Actress Megan Manos
Most are familiar with alliteration, consonance, or
assonance, which audiences enjoy as iterated sounds,
pleasing to the ear.[1] Yet we also teach less known figures
that are classified as appeals from pathos. For these
figures provide actors insight about the emotional state of
the characters they portray.[2] In Renaissance handbooks
of rhetoric, what Quintilian writes of the orator could be
applied to the actor: “What pleasure can an orator hope to
produce, or what impression even of the most moderate
learning, unless he knows how to fix one point in the
minds of the audience by repetition, and another by
dwelling on it, how to digress from and return to his theme.”[3] Quintilian’s statement
about audiences proves perennial because repetition, more than any other figures of
speech, is the device that playgoers always recognize. So, too, repetition may be the
means by which other, more ostensibly sophisticated, tropes may be identified. The
plebes in Julius Caesar, for example, understand the irony of Antony’s “Brutus is an
honorable man” through the means of repetition. As an actor, figures of repetition
provide a sure way of communicating with audiences. You should think about how you
want to use that power. Below are some figures of repetition Shakespeare uses with
passages for performance. To learn more, see "Our Approach."
Epizeuxis: “Repetition of words with no others between, for vehemence or
emphasis.”[4]
Play Epizeuxis:
ROSALIND
Nay, I prithee now with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is.
CELIA
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and
after that, out of all whooping! (AYLI, 3.2)[5]
SHALLOW
Come on, come on, come on, sir; give me your hand,
sir, give me your hand, sir. (2HIV, 3.2.)
SHALLOW
Where's the roll? where's the roll? where's the
roll? Let me see, let me see, let me see. So, so:
yea, marry, sir: Ralph Mouldy! Let them appear as
I call; let them do so, let them do so. Let me
see; where is Mouldy? (2HIV, 3.2).
Anaphora: “Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning
of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.”
Play Anaphora:
HENRY
Show men dutiful?
Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?
Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?
Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet,
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
Garnish'd and deck'd in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purged judgment trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem. (H5.2.2)
QUEEN MARGARET
Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers?
Where are thy children? wherein dost thou, joy?
Who sues to thee and cries 'God save the queen'?
Where be the bending peers that flatter'd thee?
Where be the thronging troops that follow'd thee?
Decline all this, and see what now thou art. (R3, 4.4)
Epistrophe: “Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with
the same word or words.”
Play Epistrophe:
LEONTES
Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughing with a sigh?--a note infallible
Of breaking honesty--horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing. (WT, 1.2).
A lean cheek, which you have not, a blue eye and
sunken, which you have note, an unquestionable
spirit, which you have not, a beard neglected,
which you have not. (AYLI, 3.2).
Investigate epizeuxis, anaphora, and epistrophe
The passages above illustrate how figures that involve repeated words or lines do not
constitute “throwaways” but an opportunity for an individual actor to “go solo,” like an
electric guitar piece in the middle of a rock song. Play the same lines again, but attempt
to say each repeated word in as a completely different way as the one you employed
before it. Why is your character repeating the word? Are you teasing, berating, coaxing,
what? Are there different connotations or denotations that may be explored?
Now vary in tone: try sarcasm, irony, anger, lamentation, wry circumspection,
excitement, fear, and so on. Perform the same lines by varying in speed: elongate
repeated words by slowing pronunciation down or shorten them by speeding through
them. What is true for repeated words remains so for repeated lines. By experimenting
with your delivery of the lines, you may happen upon an insight into your character.
Syntactical Arrangement
Repetitions of words in figures like anaphora and epistrophe combine well with figures
of parallel syntax, including isocolon and antithesis, and their variations such as
antimetabole. Like the repetition of words, figures of arrangement, even if the names
sound alien to us, audiences invariably recognize. Moreover, because they are more
complex than repetition of just words, they indicate how audiences may find them as a
flourish within a category of already pleasing speech patterns.
Note, too, how these figures may represent appeals from pathos and from logos.
For an argument, delivered with graceful repetition, was thought to addresses the mind
while moving or stirring the emotions. As such, these figures often provide actors the
means of displaying a more sophisticated or clever sense of their character’s
intelligence. Such figures, in any case, should be taken as “conscious” decisions your
character makes about the use of his or her language.
Parallelism or Isocolon: “Similarity of structure in a pair or series of
related words, phrases, or clauses.” This figure went by the name of isocolon, “a
series of similarly structured elements having the same length.” The figure is popular
in lyric poetry, as in Donne’s “Batter my heart”:
Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you,
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise and stand
O’erthrow me and bend
Your force to breake, blowe, burn, and make me new.
Play Parallelism:
SIR NATHANIEL
I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner
have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without
scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without
impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with-
out heresy. (LLL, 5.1).
CLEOPATRA
Be brooch'd with me; if knife, drugs,
serpents, have
Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe.
(A&C, 4.16).
Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good
life, but in respect that it is a shpeherd's life,
it is naught. In respect that is is solitary, I
like it very well; but in respect that it is
private, it is a very vile life. Now, in respect it
is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in
respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As
is it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well;
but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much
against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?
