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Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Prologue
Explanation and Analysis—New Plays and Maidens:
In the prologue that opens the play, the speaker of the prologue uses a metaphor that compares an exciting new play to a young woman who is able to successfully impersonate a virgin. Addressing the audience directly, the speaker of the Prologue states:
New plays and maidenheads are near akin:
Much followed both, for both much money giv’n,
If they stand sound and well. And a good play,
Whose modest scenes blush on his marriage day
And shake to lose his honor, is like her
That after holy tie and first night’s stir
Yet still is modesty, and still retains
More of the maid, to sight, than husband’s pains.
We pray our play may be so.
He begins by comparing “new plays” to “maidenheads,” or in other words, the virginity of young women. Both, he states, are “followed” closely by the hungry public, which is willing to spend “much money” for an exciting new play or a young woman’s virginity. A “good play” is able to “blush on his marriage day” in the same way that a young woman who has already lost her virginity might nevertheless retain her “modesty” on her marriage night by acting the part of a virgin. The speaker of the prologue, then, suggests that the play, The Two Noble Kinsmen, will still be exciting to the audience even though it has already appeared on stage many times.
Act 1, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Thebes:
Arcite attempts to convince Palamon to leave their home city of Thebes, which he characterizes as a den of crime and immoral behavior unbecoming of young noblemen. In his speech, he uses a series of closely related metaphors that compare living in Thebes to swimming in a fast-moving river:
Dear Palamon, dearer in love than blood
And our prime cousin, yet unhardened in
The crimes of nature, let us leave the city
Thebes, and the temptings in ’t, before we further
Sully our gloss of youth,
And here to keep in abstinence we shame
As in incontinence; for not to swim
I’ th’ aid o’ th’ current were almost to sink,
At least to frustrate striving; and to follow
The common stream, ’twould bring us to an eddy
Where we should turn or drown; if labor through,
Our gain but life and weakness.
First, Arcite emphasizes his closeness to Palamon, both as a friend and cousin. He fears that they will be corrupted by the “temptings” of Thebes and argues that they should leave before they “sully” their youth. Further developing his argument, he suggests that it isn’t possible to resist the immoral culture of the city, as “not to swim” in the “current” of the city is “to sink.” In this metaphor, he compares Thebes to a river and suggests that the current moves too quickly to be resisted. The only options, then, are to follow the current of the city or to drown. However, following the current is also dangerous, Arcite insists, as “to follow/ The common stream” will inevitably lead them to an “eddy” in which they would drown. Arcite’s metaphor suggests that there is no way to go on living in Thebes that wouldn’t bring danger or dishonor.
Related Themes:
Act 1, Scene 5
Explanation and Analysis—Market-Place:
At the end of Act 1, the three queens whose husbands have been murdered by the tyrannical Creon, leader of the Ancient Greek city of Thebes, reflect upon the mortality following their husbands' funerals. In a private conversation with the other queens, the First Queen uses a metaphor that compares death to a “market-place”:
SECOND QUEEN
Heavens lend
A thousand differing ways to one sure end.FIRST QUEEN
This world’s a city full of straying streets,
And death’s the market-place where each one meets
The Second Queen notes that death can come from “A thousand differing ways.” The First Queen responds by comparing the world to “a city full of straying streets” and then describing death as “a market-place where each one meets.” The First Queen’s metaphor further develops the Second Queen’s suggestion that death is inevitable by imagining death as the center of some vast city. Though there are many different streets, which represent the different paths that an individual’s life may take, all of these varying roads lead inevitably towards the central “marketplace” of death. In this scene, then, the three widowed queens reflect mournfully upon the lives of their husbands, as well as that of their nemesis, Creon, who now joins them in the afterlife.
Related Themes:
Act 2, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Freedom in Prison:
Imprisoned in Athens as enemy combatants from the city of Thebes, Arcite and Palamon at first lament their circumstances. However, Arcite attempts to cheer up his cousin and companion, using a paradox to argue that they can experience greater freedom while in prison:
Let’s think this prison holy sanctuary […]
What worthy blessing
Can be but our imaginations
May make it ours? And here being thus together,
We are an endless mine to one another;
We are one another’s wife, ever begetting
New births of love; we are father, friends,
acquaintance;
We are, in one another, families;
I am your heir, and you are mine. This place
Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor
Dare take this from us; here with a little patience
We shall live long and loving […]
Were we at liberty,
A wife might part us lawfully, or business;
Quarrels consume us.
