William Shakespeare’s ‘Fear No More’ poem demonstrates the notion of death and the

beauty it holds as it relieves us of our troubles and worries. The poem was originally a song from
one of Shakespeare’s final plays, ‘Cymbeline’, which was composed and performed around
1609-1610 and is sung by the characters in alternate stanzas. In literature, a song is a poem for
singing and chanting whether it has musical accompaniment or not. With the help of diction and
repetition, the speaker utilizes a dramatic tone and the broadened hyperbole to assure the readers
that death should not be feared.
In the said play, the characters sang this poem while dead bodies are lying on their feet
and the speaker directs his sentiments to the deceased therefore making the poem a dramatic
monologue. A dramatic monologue is a poem where one imaginary speaker is addressing an
imaginary audience.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!
Here, the narrator is not just saying what's on his mind. It's in his intentions to address his
opinions to the bodies and even though they're not alive, they were still considered as audiences.
Moreover, the theme of the poem can be easily deciphered. It tackles the significance of death
and foregrounds the fact that every men and woman naturally die eventually. Each stanza also
presents reasons why those people whose lives have ended should not be in despair but instead
be glad. All the verses or stanzas also follow the rhyme scheme ABCBDD except the last stanza.
Shakespeare also employs several literary devices that assisted in portraying the central
theme of the poem. One of them is catharsis. In its literary sense, it is the emotional release from
tension or a powerful feeling aroused by a tragedy. Generally, the poem can be regarded as a
catharsis that revolves around the speaker's sense of struggle whether he will accept the
consequences of death or not, and if there is a chance for him to escape from it. With that
tragedy, the narrator focuses instead on the advantages of death thus triggering the curiosity of
the audiences as to why they had come to such a conclusion upon a horrifying issue. Some life
problems were also exaggerated in the poem. In the first stanza, the narrator states that the
chimney sweeper should no longer fear the 'furious winter's rages'. The use of 'furious' and
'rages' certainly hyperbolizes the description of the said climate making the readers imagine the
worst situation during the winter season. The speaker continues with, "No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Ghost unlaid forbear thee! Nothing ill come near thee!",
exaggerating the comfort one may have as he dies. This operation of hyperboles helped the
narrator in further convincing the audiences about his argument. Additionally, Shakespeare also
used an apostrophe in the whole poem. The speaker directs his words to the dead bodies as if
they can hear him talk about their fortunate death. Euphemism also is shown in the poem wherein
the word 'dust' was used as a replacement to 'death', which is a biblical allusion. Such a device
aided in reassuring the audience by not saying the unpleasant word. In the second verse, the
words 'scepter', 'learning', and 'physic' were used as a technique called metonymy to substitute
the words 'king', 'teachers', and 'doctors' that are somewhat closely related to them. Same with
metonymy, Shakespeare also utilized synecdoche wherein the word ‘dust’ represents ‘death’.
Their only difference is that in synecdoche, the representative word is not at all associated with
the word it stands for. Also, epistrophe was applied in the poem. Epistrophe is a figure of speech
in which each sentence ends with the same word. In ‘Fear No More’, each of the first three
stanzas ended with the phrase ‘come to dust’, while the first four lines within the last stanza all
ended with the word ‘thee’ as to emphasize the speaker’s argument that everyone without being
specific of whom must die in the end regardless of their social standing and also contributing to
the development of the theme. Repetition can also be observed within the entire poem. In each
stanza, the idea of death giving comfort and solace was repeated throughout and this also took
part in presenting the theme. Furthermore, Shakespeare employs imagery here in the way that he
didn’t bring any fear to his readers even though some of his words were conveyed by terror.
Hence, he justifies the fear of death itself. The poem’s tone also is certainly dramatic since it was
originally a song and it is so, considering the setting where the characters sang these lines. In
parallel, the diction itself can be supposed as dramatic too for Shakespeare uses metaphorical
words with symbolic meanings. In the last paragraph, it can be noticed that the speaker expresses
a great emotion assisted by the exclamatory sentences and the recurrence of the word ‘thee’ at
the end of each statement. However, it is contradicting too since positive phrases and words were
used in illustrating death when in fact death itself is perceived to be full of negativity.
Overall, the dramatic diction and tone, the repetition, and the exaggerated representation
of things all unite in conveying the main theme which is the sense of relief in death. In addition
to that, we can never be sure if Shakespeare himself is favorable with what the speaker in the
poem is trying to say. It is only the narrator’s argument that is definite but the author’s stand-in
on this interesting theme cannot be guaranteed.