1. Romeo and Juliet Act Two, Scene iii
Annotation Practice and Reading for Understanding
Extended Metaphors, Soliloquy, Quatrain, Heroic Couplet

2. Extended Metaphor
Definition: An extended metaphor, also known as a conceit or sustained metaphor, is when an author exploits a single metaphor or analogy at length through multiple linked vehicles, tenors, and grounds. Tenor is the subject of the metaphor, vehicle is the image or subject that carries the weight of the comparison, and ground is the shared properties of the two compared subjects.

3. See how many extended metaphors you can find in the Friar’s Soliloquy…
Friar Lawrence

4. *Quatrain: Lines 1-4
The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day’s path and Titan’s burning wheels.

5. Quatrain: Lines 5-8 The day to cheer the night’s dank dew to dry,
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye
The day to cheer the night’s dank dew to dry,
I must upfill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.

6. *Quatrain: Lines 9-12 The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb.
What is her burying grave, that is her womb;
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,

7. Quatrain: Lines 13-16 Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities;

8. Quatrain: Lines 17-20 For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth for some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.

9. Heroic Couplet: Lines 21-22
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied
And vice sometime by action dignified.

10. Quatrain: Lines 23-26 Within the infant rind of this weak flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power;
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.

11. Quatrain: Lines 27-30 Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs– grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.