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Hyperbaton

Hyperbaton (hy-per'-ba-ton) is the altering of normal or expected word order, or the separation of words that belong together. See also anastrophe“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” Measure for Measure, 2.1.41.

Hyperbaton is an example of:
Arrangement

Richard III and the Sonnet

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“Now is the winter of our discontent” is nearly as familiar as Hamlet’s, “To be, or not to be” and Mark Antony’s, “Friends, Romans, countrymen”. Not one of these three passages is a dramatic dialogue. Mark Antony addresses a large Roman crowd in an extended speech. Hamlet muses to himself in a soliloquy while we the audience listen in.
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How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st

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How oft, when thou, my music, music play’stAnastrophe, Antanaclasis, Epizeuxis & Metaphor
Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,Anastrophe & Synecdoche
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Rhetorical Question
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,Metaphor & Hyperbaton
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
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In Troy there lies the scene

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Enter the Prologue in armor.

In Troy there lies the scene.Hyperbaton From isles of Greece
The princes orgulousAnastrophe, their high blood chafed,
Have to the port of Athens sent their shipsHyperbaton
Fraught with the ministers and instruments
Of cruel war. Sixty and nine,
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Source:
Act 1
Line Prologue

Source Type:

Spoken by:

Themes:

Figures of Speech:
,

O, for a muse of fire

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O, for a muse of fire that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!Metaphor

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!Anapodoton

Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
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Source:
Act 1
Scene Prologue
Line 1

Source Type:

Spoken by:

Themes:

Figures of Speech:
, , , , , ,

I come no more to make you laugh

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I come no more to make you laugh. Things now
PersonificationThat bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,
SynecdocheSuch noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present.Hyperbaton
Those that can pity here
May,
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 1
Line Prologue

Source Type:

Spoken by:

Themes:
, ,

Figures of Speech:
, , , ,

I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Aragon comes this night to Messina

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Leonato, with a letter
I learn in this letter that Don
Pedro of Aragon comes this night to Messina.
Messenger
He is very near by this. He was not three
leagues off when I left him.

He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age,
doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion.
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In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband

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Countess
In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.
Bertram
And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s
death anew; but I must attend his Majesty’s
command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore
in subjection.

Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
excessive grief the enemy to the living

Lafew
You shall find of the King a husband,
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In sooth I know not why I am so sad

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Antonio
In sooth I know not why I am so sad.
It wearies me, you say it wearies you.
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,Epistrophe
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn.
And such a want-wit sadness makes of meHyperbaton
That I have much ado to know myself.
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 1
Line 1

Source Type:

Spoken by:
,

Figures of Speech:
, , , , , , ,

Connected Notes:
The Sadness of the Merchant

Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms

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 Saturninus and his followers at one door, and
 Bassianus and his followers at another door, with
 other Romans, Drums, and Trumpets.
Saturninus
Noble patricians, patrons of my right,
Defend the justice of my cause with arms.
And countrymen, my loving followers,
Plead my successive title with your swords.
I am his firstborn son that was the last
That wore the imperial diadem of Rome.
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Now is the winter of our discontent

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NowHyperbaton is the winter of our discontentMetaphor
Made glorious summerMetaphor by this son of York,Paronomasia
And all the clouds that louredMetaphor upon our houseMetonymy
In the deep bosom of the ocean MetaphorburiedHyperbaton & Ellipsis.
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