He implores Palamon to think of the tower not as a prison but as a “sanctuary” in which they are, paradoxically, free from all of the troubles that come with freedom. He then emphasizes all the things that they can do in prison by force of imagination, serving, for example, as wife, father, heir, and friend to each other. In a similar metaphor, he suggests that they might be “an endless mine” to one another, or in other words, a limitless resource. “Were we at liberty,” he claims, they would be subject to all different kinds of restrictions, from the law to commerce to wives. Though Arcite’s paradoxical argument is not very convincing, it does show his sincere attempt to cheer up his companion prior to their tragic feud.
Related Themes:
Act 3, Scene 5
Explanation and Analysis—The Schoolmaster :
In one of the play’s few comedic scenes, a local Schoolmaster attempts to lead the Country Folk in a short dance and theatrical performance, to be performed for Theseus, the Duke of Athens. Shakespeare and Fletcher satirize both the rustic and simple villagers, and the pretensions of the Schoolmaster. When the villagers struggle to follow his directions, the Schoolmaster states:
Fie, fie, what tediosity and disinsanity
is here among you! Have my rudiments been labored so long with you, milked unto you, and, by a figure, even the very plum broth and marrow of my understanding laid upon you, and do you still cry “Where?” and “How?” and “Wherefore?” […] Proh deum, medius fidius, you are all dunces! Forwhy, here stand I; here the Duke comes; there are you, close in the thicket; the Duke appears; I meet him and unto him I utter learnèd things and many figures; he hears, and nods, and hums, and then cries “Rare!” and I go forward.
The impatient Schoolmaster vents his frustrations at the villagers, who have failed to master his directions. He insists that he has given them the “plum broth and marrow / of [his] understanding”—a metaphor that compares his knowledge to some food considered both valuable and delicious in early modern England.
While the Schoolmaster considers himself to be more intelligent than the villagers, Shakespeare and Fletcher also satirize his pretentious attitude. He has peppered his speech with Latin expressions and pompous vocabulary in an attempt to appear well-educated, though he uses many words incorrectly. “Tediosity” and “disinsanity,” for example, are words of his own invention. In this scene, then, the playwrights satirize different classes of society.
Act 5, Scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Diana:
After Arcite has prayed to the god of war, Mars, and Palamon has prayed to the goddess of love, Venus, Emilia makes a final prayer to Diana, a patron goddess of maidens. In her prayer, she uses a series of similes and metaphors that touch upon the topic of chastity, or virginity:
O sacred, shadowy, cold, and constant queen,
Abandoner of revels, mute contemplative,
Sweet, solitary, white as chaste, and pure
As wind-fanned snow, who to thy female knights
Allow’st no more blood than will make a blush,
Which is their order’s robe, I here, thy priest,
Am humbled ’fore thine altar. O, vouchsafe
With that thy rare green eye, which never yet
Beheld thing maculate, look on thy virgin,
And, sacred silver mistress, lend thine ear—
Which ne’er heard scurrile term, into whose port
Ne’er entered wanton sound—to my petition,
Seasoned with holy fear.
In a simile, she states that Diana is as pure “as wind-fanned snow,” or in other words, white snow that has not yet been sullied or stood upon, a common poetic metaphor for virginity. Next, she notes that Diana “Allow’st no more blood than will make a blush, / Which is their order’s robe.” In describing a “blush” metaphorically as the “robe” or uniform of Diana’s followers, she suggests that the virginal young women who seek Diana’s protection are not permitted to submit to bodily passion, but instead, blush at the thought of male attention. Last, she implores Diana, in another metaphor, to allow her prayer to enter the “port” of her ear, which does not admit anything Diana does not want to hear. Emilia’s similes and metaphors suggest that she is, at this moment in the play, preoccupied with the question of virginity as she prepares to wed the winner of the fight.
Related Themes:
