Stand forth,
Lysander: and my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my
child;
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,
And
interchanged love-tokens with my child:
Thou hast by moonlight at her window
sung,
With feigning voice verses of feigning love,
And stolen the
impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds,
conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers
Of
strong prevailment in unharden'd youth:
With cunning hast thou filch'd my
daughter's heart, (A Midsummer Night Dream, Act I scene i, lines
20-30)
The metaphor being
developed at length by Shakespeare in lines 20-30 of A Midsummer Night's
Dream, Act I scene i, is a comparison of Lysander's actions to witchcraft. A
metaphor is a literary devices (specifically a trope that is a literary technique) that
compares two unlike things to each other, like comparing an orange to a ping-pong
paddle. In this scene, Egeus is complaining before the Duke that through trivial,
potentially insincere actions, like bestowing locks of hair and singing beneath windows,
Lysander has "bewitched" Hermia--made her fall frivolously in love--so that she no
longer obeys her father but has headstrong ideas of her own--one headstrong idea of her
own. That idea is to refuse to marry Demetrius and to insist upon marrying Lysander.
Hermia's preference for Lysander is a problem because Egeus has promised Hermia in
marriage to Demetrius. It is therefore Egeus' complaint that Lysander has acted
unscrupulously and has underhandedly--through actions that take advantage of Hermia's
"unharden'd youth"--turned her heart against obeying her father and against accepting
the love of the man she has been promised to.
Lysander
hath
bewitch'd the bosom of [his] child;
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her
rhymes,
And interchanged love-tokens with [his]
child:
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