Metaphor is much more than a poetic device. It's a way of thinking. It encourages the mind to see a thing through another. It can be applied to every facet of human endeavour. It is one of the main reasons that reading Shakespeare can be of so much value to everyone, not only English majors, teachers and writers. In fact, it sometimes seems as if every aspect of his work is shot through with the idea. Today, let's consider once more (I wrote about this in a different context in my post of October 8, 2010) what is often called "word class conversion", the technique whereby one part of speech is used as another. Here's an example from act two, scene three of King Lear - the speech in which Edgar decides that the only way to avoid being caught by his father's forces (he's been framed by his half-brother, Edmund) is to disguise himself as a "Bedlam beggar". Check out the three successive nouns used as verbs in the ninth and tenth lines:

I heard myself proclaim'd,

And by the happy hollow of a tree

Escap'd the hunt. No port is free, no place

That guard and most unusual vigilance

Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may scape,

I will preserve myself; and am bethought

To take the basest and most poorest shape

That ever penury, in contempt of man,

Brought near to beast. My face I'll grime with filth,

Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots,

And with presented nakedness outface

The winds and persecutions of the sky.

The country gives me proof and precedent

Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,

Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms

Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;

And with this horrible object, from low farms,

Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills,

Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,

Enforce their charity. 'Poor Turlygod! poor Tom!'

That's something yet! Edgar I nothing am.

When we speak of Shakespeare as "using poetry" or "writing in verse", I think we may be missing the point. Shakespeare's brilliance is largely due to the fact that he was always thinking poetically, not simply employing it as a device, and over the next few posts, I'm going to try to prove this contention. Today, I'd like to consider Shakespeare's use of metaphor.

When something new is brought to the mind's attention, one of the processes that it employs in its apprehension is to compare it to something that it already knows. The flip side to this also happens, where something familiar can be understood differently, and often more deeply, by comparison with something new. Therefore, writing (which is, in one sense, simply recorded thinking) based on the metaphorical concept will lead to places that "realistic" writing won't. Here is an example from the opening scene of King Lear. This occurs as Lear is in the act of disowning Cordelia because he did not get the answer from her that he was expecting, either in form or content, to his question about the quantity of her love. The Earl of Kent, a nobleman of great personal loyalty to Lear, attempts to intercede and prevent disaster:

KENT

Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,

Lov'd as my father, as my master follow'd,

As my great patron thought on in my prayers-

LEAR

The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.

KENT

Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

The region of my heart! Be Kent unmannerly

When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?

Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak

When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound

When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy doom;

And in thy best consideration check

This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgment,

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,

Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound

Reverbs no hollowness.

The last lines contain a metaphor of astonishing power: Kent points out that the heart of a person who does a lot of talking about love or loyalty can be like a barrel that produces more sound when it is less full. So here's the question: Would this remarkable observation have come into being if Shakespeare was not thinking poetically? My own feeling is that the poetry is more often the cause rather than the effect of moments like this one.