Saying one thing by means of another, without a word of comparison: instead of saying that something is like another thing, one says that it is. The image transfers to the subject the qualities of the thing it is identified with.
In Hamlet
But I have that within which passeth show; / These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
Grief becomes “trappings and suits”: clothing that covers and announces the pain without being the pain. The image devalues what is seen and keeps the true value for what is “within.”
Act I: The Ghost and the order of revenge, Hamlet, to Gertrude
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Act I: The Ghost and the order of revenge, Marcellus
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!
Act I: The Ghost and the order of revenge, Hamlet
See you now, / Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth
Act II: Feigned madness and the theater trap, Polonius, to Reynaldo
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, / And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought
Act III: The Mousetrap and the death of Polonius, Hamlet, alone, in the soliloquy
That we would do, / We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes
Act IV: Exile, madness, and the trap, Claudius, to Laertes
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