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Let us sit and mock the good huswife Fortune

Celia
Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune
from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be
bestowed equally.Personification

Rosalind
I would we could do so, for her benefits are
mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman
doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
Celia
‘Tis true, for those that she makes fair she scarce
makes honest, and those that she makes honest she
makes very ill-favoredly.Antimetabole

for always the dullness
of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.

Rosalind
Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to
Nature's. Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in
the lineaments of nature.Antithesis

Celia
No? When Nature hath made a fair creature,
may she not by fortune fall into the fire?

 Enter Touchstone.

Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune,
hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?Anadiplosis

Rosalind
Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature,
when Fortune makes Nature's natural the
cutter-off of Nature's wit.Paronomasia

Celia
Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither,
but Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too
dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent
this natural for our whetstoneParonomasia
, for always the dullness
of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.Metaphor

Source:
Act 1
Scene 2
Line 31

Source Type:

Spoken by:
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Themes:
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Figures of Speech:
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Connected Notes:
Status of Women, Blind Fortune