Figurative Language In The Dramatist

F

igurative language is the language that expresses one thing in terms of another by analogy, extension, or other association. A critical approach to drama written in verse requires the knowledge of not only of metre but also the function and purpose of the various figures of speech. These should never be only decoration because they are one of the means by which the playwright can develop and express his meaning. The various figures of speech have often been made interchangeable, thus a satisfactory definition of them is difficult to provide. There is a tendency to include symbols, similes, and metaphors making up the imagery. Metaphorical is used to mean figurative and symbolical or symbolizes is often applied to almost any of the figurative

In this technique, understanding is suggested not through conscious evaluations – like those of a chorus aware of everything, a character specially endowed with authority, or the observers who interpret a central referent – but through devices of speech that implicitly reveal a level of awareness beyond the speaker’s own comprehension. By introducing changes of tone, images, allusions, ambiguous words, and variation in sound, or by making a speech from words, images, and symbols repeated or duplicated in other contexts, the dramatist “breaks the barrier of human limitations of his individualized characters.” Through these devices, the dramatist creates authoritative dramatic facts relevant to all the characters. None of these stylistic devices can function alone. They acquire their significance from the general context of the action, which, they in turn try help to elucidate through their own contributions. Each of these stylistic devices works with other devices, of language and structure, in provoking the spectators to view the action as a whole in a certain perspective. This lack of autonomy is especially true of the sound pattern into which the dramatist shapes his words, that is, the pattern produced by variations in stress and pitch, differences in the placement and duration of pauses, the relationships between individual words or lines, the presence or absence of rhyme, and the contrast of one speaking voice with another. While it is possible to isolate and describe this pattern, the resulting description can embody no specific meaning. The sound pattern may have only appropriateness, meaning that the emotion articulated by the content of expressive words determines their arrangement. Nevertheless, in many instances sound devices lead the spectator toward a clearer understanding of the situation presented. Rhyme implies a