Miri Ji ya Leidai er shujue youshu Chu Gouer

Mirígy’s scheme uses Ledér as a counterfeit beloved to punish Csongor at the moment he is most vulnerable to deception. By preparing a staged encounter and counting on his enchanted sleep to make him miss the woman he loves, Mirígy tries to turn an anticipated reunion into an embrace of the wrong person. The episode makes deception itself her instrument of revenge: she seeks not simply to obstruct Csongor’s desire, but to make its apparent fulfillment hateful.

The Design of the Trap

In the earlier exchange, Ledér arrives in haste, and Mirígy addresses her as her daughter. Ledér laments her miserable life and calls herself a lost girl; Mirígy answers by urging her to stop grieving and telling her that a handsome young man is waiting for her. She then directs Ledér’s attention to beautiful golden hair, presenting it as something intended for her. The exchange sets out the trap’s materials: Ledér’s vulnerability, the promise of a young man, and the golden hair used to adorn or entice her.

The plan is directed at Csongor, whom Mirígy names when she says that she has procured Ledér for him. She describes the intended encounter as a source of loathed love, and declares that she wants it and will carry it out. Her stated purpose gives the deception its retaliatory edge: Ledér is not simply being introduced as a possible companion, but placed into an encounter meant to poison Csongor’s experience of intimacy.

A Substitute in the House

Later, the stage direction places Mirígy and Ledér together in a room. Mirígy points out the house and tells her daughter to hurry and dress herself up. Ledér leaves to prepare, while Mirígy says that she will go into the garden and keep watch over her affairs. These practical instructions transform the earlier promise into an arranged scene: Ledér is to be made presentable, and Mirígy positions herself to oversee what follows.

Mirígy’s plan depends on a particular vulnerability rather than on Csongor knowingly choosing Ledér. She predicts that he will fall asleep and thereby miss his beloved; once that opportunity has passed, he will embrace Ledér in disappointment. The intended substitution therefore relies on timing and mistaken expectation. Mirígy wants the embrace to occur after Csongor has lost the chance to meet the person he truly awaits, so that the counterfeit encounter carries the charge of a missed reunion.

The Staged Embrace

At Mirígy’s dwelling, Ledér tries to console Balga, telling him to be patient and calling him her dear one. She pushes a shabby, stuffed armchair into her place and tells him to embrace the chair as if embracing the son of his father; she adds that she knows she will escape. The stage business exposes the physical absurdity beneath the scheme: an embrace is directed toward a substitute object, not toward the person Balga believes he is embracing.

The chair collapses with a loud crash. Balga jumps up in fright, left holding a tuft of horsehair, and exclaims over the grey horsehair and wooden leg. This comic failure gives the substitution a concrete theatrical form: the promised body has become a rickety chair, and the embrace ends in noise, fright, and debris rather than intimacy. It also shows Ledér’s immediate aim in this encounter with Balga: she uses the chair as a stand-in while anticipating her own escape.

Revenge and Dramatic Irony

Mirígy’s design joins two deceptions without making their outcomes identical. Her larger scheme presents Ledér as a substitute for Csongor’s beloved and depends on Csongor sleeping through the moment of reunion; the later chair episode instead shows Balga fooled by a makeshift proxy and Ledér looking for a way out. The contrast makes the mechanics of substitution visible onstage: a promise of personal intimacy can resolve into an embrace of something other than the person expected.

The revenge remains legible through Mirígy’s own declaration that she has arranged Ledér for Csongor and wants him to find loathed love. Her plan depends on the gap between what Csongor hopes to encounter and what Mirígy intends him to encounter. In that gap, the beloved is replaced by an instrument of spite, while the stage’s collapsing chair turns the same logic into farce. The action thus presents temptation as an engineered misrecognition, not a freely chosen romance.