How Does Shakespeare Use Repetition In A Midsummer Night's Dream

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, each character has their own take on a persuasive argument. Helena uses many insults and sarcasm, in contrast with Hermia's use of pronouns and repetition of the last thing said. Demetrius and Lysander take a more love driven approach and use much more beautiful pathos until the end of the passage. Much happens within this cut portion of text, and it contains quite the persuasive arsenal. Lysander uses emotive language as a primary technique of persuasion. We can see this when Lysander says, “Lysander's love, that would not let him bide”. Lysander dramatizes his love for Helena. He does this multiple times in the scene. For example, when Lysander says, “Helena, I love thee; by my life, I do”

Although it must be noted that her persuasive language does make a significant appearance in her lines. In particular her sarcasm and insulting capability become well known in the passage of text. When she says, “O excellent!;” you can practically hear the sarcasm dripping off of it. Her insults are ones to be aware of, she attacks Hermia’s stature as a woman of high society as well as her height many a times. Upon calling Hermia a “counterfeit” and “puppet,” her immediate reaction is that of anger and false realization that Helena’s height is why the men lover her so while Hermia is

In the beginning of the act, Hermia only appears to be mildly upset with Lysander for leaving her. Simply calling him out for what he had done, saying “Why unkindly didst thou leave me so?”. As a scene goes on and the argument progresses Hermia begins to use pronouns in her argument, such as “I scorn you not, it seems you scorn me”. However towards the end of the argument things really start to get heated. She uses insults, like calling Lysander a “Juggler” or using repetition, like when Helena calls Hermia a puppet, which causes Hermia to respond with “Puppet, why so..” All of these persuasive methods can allow us to view what is going on inside of the mind of Hernia, she is pissed off. These methods of name calling, repetition, and use of pronouns would typically be used in an argument, such as this