Previous
Literary Devices
Definition of Allegory
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The Tortoise and The Hare" is... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and... read full definition
Act 1, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Jealousy:
Attempting to convince Camillo to lay aside his suspicions that his wife is conducting an affair, Flamineo metaphorically compares a jealous husband to a man who sees the world through glass:
FLAMINIO
Now should
you wear a pair of these spectacles and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine twenty hands were taking up of your wife’s
clothes, and this would put you into a horrible, causeless fury.CAMILLO
The fault there, sir, is not in the eyesight.FLAMINIO
True, but they that have the yellow jaundice think all objects they look on to be yellow. Jealousy is worser: her fits present to a man, like so many bubbles in a basin of water, twenty several crabbed faces; many times makes his own shadow his cuckold-maker.
Flamineo sets up an extended metaphor in which a man examines the world through a pair of faceted glass “spectacles.” Because of the cut of the glass, everything he sees is magnified by twenty. When that man sees his wife “tying her shoes,” he mistakenly imagines that “twenty hands” are taking off her clothing. Flamineo then uses another metaphor that similarly compares jealousy to a form of distorted vision. An individual with “yellow jaundice” (a disease that causes skin and eyes to appear yellow), he claims, imagines the whole world to be “yellow.”
Next, Flamineo employs a common allegorical figure in Renaissance literature: “Jealousy.” The allegorical figure of jealousy, Flamineo claims, causes “fits” in men that make them see the world as if through a “basin of water” filled with “bubbles.” The victim of Jealousy, then, “makes his own shadow / his cuckold-maker,” or in other words, suspects his own reflection of carrying out an affair with his wife. Flamineo uses these metaphors and allegorical figures in order to persuade Camillo to set aside his fears.
