This document defines and provides examples of various literary devices used in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, including puns, metaphors, personification, allusions, oxymorons, paradoxes, foreshadowing, hyperboles, and similes. It explains each device and illustrates them with short quotes from the play, such as Romeo's metaphor comparing Juliet to the sun and Juliet's personification of night. The document serves to familiarize readers with the language techniques employed in Romeo and Juliet.

2. Puns Allusions Foreshadowing
• Metaphors • Oxymoron • Hyperboles
• Personification • Paradoxes • Similes

3. A pun is humorous
play on words.
Example: Romeo – ―Not I, believe me.
You have dancing shoes / With
nimble soles; I have a soul of lead…‖
(Act I Sc. 4)

4. A metaphor is a direct
comparison between two
unlike things.
Example: Romeo – ―But, soft! what light through
yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and
Juliet is the sun.‖ (Act II Sc. 2)

5.  Personification occurs when an
inanimate object or concept is
given the qualities of a person
or animal.
Example: Juliet— ―For thou wilt lie upon the
wings of night / Whiter than new snow on
a raven’s back. / Come, gentle
night, come, loving, black-brow’d night‖
(Act III Sc. 2)

6. An allusion is a reference to a
well known work of
art, music, literature, or history.
Example:―At lovers’ perjuries, they
say Jove laughs.‖ (Act II, Sc. 2)

7. An oxymoron describes when
two juxtaposed words have
opposing or very diverse
meanings.
Example: Juliet – ―Beautiful tyrant!
fiend angelical!‖ (Act III Sc.2)

8.  A paradox is a statement or
situation with seemingly
contradictory or incompatible
components.
 Example: Juliet – ―O serpent
heart, hid with a flowering face!‖
(Act III Sc. 2)

9.  Foreshadowing is a reference to
something that will happen
later in the story.
Example: Juliet – ―Give me my Romeo; and, when
he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.‖ (Act III
Sc. 2)

10. A hyperbole is a deliberate and
obvious exaggeration used for
effect.
Example: Juliet- "My bounty is as
boundless as the sea.― (Act II
Sc.2)

11.  A simile directly compares two
different things, usually
employing the words “like” and
“as.”
 Example: ―Death lies on her, like
an untimely frost‖ (Act IV Sc. 5)