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Polyptoton

Polyptoton is word play for words derived from the same root or cognate. Repeating words in different case forms. “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove.” Sonnet 116Related to antanaclasisadnominatio and paronomasia.

Polyptoton is an example of:
Repetition, Word Play

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.Synecdoche
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.Polyptoton

O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

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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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An untimely ague Stayed me a prisoner in my chamber

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Buckingham
An untimely ague
Stayed me a prisoner in my chamber when
Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,Anaphora, Pun & Metaphor
Met in the vale of Andren.
Norfolk
’Twixt Guynes and Arde.
I was then present, saw them salute on horseback,
Beheld them when they lighted,
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Act 1
Scene 1
Line 2

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Set down, set down your honorable load

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Set down, set down your honorable load,Epimone
If honor may be shrouded in a hearse,Personification
Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament
Th’ untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.
   They set down the bier.
Poor key-cold figure of a holy king,Alliteration
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster,
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Act 1
Scene 2
Line 1

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Hail, brave friend! Say to the King the knowledge of the broil

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Malcolm
Hail, brave friend!
Say to the King the knowledge of the broil
As thou didst leave it.

So from that spring whence comfort seemed to come
Discomfort swells

Captain
Doubtful it stood,
As two spent swimmers that do cling together
And choke their art.Simile
The merciless Macdonwald
Worthy to be a rebel,

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Source:
Act 1
Scene 2
Line 6

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She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France

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She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France,
Whose Synecdochetongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth:Metaphor, Diacope & Parenthesis

How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex
To triumph like an Amazonian trull
Upon their woes whom Fortune captivates.Simile

O, tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide,
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All good people, You that thus far have come to pity me

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Buckingham
All good people,
You that thus far have come to pity me,
Hear what I say, and then go home and lose me.

Go with me like good angels to my end,
And as the long divorce of steel falls on me,
Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice

I have this day received a traitor’s judgment,
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Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you

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Orlando
Speak you so gently?Rhetorical Questions Pardon me, I pray you.
I thought that all things had been savage here,
And therefore put I on the countenanceAnastrophe
Of stern command’ment. But what e’er you are
That in this desert inaccessibleAnastrophe,
Under the shade of melancholy boughs,
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Source:
Act 2
Scene 7
Line 106

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O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

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O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!Synecdoche
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,Alliteration & Synecdoche
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,Hendiadys
The glass of fashion and the mold of form,Metaphor & Isocolon
Th’ observed of all observers,
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Source:
Act 3
Scene 1
Line 163

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