What are some figurative devices used in act 4 of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet?

Most of
the significant figurative devices in act 4 of can be found in scene 5,
whenis discovered: supposedly dead. Juliet's father, , exclaims that "Death lies on her
like an untimely frost / Upon the sweetest flower of all the field."

Death is here personified, as it is for the rest of the play after this point. The
makes death seem, paradoxically, like a living presence on stage.
He stalks the characters for the last part of the play until he eventually takes bothand
Juliet.

In the quotation above, there is also a
comparing Death to "an untimely frost." This simile emphasizes how unnaturally cold
death is, and the fact that Juliet is subsequently described as "the sweetest flower of all
the field" suggests that Death has come too soon. Frost is not meant to make an appearance
until winter, but here it has come prematurely: it is, as Lord Capulet says,
"untimely." This premature arrival of Death reminds the audience that Juliet is still
very young and makes her deathand thus the loss to her parentsall the more tragic.

Later in the same scene, Lord Capulet exclaims that, "with my child my joys are
buried." This alludes to the grave and indicates that, as his
daughter is buried beneath the earth, so too will be buried any hope of joy he had. There is a
certainto this, of course; in act 3, scene 5, Lord Capulet told Juliet that he would "drag
[her] on a hurdle" to Saint 's Church to marryand that, if she still refused, she should
"never look [him] in the face" again.

Trying to comfort Juliet's
parentsand also perhaps trying to ease his own conscience, given that he caused this scene of
grief says that Juliet is "advanced / Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself."
This quotation conjures up images of angels, suggesting that Juliet is happier now with the
angels in heaven than she could possibly be on earth.

We, the audience, of
course know that Juliet is not really dead at this moment, and so throughout this scene there is
dramatic irony, which is when the audience knows something that one
or more of the characters on stage does not. The dramatic irony in this instance could make it
more difficult for us to empathize with the grief of the parents or make us dislike Friar
Lawrence for putting Juliet's parents through such an ordeal.