What are some conceit, oxymoron and sililoquies in Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare? Thanks

1 Answer | Add Yours

Top Answer

sciftw's profile pic

sciftw | High School Teacher | (Level 1) Educator Emeritus

Posted on

I'll start with soliloquy.  By definition a soliloquy is a speech that a character says to himself or herself.  It doesn't have to be long, but it always expresses the inner thoughts, emotions, and/or motivations of a character.  Probably the most famous soliloquy from Romeo and Juliet appears in Act 2 Scene 2 when Romeo is standing beneath Juliet's balcony waiting for her to appear. That's the one that starts like this: 

"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."

An oxymoron is a figure of speech where two contradictory terms are used together.  Jumbo shrimp is my favorite.  How can a shrimp (something small) be jumbo (something big).  In Romeo and Juliet, from the same Act 2 Scene 2 scene is Juliet's famous line "parting is such sweet sorrow."  How can sorrow and sadness be sweet? In Act 1 scene 1, Romeo strings a bunch of them together as he is whining about his lost Rosaline.  

O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!

A conceit is going to be an elaborate metaphor.  In Act 3 Scene 5, Capulet comes to Juliet's room and finds her crying.  He says:

“Thou counterfeit’st a bark, a sea, a wind;
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs;
Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,
Without a sudden calm, will overset
Thy tempest-tossed body.”

Her compares Juliet to a boat, at sea, in a storm. Her eyes are the sea. Her sighs the winds, and her tears the storm itself. 

We’ve answered 319,631 questions. We can answer yours, too.

Ask a question