Metaphor: Gentility
The elderly patriarch of the family at the center of the play provides a rather unique metaphorical definition of the concept of gentility and manners to his somewhat dull-witted nephew, Stephen: "Nor stand so much on your gentility, / Which is an airy and mere borrowed thing, / From dead men's dust and bones" (10). With these words he reminds his nephew that gentility is something inherited; it says nothing about the man himself.
Simile: Jealousy
Poor Kitely is consumed by jealousy over his wife. Fortunately for him, she is true and faithful. Unfortunately for him, though, he is well past the point where fidelity matters. At least he is self-aware enough to know his jealousy possesses him and gifted enough to put it in perhaps the play’s most beautifully executed extended metaphor when he describes it thusly:
A new disease? I know not, new, or old,
But it may well be called poor mortals' plague;
For, like a pestilence, it doth infect
The houses of the brain. (31)
Simile: Kitely's Brain
Kitely reveals himself to be very gifted with figurative language. It helps that he is self-aware but also naive, the former perhaps to the point of narcissistic self-centeredness. One of his many asides to the audience to allow them a glimpse into this sense of awareness involves a description of how his own brain works: "My brain, methinks, is like an hour-glass, / Wherein my imaginations run like sands" (46).
Simile: Clement the Wise
Justice Clement is situated in opposition to Knowell, the patriarch doling out advice like a sage, but revealed to be rather gullible and easily confused. Clement, on the other hand, is capable of seeing right to the truth of what is happening with those involved in such machinations, but his character is also one that gets a kick out of sitting back and watching things unfold. However, when Knowell gets into particularly despondent mood, Clement is quick to turn to metaphor to give the old man a jolt of cold reality: "Your cares are nothing: they are like my cap, soon put on, and as soon put off" (59).
Simile: The Moon
Edward says to Wellbred that he guesses his father thinks he is a "strange dissolute" (40) figure right now, but Wellbred tries to encourage him that the thought is "like the moon in her last / quarter, 'twill change shortly" (40). A moon in her last quarter is about to disappear completely, which is a fitting image for the perception Knowell has of his son at the moment.
