Tell me about use of figures of speech in Hamlet, and give examples of different figures of speech from the play.

A figure of speech is the use of language in a non-literal
way, and the most common figures of speech are similes and metaphors.  Also common are
personification, metonymy, imagery, symbolism, and allusion.  There are many other
figures, but these are some of the most widely recognizable ones.  Here are a few
examples of figurative language found in the play,
Hamlet.

Simile:  a
stated comparison using like or as.

In his
first soliloquy in Act 1, Hamlet expresses his dismay at how his mother could go from
being married to man as great as King Hamlet to being married to man who is so much less
than that.  He makes a rather complicated comparison to express the extreme difference
between the two men.  He says, "My father's brother, but no more like my father / Than I
to Hercules."  He is saying that Claudius is no more like King Hamlet than Hamlet is
like Hercules.

Metaphor:  an implied
comparison between unalike things.

When
Hamlet is expressing his disgust with his mother's marriage to Claudius, he compares
this corruption of the state of Denmark to a garden.  He says, "'Tis an unweeded garden
that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it
merely."

Personification:  assigning human
qualities or abilities to a non-human
thing.

Horatio describes the dawn with the
words, "the morn, in russet mantle clad, / Walks o'er the dew of you high eastern
hill."  Clearly, the rising sun and the morning cannot wear a coat or actually, walk --
but the line describes the color and the movement of the sun at early
dawn.

Symbolism:  using a actual thing to
represent an idea

In Ophelia's display of
crazy behavior in Act 4 she hands out various flowers to Claudius, Gertrude and her
brother.  In her speech to tells each receiver what each flower symbolizes.  For
examples she gives Laertes pansies and says "that for thoughts."  Pansies were used a
symbol of remembrance in the time of Shakespeare.  She hands Claudius the flower rue and
tells him it is called "herb of grace o' Sundays."  Rue was a flower associated with
repentance that could achieved through Grace with
reconcillation.

Metonymy:  using something
associated with the thing to represent the whole of the
thing.

In Act 3, after the "get thee to a
nunnery scene," Ophelia comments and Hamlet changed behavior and thinks he has truly
lost his mind. She states "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! / The courtier's,
soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword ... [is] quite down."  She names three aspects
of Hamlet's character and then references three things associated with those
descriptions -- Hamlet is a soldier (reference to the sword); Hamlet is a courtier
(reference to the tongue); Hamlet is a scholar (reference to the
eye).

Also -- all references to the throne are not
referring the chair, but the King of Denmark who is associated with the
throne.

Imagery:  language used to
appeal to any of the
senses

There are examples all throughout the
text where Shakespeare uses descriptive language to clarify the scene.  One example is
when Marcellus states that the arrival of the ghost suggests that something is "rotten
in the state of Denmark."  This could be a image to draw on the sense of sight and
smell. 

Allusion:  a reference to something
historical or literary

In Act 1, Horatio is
comparing the arrival of the ghost to some of the omens that occurred before the
assassination of Julius Caesar "in the palmy state of Rome."