Grief
Notes on Grief
Banishment: Romeo and Coriolanus
Read the NoteFor two of Shakespeare’s most passionate male characters, banishment holds passionately different meanings. Romeo, banished from Verona, is grief-stricken and in fear of never seeing Juliet again. For him, banishment is the equivalent of death. Coriolanus, banished from Rome, is enraged and contemptuous of the plebeians who he hopes he will never have to see again. For him, banishment is an opportunity for a new life.
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Quotes including the Theme Grief
Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?
Read the QuoteLafew
—Was this gentlewoman
the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
excessive grief the enemy to the living
Countess
His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to
my overlooking.Ellipsis I have those hopes of her good
that her education promises.
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Set down, set down your honorable load
Read the QuoteSet 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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Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
Read the QuoteThough yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
MetaphorThe memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and Personificationour whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
PersonificationYet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
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Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off
Read the QuoteQueen Gertrude
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,Anthimeria
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.Synecdoche
Do not forever with thy vailèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
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O that this too too solid flesh would melt
Read the QuoteO, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!Epizeuxis & Metaphor
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!Metonymy O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!Apostrophe & Epizeuxis
She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France
Read the QuoteShe-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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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!
Read the QuoteAntony
Friends, Romans, countrymenExordium, lend me your earsSynecdoche!
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.Antithesis
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bonesAntithesis;
So let it be with Caesar.
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Will you speak well of him that killed your cousin?
Read the QuoteNurse
Will you speak well of him that killed your cousin?
Juliet
Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name
When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?
But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have killed my husband.
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Bind up your hairs
Read the QuoteKing Philip
Bind up your hairs.
Constance
Yes, that I will. And wherefore will I do it?
I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud
“O, that these hands could so redeem my son,
As they have given these hairs their liberty!”
But now I envy at their liberty,
And will again commit them to their bonds,
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Did your letters pierce the Queen
Read the QuoteKent
Did your letters pierce the Queen to any demonstration
of grief?
Gentleman
Ay, sir, she took them, read them in my presence,
And now and then an ample tear trilled down
Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen
Over her passion, who, most rebel-like,
Fought to be king o’er her.
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