Ave Maria University 

Figures of speech show how actors may discover a character through language.  As 

Leslie O’Dell, Text Consultant for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario,  

comments:

Certain figures of speech announce or trace changes in thought or feeling, which help 

actors discover the “emotional engine encoded in the text.”  Explore and perform the 

listing below to learn more.  See "Our Approach" for how figures pertain to acting 

styles.  To see how study of the figures may help performance, visit a

part text analysis.

 

Parenthesis: “Insertion of a verbal unit that interrupts normal syntactical 

flow.”[2]  The use of parenthesis remains a topmost art of every Shakespeare actor.  

Consider how parenthesis augments or contrasts or emotionally contextualizes the main 

thought that it interrupts.  Begin by reducing the sentence to its most simple statement 

of its main idea.  Then explore what the parentheses add or subtract. 

 

Play Parenthesis:

 

LEONTES

Ha' not you seen, Camillo,--

But that's past doubt, you have, or your eye-glass

Is thicker than a cuckold's horn,--or heard,--

For to a vision so apparent rumour

Cannot be mute,--or thought,--for cogitation

Resides not in that man that does not think,--

My wife is slippery?  (WT, 1.1)[3]

 

BENEDICK

I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much

another man is a fool when he dedicates his

behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at

such shallow follies in others, become the argument

of his own scorn by failing in love: and such a man

is Claudio. (Much Ado, 2.3)

 

ANTONY

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. The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--

For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men--

Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man. (J&C, 2.3)

                                   

Epanorthosis: “Amending a first thought by altering it to make it stronger 

or more vehement.”  The author of Rhetorica ad Herennium writes that this figure, 

like correctio, “retracts what has been said and replaces it with what seems more 

suitable,” adding that “this figure makes an impression upon the hearer, for the idea 

when expressed by an ordinary word seems rather feebly stated, but after the speaker’s 

own amendment it is made more striking by means of the more appropriate 

expression.” [4]

 

Play Epanorthosis:

 

HENRY V 

a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the

moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it

shines bright and never changes, but keeps his

course truly. (H5, 5.2.171).

 

TROILUS

And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts,--

So, traitor! 'When she comes!' When is she thence? (T&C, 1.1).

 

OTHELLO

Would! nay, I will.

(Oth. 3.3)

 

CANTERBURY

He seems indifferent,

Or rather swaying more upon our part

Than cherishing the exhibiters against us. (H5, 1.1)

 

Correctio: “The amending of a term or phrase just 

employed; or, a futher specifying of meaning, 

especially by indicating what something is not 

(which may occur either before or after the term 

or phrase used). A kind of redefinition, often 

employed as a parenthesis (an interruption) or as 

a climax.”  The difference between epanorthosis and 

correctio would appear to be that of tone because the 

former always inclines toward greater vehemence whereas the latter may not.

 

Play Correctio: 

 

HAMLET

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count

myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I

have bad dreams.  (Ham., 2.2)

 

That it should come [to this]!

But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two.

(Ham. 1.2)

 

HAMLET

You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will

more willingly part withal: except my life, except

my life, except my life.  (Ham., 2.2)

 

Play Parenthesis with Correctio:

 

ADAM

O unhappy youth!

Come not within these doors; within this roof

The enemy of all your graces lives:

Your brother--no, no brother; yet the son--

Yet not the son, I will not call him son

Of him I was about to call his father--

Hath heard your praises, and this night he means

To burn the lodging where you use to lie

And you within it. (AYLI, 2.3.19).

 

Aporia: “Deliberating with oneself as though in doubt over some matter; 

asking oneself (or rhetorically asking one's hearers) what is the best or 

appropriate way to approach something.”  Aporia is a master figure for 

simulating your character’s self-consciousness changes of mind at heightened 

moments.

 

BENEDICK

They say the lady is fair; 'tis a

truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous; 'tis

so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving

me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor

no great argument of her folly, for I will be

horribly in love with her.  (Much Ado, 2.3)

To see Benedick play these lines in context, see:

 

Note how epanorthos, correctio, and aporia employ parentheses as a self-interruption 

that makes a self-correction.  Consider, then, how these figures may reveal a moment of 

your character’s own consciousness about his or her own use of language or how speech 

signals a change in thought or feeling.  These figures, in particular, may illustrate the 

“naturalism” present in the so-called oratorical or formal acting style.

 

Anastrophe: “Departure from normal word order for the sake of 

emphasis.” Why would your character purposefully use creative syntax?  What word 

appears to receive added importance in the unusual arrangement?   What purpose does 

the arrangement serve?

 

Play Anastrophe:

 

ARIEL

Jove's lightnings, the precursors

O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary

And sight-outrunning were not.

(Tem., 1.2.201)

 

CHORUS

O, pardon! since a crooked figure may

Attest in little place a million;

And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,

On your imaginary forces work. (H5, 1.1)

 

HENRY

Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,

How you awake our sleeping sword of war:

We charge you, in the name of God, take heed;

For never two such kingdoms did contend

Without much fall of blood.  (H5, 1.2)

 

Erotema: “The rhetorical question. To affirm or 

deny a point strongly by asking it as a question.”  

Why does your character ask a question to which he or she 

already knows the answer?—or does he or she know the 

answer?  Rhetorical questions are meant to persuade, after 

all.  Hence, they may represent a strategy, a mode of 

persuasion that skips argument by reducing things to what 

the speaker finds—or wants an addressee to 

find—obvious.  Within the context of your scene, your 

scene partners, or the audience, consider how your 

addressee(s) may alter your delivery.  Erotema, in some cases, may indicate an 

embedded stage direction, showing you where to take lines to the house.

 

Play Erotema:

 

IAGO

And what's he then that says I play the villain?

When this advice is free I give and honest,

Probal to thinking and indeed the course

To win the Moor again? For 'tis most easy

The inclining Desdemona to subdue

In any honest suit: she's framed as fruitful

As the free elements. And then for her

To win the Moor--were't to renounce his baptism,

All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,

His soul is so enfetter'd to her love,

That she may make, unmake, do what she list,

Even as her appetite shall play the god

With his weak function. How am I then a villain

To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,

Directly to his good? Othello 2.3

 

 

HAMLET

Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann'd,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!

For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? . . . . Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,

As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?

Ha! (HAM., 2.2)

 

MARULLUS

Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?

What tributaries follow him to Rome,

To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!

O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,

Knew you not Pompey? (J&C, 1.1)

 

Learn to recognize the above patterns and to ask why your character uses a particular 

figures.  Remember that 

NOTES

[1] Leslie O’Dell, Shakespearean Characterization:  A Guide for Actors and Students (London:  

Greenwood Press, 2002), 209.

[2] Unless otherwise noted, all definitions of the figures are from Gideon O. Burton’s "Silva 

Rhetoricae" at http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm.

[3] Shakespeare is cited by act and scene number from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/.  All play 

titles are abbreviated.

[4] Rhetorica ad Herennium, trans. Harry Caplan (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 

1954), IV.xxii.32.