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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Act 1, Scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Meal of Steam :
Face employs hyperbole and simile in a comedic speech in which he describes Subtle, a co-conspirator in his criminal scheme, as desperately impoverished:
Fac. Not of this, I think it.
But I shall put you in mind, sir;—at Pie-corner,
Taking your meal of steam in, from cooks' stalls,
Where, like the father of hunger, you did walk
Piteously costive, with your pinch'd-horn-nose,
And your complexion of the Roman wash,
Stuck full of black and melancholic worms,
Like powder corns shot at the artillery-yard.
In this scene, Subtle and Face bicker incessantly, each emphasizing how much they have done to help the other. When Subtle claims that Face had no will or spirit of his own before their acquaintance, Face retorts that Subtle was penniless and starving before Face assisted him. Face claims that when he first met Subtle “at Pie-corner,” Subtle was eating “a meal of steam” from the “cooks’ stalls.” Here, then, he hyperbolically claims that Subtle was so poor and hungry that he subsisted on nothing more than the steam wafting over from the food of others. Further, in a simile, he describes Subtle as appearing “like the father of hunger” as he walked around London. In a final simile, Face describes Subtle as being so infested with “worms” that his skin appeared “Like powder corns shot at the artillery-yard,” or in other words, like grains of gun-powder. Through these similes and hyperbole, Face attempts to underscore Subtle’s reliance upon Face’s own generosity.