(AYLI,
3.2)
Parallelism often functions with climax or gradatio: “Generally, the
arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of increasing
importance, often in parallel structure.” As in the example below, climax can be
used to heighten emotion. Kristin Linklater refers to gradatio and climax as “the ladder”
or a device “for building the intensity of a feeling.” The performer, in these cases, must
channel such an increase through the use of voice. It may be done “through growing
volume, rising pitch and/or increasing pace,” and these choices are determined by “the
way in which the imagery, the circumstances, the objective, act on the inner energies of
the speaker.”[6]
BRUTUS
As Caesar loved me, I weep for him;
as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was
valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I
slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his
fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his
ambition. Who is here so base that would be a
bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended.
Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If
any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so
vile that will not love his country? If any, speak;
for him have I offended. I pause for a reply. (JC, 3.2)
You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life
That should be in a Roman you do want,
Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze
And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder,
To see the strange impatience of the heavens:
But if you would consider the true cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,
Why birds and beasts from quality and kind,
Why old men fool and children calculate,
Why all these things change from their ordinance
Their natures and preformed faculties
To monstrous quality,--why, you shall find
That heaven hath infused them with these spirits,
To make them instruments of fear and warning
Unto some monstrous state. (JC, 1.3).
CAESAR
I could be well moved, if I were as you:
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament. (JC, 3.1)
Parallelism may take the form of antithesis as well. Antithesis is “juxtaposition of
contrasting words or ideas (often, although not always, in parallel
structure).” Aristotle thought that the effect of antithesis could be heightened by
parallel clauses. He writes: “Such a form of speech is satisfying, because the significance
of contrasted ideas is easily felt, especially when they are thus put side by side, and also
because it has the effect of a logical argument; it is by putting two opposing conclusions
side by side that you prove one of them false.”[7] Of antithesis, Director John Barton
asserts: “If I were to offer one single bit of advice to an actor new to Shakespeare’s text,
I suspect that the most useful thing I could say would be, ‘Look for the antitheses and
play them.’” He calls antitheses, “setting the word against the word” and offers this
practical advice: Antithesis “tells us how each new word in a sentence qualifies what
has gone before or changes the direction of that sentence. If we don’t set up one word,
we won’t prepare for another to qualify it. And if the next word doesn’t build on the first
and move the sentence on, both the audience and the actor may lose their way. That’s
what I mean by urging actors to think antithetically.”[8] Shakespeare’s antitheses range
from short to extended to ornately extended; such antitheses form the essence of a
constellation of other tropes like auxesis and gradatio.
Play Parallelism with Antithesis:
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good. (Mac, 1.3)
LEAR
I am a man
More sinn'd against than sinning. (Lear, 3.2)
HAMLET
To be or not to be that is the question. (Ham, 3.1)
MESSENGER:
Take no offence that I would not offend you:
To punish me for what you make me do
Seems much unequal: he’s married to Octavia. (A&C, 2.5).
ANTONY
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. (JC, 3.2)
DROMIO OF EPHESUS
Return'd so soon! rather approach'd too late:
The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit,
The clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell;
My mistress made it one upon my cheek:
She is so hot because the meat is cold;
The meat is cold because you come not home;
You come not home because you have no stomach;
You have no stomach having broke your fast;
But we that know what 'tis to fast and pray
Are penitent for your default to-day.
(Com. of Errors, 1.2)
ROMEO
What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh? (R&J, 1.1)
Note how Juliet, too, speaks the same language of disjunctive thought, an all or nothing
mode of reasoning, which is heightened by and enacted through antitheses.
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
A damned saint, an honourable villain!
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell,
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In moral paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace! (R&J, 3.2)
“If I were to offer one single bit of advice
to an actor new to Shakespeare’s text,
I suspect that the most useful thing
I could say would be, ‘Look for the
antitheses and play them.’”
--Director John Barton, Co-Founder of the
Finally, Shakespeare’s earlier works (pre 1596) especially bring together several figures
in a single passage for climatic effect as in Richard II abdication scene with
Bolingbroke. Use Richard’s words to investigate parallelism, anaphora, antithesis,
and gradatio:
Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be;
Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.
Now mark me, how I will undo myself;
I give this heavy weight from off my head
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duty's rites:
All pomp and majesty I do forswear;
My manors, rents, revenues I forego;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny:
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me! (R2, 4.1)
Polsyndeton: “Employing many conjunctions between clauses, often
slowing the tempo or rhythm.” This is the figure of coordinate conjunctions,
which rhetoricians may couple with parallelism or antithesis. We can think of
characters who string together clauses with “and” and create an impression of
mindless loquacity, or imagine those who rush with excitement to convey much
information.
Play Polysndeton:
Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily,
they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have
belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust
things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
(Much Ado, 5.1).
'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,
Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm,
Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit
To your own person. (Oth., 3.3.77)
Asyndeton: “The omission of conjunctions between clauses, often resulting
in a hurried rhythm or vehement effect.” Quintillian writes of this figure that it
has it makes our “utterances more vigorous and emphatic” and produces “outbursts of
emotion” (ix.iii.30). Why does your character employ a "hurried rhythm"?
