"Here's to the maid with a bosom of snow: / Now to her that's brown as a berry" (p.110) (Metaphor/Simile)
The song sung by the group of rowdy young men at Charles's house objectifies and sings the praises of various kinds of women by calling attention to their various attributes. In this short section of the song, we have both a metaphor and a simile. The line "Here's to the maid with a bosom of snow" (p.110) is a metaphor comparing the color of a woman's skin to snow directly. In contrast, the next line, "Now to her that's brown as a berry"(p.110) is a simile because it makes a similar color comparison using "as."
"a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin" (p.32) (Metaphor)
In this quote, Benjamin Backbite describes the way his writing will look when published, in an attempt to woo Maria. As a poet, he uses figurative, lyrical language to describe his writing. Here, he compares his poetry to a stream running through a meadow, attempting to highlight both its length and its beauty.
"A tale of scandal is as fatal to the credit of a prudent lady of her stamp as a fever is generally to those of the strongest constitutions" (p.34) (Simile)
Scandal is, of course, one of the main themes of The School for Scandal, and the play shows the extreme effects that even a single false rumor can wreak on a person's reputation and on the functioning of society as a whole. In this quote, a scandal is compared to a fever, and the speaker emphasizes how scandal can affect anyone.
"to spend as much to furnish your dressing-room with flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a greenhouse" (p.48) (Simile)
Sir Peter Teazle uses simile and hyperbole in this quote while arguing about how lavishly his new, young wife spends his money. He makes a fairly direct comparison between the way Lady Teazle wishes to decorate her dressing room with flowers in the winter (when they are out of season, thus much more expensive) and decorating the Pantheon (a famously large space) as a greenhouse (an exaggeration of the amount of flowers and plants one would use to do so).
"‘tis not that she paints so ill—but, when she has finished her face, she joins it on so badly to her neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in which the connoisseur may see at once that the head’s modern, though the trunk’s antique!" (p.59) (Simile)
Sir Benjamin uses this extended simile to make fun of the makeup habits of a woman not shown in the play. He compares her makeup to repairs on an old statue, and particularly points out the way she does not seem to notice the difference in color between her face and neck.
