SOURCE: Lucking, David. “‘And All Things Change Them to the Contrary’: Romeo and Juliet and the Metaphysics of Language.” English Studies 78, no. 1 (January 1997): 8-18.

In the essay that follows, Lucking investigates the way oxymoron functions in Romeo and Juliet, focusing particularly on the way Romeo and Juliet employ this rhetorical device.

While the fact that oxymoron is the most pervasive rhetorical figure in Romeo and Juliet is unlikely to escape the notice of any reasonably attentive reader, the significance that is to be attributed to this predominance is by no means equally apparent. Critics have evinced widely varying views as to whether the frequency with which this device recurs is to be regarded as a key to character or to the stage of development attained by Shakespeare's own art at the time of composition, and whether in either case its use is indicative of control of the verbal...