, art far more fair than she" (2.2.5-6).

personification – gives human qualities to the moon. It is sick and pale with grief.

"The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
as daylight doth a lamp…" (2.2.19-20).

hyperbole – exaggeration. Juliet’s cheek is so bright it puts the brightness of stars to shame.

"…her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night" (2.2.20-22).

hyperbole – exaggeration. If Juliet’s eyes were like stars in heaven looking down on us, it would be so bright that birds would be singing because they thought it was daytime.

"O, speak again, bright angel! For thou art as glorious to this night, being o’er my head, as a winged messenger of heaven…" (2.2.28-30).

metaphor – Romeo compares Juliet to a "bright angel" simile – she is AS glorious to the night AS a "winged messenger of heaven"

"With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out" (2.2.70-71).

hyperbole – love gave him wings to climb over the walls and reach Juliet

"…there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords!" (2.2.75-76).

hyperbole – Romeo claims there is more danger in Juliet’s eyes than in twenty of her relatives coming at him with their swords

"I have night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes" (2.2.79).

personification – night does not have a cloak

"I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far as that vast shore was’d with the farthest sea, I should adventure for such merchandise" (2.2.86-88).

"Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face…" (2.2.89).

metaphor – compares the darkness of night to a mask

"Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to-nite; It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden, too like the lightning, which doth cease to be ere one can say it lightens" (2.2.122-126).

simile – Juliet compares their "contract", or promises of love, to lightning. It is sudden and quick – lightning disappears from the sky before you can say there was lightning.

"This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet…" (2.2.127-128).

personification – summer does not have "ripening breath" metaphor – compares their love to a flower bud

"Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books…" (2.2.165).

simile – compares how lovers go to lovers with the same joy as schoolboys leave their schoolwork behind

"… But love from love, toward school with heavy looks" (2.2.166).

metaphor – compares how lovers leave one another with the same unhappiness schoolboys experience when going to school

"How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears" (2.2.175-176).

simile – compares the sound of lovers talking at night to soft music

"…’tis twenty years til then" (2.2.182).

hyperbole – exaggeration. The short time they are apart will feel like 20 years

"…I would have thee gone; — and yet no farther than a wanton’s bird, that lets it hop a little from her hand…" (2.2.189-191).

metaphor – Juliet expresses how closely she wishes Romeo could stay to her by comparing him to a bird kept on a chain that can only "hop a little from her hand" hyperbole – exaggeration of just how close she wants to keep Romeo

"…like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves (chains), and with a silk thread plucks it back again, so loving-jealous of his liberty" (2.2.192-194).

simile – compares the bird (Romeo) to a "poor prisoner"