I'm detecting oxymorons in everything I read. Perhaps I'm even imagining them. Love's Labour's Lost is a "great feast of languages" and also a savory banquet of rhetorical figures. Here are some of the oxymorons (or "cross-couplers," as Puttenham called them) that I came upon in my latest re-reading of the play. Some require explanation.
"Civil war," not 'civil" as in the American Civil War but civil as in "civility" or good manners (like the "merry war" between Beatrice and Benedick). "Trencher-knight" because a trencher was generally a wooden dish, not suitable for knights -- and therefore a trencher-knight would be a low-born knight. "Living art," where the art is a portrait or a statue, and therefore not living and breathing. "Loose grace,' where "loose" means worldly rather than spiritual. "Profound simplicity." "Evil angel." "Dainty Bacchus," because Bacchus was notably disorderly. "Sweet misprision," because misprision is a dereliction of duty and therefore not sweet but sour or bitter. "Rational hind," whether hind refers to an animal or to a person of exceedingly small intellectual gifts. In addition, two near-oxymora: "merry days of desolation," "as swift as lead."
These figures of speech are not as obvious as those in Romeo and Juliet, but they allow us to observe Shakespeare at work, experimenting with the ingredients of language, just as he was hitting his stride.
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