Name: _______________________________
Identifying Figurative Language of Shakespeare 

Directions: Write which technique is being used on the line.  Then, explain how you know your answer.  

Answers: Simile, Metaphor, Personification, and Hyperbole

1.  Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, / Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

2.  What say you, Hermia? be advised fair maid: / To you your father should be as a god; 
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one / To whom you are but as a form in wax 
By him imprinted and within his power / To leave the figure or disfigure it.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

3.  Not to-night, good Iago: I have very poor and / unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish
courtesy would invent some other custom of / entertainment.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

4.  I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; / A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

5.  Come, then; for with a wound I must be cured. / Draw that thy honest sword, which thou hast worn

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	
6.  I must hear from thee every day in the hour, / For in a minute there are many days:
O, by this count I shall be much in years / Ere I again behold my Romeo!

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

7.  As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. / They kill us for their sport.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

8.  If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, 
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

9.  When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced / The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

10.  Here's the smell of the blood still: all the / perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

11.  The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and / ill together

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	
12.  I say 'your city,' to his wife and mother; / Breaking his oath and resolution like
A twist of rotten silk, never admitting / That pages blush'd at him and men of heart

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

13. But if it be a sin to covet honour, / I am the most offending soul alive.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

14. Whether  'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,  
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

15.  Say that she frown, I'll say she looks as clear / As morning roses newly wash'd with dew:

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

16.  I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed / monster. A most scurvy monster! 

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

17.  Nativity, once in the main of light, / Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight, / And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	
18.  You seem to me as Dian in her orb, / As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

19. O, she is fallen / Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea / Hath drops too few to wash her clean again
And salt too little which may season give / To her foul-tainted flesh!

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

20.  But yesterday the word of Caesar might / Have stood against the world; now lies he there.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

21.  So are you to my thoughts as food to life, / Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

22.  Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? / Draw near them then in being merciful:
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge: / Thrice noble Titus, spare my first-born son.

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer

	

23.  You are a thousand times a properer man / Than she a woman: 'tis such fools as you
That makes the world full of ill-favour'd children

What technique is being used? ___________________________________________________________

Simile, Metaphor, Personification, or Hyperbole

How do you figure?  
Explain how you got your answer