William Shakespeare has used a variety of literary devices throughout his works. Without them his plays would not be the success they have been throughout history.

Romeo and Juliet along with Hamlet is one of the most performed plays. It has been highly praised by literary critics for its language and dramatic effect. Literary devices used in this play are puns, foreshadowing, metaphor, personification, oxymoron, paradox, among others. A pun is a joke based on the use of a word, or more than one word, that has more than one meaning but the same sound. Mercutio and Romeo often exchange puns with one another in the play: Mercutio--"Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance." Romeo--"Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes / With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead…"(I iv 13-5)

In these lines, Romeo has used the word "sole" when referring to Mercutio's shoes, then made a pun by referring to his own "soul."

Another literary device used in Romeo and Juliet is paradox, statement that seems contradictory or incompatible. On closer examination, however, the combination of these components is indeed appropriate. For example, see how Juliet describes Romeo in the following quote: Juliet--"O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!" (III ii 75)

While Juliet knows that Romeo is neither a serpent nor does he have a face full of flowers, her use of these descriptions show how paradoxically he is her lover and the murderer of her cousin at the same time.

Hamlet, also one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays uses a variety of literary devices. Hamlet's famous speech in Act III, scene 1, uses an antithesis, contrary ideas expressed in a balanced sentence. “To be or not to be, that is the question,” presents opposite ideas of being or not being, living or dying, are expressed in this sentence. Hamlet's entire "To be or not to be" speech is a soliloquy. A soliloquy, a speech delivered by a character in a play or other literature while alone. We also have alliteration, the repetition of an initial sound in two or more words of a phrase, line or sentence. "With a bare bodkin?" Alliteration is found in the "b" sound beginning bare and bodkin. Allusion, a reference to a person , event, or condition thought to be familiar (but sometimes actually obscure or unknown) to the reader. "The fair Ophelia.--Nymph, in thy orisons/Be all my sins remembered." A nymph is a mythological reference, or allusion.

Macbeth is among the best-known of William Shakespeare’s plays, and is his shortest tragedy. The literary device used within this play make it more appealing. The most effect and interesting literary devices are irony, symbolism and imagery.

Irony, particularly verbal irony, is used when a character says one thing but means the opposite. An example of this is in Act 3 Scene 1 Lines 13-14, when Macbeth says to Banquo, "Tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir,/ And I’ll request your presence". As we, the reader continues to read, we learn that Banquo never makes it to the banquet because he is brutally murdered by order of Macbeth.

Symbols are also used in Macbeth such as blood and the weather. Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. Blood is everywhere in Macbeth, beginning with the opening battle between the Scots and the Norwegian invaders, described in terms of horror by the wounded captain in Act I, scene ii. From the beginning of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s murderous journey, blood comes to symbolize their guilt, and they begin to feel that their crimes have stained them in a way that cannot be washed clean. “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” Macbeth cries after he kills Duncan, even as his wife scolds him and says that a little water will do the job (II.ii.58–59). Later, though, she comes to share his horrified sense of being stained: “Out, damned spot; out, I say . . . who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” she asks as she wanders through the halls of their castle near the close of the play (V.i.30–34). Blood symbolizes the guilt that will haunt Macbeth and Lady Macbeth until their death.

The symbolism of weather as in other Shakespearean tragedies is present in Macbeth. The murders of Macbeth are followed by a number of unnatural occurrences in the natural realm. We have thunder and lightning with the witches’ appearances to the terrible storms that rage on the night of Duncan’s murder. These disturbances in nature symbolize the corruption in the moral and political orders.