Paraphrasing the words strung together may help you discover the answer. Consider,
too, whether the words amplify a single thought or feeling or represent several. Avoid
down-glides and play with your breath to see how the words come together or may be
separated to discover possibilities. Traditionally, this figure indicates emotional
disturbance or amplification such that words appear in a torrent and the audience must
supply the connectives.
Play Asyndeton:
HAMLET
'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
(Ham.., 2.1)
But he loves Caesar best; yet he loves Antony:
Ho! hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards,
poets, cannot
Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number, ho!
His love to Antony. (A&C, 3.2).
ARIEL
All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task
(Tem., 1.2.189).
Yes, one, and in this manner. He was to imagine me
his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to
woo me: at which time would I, being but a moonish
youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing
and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow,
inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for every
passion something and for no passion truly any
thing, as boys and women are for the most part
cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe
him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep
for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor
from his mad humour of love to a living humour of
madness; which was, to forswear the full stream of
the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic.
And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon
me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's
heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in't.
(AYLI, 3.2). For a performance of this passage, see:
Antimetabole: Repetition of words in reverse grammatical order and
successive clauses. The figure’s very ornate nature calls attention to language’s use
as much as to the thought it expresses. As a result, it can show a character’s wit, as in
Benedick’s
BENEDICK
Till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall come in my grace (Much Ado, 2.3)
To see Benedick's use of this figure in context, see below:
Antimetable, too, may render a sort of epigrammatic effect as in AYLI and Hamlet:
TOUCHSTONE
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. (AYLI, 5.1)
PLAYER KING
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. (Ham., 3.2)
Contrarily, antimetable is a favorite of Polonious, who represents a sort of parody of
conventional wisdom, and thus draws attention to it as a “foolish figure”:
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure;
But farewell it, for I will use no art. (Ham., 2.2)
He employs it elsewhere in the same scene with serious purpose if not astute insight:
For ’tis a question left us yet to prove, whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love. (Ham., 3.2).
Hamlet employs an extended version of the figure with greater eloquence:
If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes? (Ham., 5.2)
Play antimetable and its variants:
PORTIA
When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better
than a beast. (MV, 1.2)
DUKE VINCENTIO
The goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness. (MM, 3.1)
LEONTES
Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven. (WT, 1.2)
Auxesis: “Arranging words or clauses in a sequence of increasing force.”
Auxesis, in particular, represents increasing emotion, an amplification of appeal. Your
character is closing an argument, stirring an interlocutor. The figure goes nicely with
gradatio.
HENRY
Speak, my lord,
For we will hear, note, and believe in heart
That what you speak is in your conscience washed
As pure as sin with baptism. (H5, 1.2)
CANTERBURY
Gracious lord,
Stand for your own, unwind your bloody flag,
Look back into your mighty ancestors. (H5, 1.2)
They know your grace hath cause and means and might;
So hath your highness; never king of England
Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,
Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England
And lie pavilion'd in the fields of France. (H5, 1.2)
Note how auxesis may be used and multiplied to represent impassioned argument by
one or more characters.
And never did desire to see thee more.
Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt;
Be certain, nothing truer; 'tis no jest
That I do hate thee and love Helena.
O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom!
You thief of love! what, have you come by night
And stolen my love's heart from him?
HELENA
Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,
No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear
Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?
Fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet, you! (MS, 3.2).
Learn to recognize the above patterns as a sign of a character’s linguistic intelligence, if
not wisdom, which may be used to show off, win an argument, rouse an audience,
epigrammatically sum up a point, or function as a climax. Why does your character use
these figures? Remember that
"Mastering the execution of rhetorical
forms is something like mastering grand
jetés and pirouettes. They are the means
by which the excitement of performance is
raised to dazzling heights but they are also
the means by which the audience really
understands what is being said, what is
being felt, and what the story is. They are
the linchpins of intelligibility."
–Kristin Linklater, Freeing
Shakespeare’s Voice.
NOTES
[1] Alliteration: Repetition of an initial consonant sound. Puttenham calls this “the figure of like
letter,” which may “notably affect the ear.” Consonance refers to the general The repetition of
consonants without regard to the initial consonant. Assonance is Repetition of similar vowel
sounds, preceded and followed by different consonants.
[2] Other figures that may indicate emotion are ellipsis (the omission of a word or phrase that is
easily understood in context) and zeugma (which is the omission of a verb). Actors should know
these obviously but they have less of an impact upon audiences than the ones covered in greater
detail here.
[3] Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H.E. Butler, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1922), ix.ii.4. Hereafter cited internally.
[4] Unless otherwise noted, all definitions of the figures are from Gideon O. Burton’s "Silva
Rhetoricae" at http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm.
[5] Unless otherwise noted, Shakespeare is cited by act and scene number from
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/. All play titles are abbreviated.
[6] Kristin Linklater, Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text (New York:
Theatre Communications Group, 1992), 95.
[7] Aristotle’s Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts at
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.3.iii.html.
[8] John Barton, Playing Shakespeare: An Actor’s Guide (New York: Anchor Books, 2001), 66-67.