Name:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Literary Devices
Device
Simile: a comparison of two
unlike things using the words
like or as.
Examples (write example, act, and scene)
she lingers my desires,/Like to a step-dame or a dowager/
Long withering out a young man revenue. Act I, Scene 1
Metaphor: a comparison of
two unlike things where one
thing is said to be the other.
To whom you are but as a form in wax/By him imprinted and within his power/
To leave the figure or disfigure it. Act I, Scene 1
Personification: attributes of
human given to an animal,
object, or a concept
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;/ The pale companion is not for our pomp.
Act I, Scene 1
Irony:
And, which is more than all these boasts can be,/I am beloved of beauteous
Hermia: (situational) Act I, Scene 1
Situational: discrepancy between actual
circumstances and those that would
seem appropriate
or discrepancy between what one
anticipates and what actually comes to
pass
Dramatic: discrepancy between what
the speaker says and what the poem
means
Verbal: saying the opposite of what one
means
Symbolism: using a literal
part of the store to represent
more than what it is.
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,/Knacks, trifles, nosegays,
sweetmeats, messengers/Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth
Act I, Scene 1
Allusion: a reference to
something in other literature
or history
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,/Playing on pipes of corn and versing love
To amorous Phillida. Act II, Scene 1
Pun: A play on words,
sometimes on different
senses of the same word and
sometimes on the similar
sense or sound of different
words.
For, ere Demetrius looked on Hermia’s eyne,/He hailed down oaths that he was
only mine;/And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,/So he dissolved, and
show’rs of oaths did melt—