What is an example of traductio in Shakespeare?

"Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove" (Sonnet 116, 1609) is the clearest example: one root word driven back through the line, which is traductio (the repetition of a word, or its root, across a passage). But two of those returns come back in a changed grammatical form, alters into alteration, remover into remove, and that shift is the textbook description of polyptoton, a different figure with a different name. Deciding which name the line actually wants is the whole task, and it is the same task for almost every Shakespeare line you would tag as traductio.

Sonnet 116: "Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds"

Here is the opening of the sonnet in full:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.

Track the recurrences. "Love" returns as "love." "Alters" comes back as "alteration." "Remover" comes back as "remove." The word keeps reappearing while the grammar around it bends, and that is the point of the passage: love is being defined as the thing that stays fixed while everything else moves. The figure does the argument's work for it. The constant word physically persists on the page exactly as constant love persists against change, so the form enacts the claim instead of just stating it.

This is the strongest and most recognizable instance, which is why it leads. It is also the one most likely to be filed under a different name. Because "alter" and "remove" return in shifted grammatical form rather than identical, many handbooks would call this polyptoton (the repetition of a word in a different grammatical form, like "alters" and "alteration"). The loose classical sense of traductio is broad enough to claim it anyway, since the Roman rhetoricians used the term as a catch-all for bringing a word back through a passage in any form. Whether you call this line traductio or polyptoton depends entirely on which definition you are working from, and the line between traductio and polyptoton is what you have to settle before you commit to a name.

Hamlet: "Words, words, words"

Polonius asks Hamlet what he is reading, and Hamlet answers: "Words, words, words" (Hamlet, 2.2, 1601). The same word, unchanged, driven three times.

This is the bare end of the traductio range: pure word-repetition with no shift in form and no shift in sense. "Words" means "words" all three times. What the flat triple does in the scene is refuse Polonius an answer. By repeating the word with no addition, Hamlet empties it of content and hands back nothing, which is both an insult and a piece of feigned madness. The repetition is the snub.

A strict reading would not call this traductio at all. When the same word repeats with no change and the repetitions sit immediately back-to-back, the precise name is epizeuxis (immediate repetition of a word with no words between, like "Never, never, never"). When identical repetitions are spread across a passage rather than touching, the name is ploce. Traductio, in its loose umbrella sense, covers both, but if you want the working writer's answer, "Words, words, words" is epizeuxis.

Richard II and Othello: a word turned to a new sense

The far end of the range is repetition that changes the word's meaning on its return. Richard II, the most word-conscious of the plays, runs this constantly. As Richard hands over his crown, the word "crown" keeps coming back carrying different weights, the gold object in one breath and the office it stands for in the next, so that giving up the one is made to feel like giving up the other.

Othello shows the same engine driving a single line. Iago describes the jealous man as one "Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves" (Othello, 3.3, 1604). The clause turns on paired verbs circling the same fixed state, the repetition holding the contradiction in one frame rather than resolving it.

When the second instance of a word carries a genuinely different sense, the figure has its own name: antanaclasis (the repetition of a word in a shifted meaning, like "put out the light, and then put out the light"). Traductio is the umbrella the narrower term sits under, so a sense-shifting repetition is correctly both, but the same-sense and shifted-sense distinction is what decides whether antanaclasis is the more precise call.

Why "traductio in Shakespeare" is a slippery search

You will find very few Shakespeare lines actually labeled traductio, and the reason is not that Shakespeare avoids the move. He uses it constantly. The reason is that editors and critics almost never reach for the word "traductio" when they annotate him.

Traductio is a broad classical catch-all, and modern analysis prefers the narrower figures that name exactly what a given line does: polyptoton for changed form, antanaclasis for changed sense, ploce and epizeuxis for plain repetition. A footnote that says "polyptoton" tells a reader more than one that says "traductio," so that is the word editions use. The label fell out of working circulation, not the technique.

What this means in practice: do not search for lines tagged traductio. Read for the move instead. Find a passage where one word returns across a few lines, then decide which of the narrower figures the return actually is.

How to tell which figure you are actually looking at

Once you have a Shakespeare line with a word coming back through it, one question settles the name: what changed on the return? Nothing, the form, or the sense.

If the word returns unchanged and means the same thing, it is ploce, or epizeuxis when the repetitions sit immediately back-to-back. If the same root returns in a new grammatical form, it is polyptoton. If the word returns carrying a different meaning, it is antanaclasis. Traductio is the family name covering all three, which is why it reads as imprecise on any single line.

What the repetition does	Figure to name it	Shakespeare instance
Same word, unchanged, same sense	Ploce, or epizeuxis if back-to-back	"Words, words, words" (Hamlet, 2.2)
Same root, new grammatical form	Polyptoton	"alters... alteration," "remover... remove" (Sonnet 116)
Same word, new sense	Antanaclasis	"crown" shifting object to office (Richard II)
Any of the above, umbrella term	Traductio	all of the above

So "traductio in Shakespeare" is best read as a whole family of repetitions he uses on nearly every page. The skill the search is really after is not finding traductio. It is naming the specific member, polyptoton or antanaclasis or ploce, that a given line turns out to be, because that is the call that shows you can actually see what the line is doing.