Dramatic irony

Dramatic irony is a literary device in which the audience possesses knowledge unavailable to characters in a novel, play, or film. The audience occupies a privileged position that enables it to see implications in speeches and in developing action that remain veiled from the characters’ perspective. Dramatic irony can be effective in both comedy and tragedy. In comedy, it can contribute to cases of mistaken identity, misunderstanding, and confusion that evoke laughter from the audience. For example, in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ca. 1595–96), the audience knows before any of the characters that Puck has erred in administering the love potion, increasing the humor of the scene. In tragedy, dramatic irony can intensify the tension as tragic events unfold. In the classic example of dramatic irony, in Sophocles play Oidipous Tyrannos (ca. 429 BCE; Oedipus the King 1715; also known as Oedipus Rex), the audience understands that Oedipus is responsible for the death of King Laius, as prophesized, and that his vow of vengeance is inherently a vow of self-destruction. In both cases, dramatic irony serves to engage the audience with the action.

Overview

The most frequently cited example of dramatic irony is Oedipus the King. In the opening scene, when Oedipus pledges to “make dark things clear” and right the wrong of King Laius’s death, he is ignorant of the events he has set in motion. However, the audience knows that Oedipus killed Laius and that Jocasta is both his wife and mother. Oedipus knows neither of these facts, and the divine order and Oedipus’s intelligence will ensure the inexorable movement toward revelation, punishment, and tragedy. In this play, the dramatic irony is layered, and the audience’s emotional investment is high.

The classic example of dramatic irony may come from Greek drama, but the most bountiful supply of examples comes from the plays of Shakespeare. In Othello (1604), the audience learns in the opening scene that Iago hates Othello but will pretend to love him; by the third scene, the audience knows that Iago’s hatred is rooted in his suspicion that Othello has slept with Iago’s wife. Thus, the audience is aware of Iago’s manipulations and intentions even though Othello, Desdemona, Emilia, and Cassio all remain unaware of how Iago is using them to further his plan. In Henry V (ca. 1598–99), the audience knows Henry is privy to conspiracy while the conspirators imagine Henry is unaware of the plot. In Twelfth Night (ca. 1600–2), the audience knows that the letter that feeds the foolish Malvolio’s fantasy of becoming count to Countess Olivia is a forgery. These examples serve to illustrate the frequency with which Shakespeare used dramatic irony in different kinds of plays.

Ironic changes in circumstances in tragedy generally signal turns for the worse, but changes in comedy may portend the opposite. In Molière’s Tartuffe (1664; English translation, 1732), Orgon’s misperception of the hypocritical Tartuffe is the dramatic irony that undergirds the play. Other characters, as well as the audience, are aware of Tartuffe’s villainy, but Orgon persists in seeing him as virtuous until the turning point, when Tartuffe attempts to seduce Orgon’s wife as Orgon hides beneath a table. The audience knows that Orgon is eavesdropping, but Tartuffe does not. Even after this incident, another character, Madame Pernelle, refuses to believe that Tartuffe is not what he appears to be. The lines Molière gives her (“My dear, appearances are oft deceiving, / And seeing shouldn’t always be believing”) blend verbal and dramatic irony since the audience interprets the lines quite differently from the character. The dramatic irony in Tartuffe centers on Orgon’s naïveté.

The most famous example of dramatic irony associated with a naïf may be the narrator in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387–1400). To cite one of many instances of discrepancies between the perception of the narrator and the audience, Chaucer the Pilgrim accepts the Prioress as pious and tenderhearted, unaware of her shallowness and decidedly un-Christian character revealed, for example, in her dogs’ diet, which is better than that of many human infants; in the ambiguous inscription of her brooch, “Love Conquers All”; and in the viciously anti-Semitic nature of her tale. As Chaucer shows, sometimes comic dramatic irony serves a serious purpose. In Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Huck’s naïveté underlies the dramatic irony of the character’s great moral crisis when Huck chooses what he believes will be eternal damnation over betraying Jim. Huck accepts the teachings of his racist culture and believes his choice to protect Jim’s freedom is a “return to wickedness,” but the reader understands that Huck has made the morally right choice.

Impact

Dramatic irony as a term developed in the nineteenth century, but the concept and practice are far older. Dramatic irony serves to emphasize the limitations of human understanding and to suggest that humans are sometimes willfully blind to crucial truths. Writers have used dramatic irony for these purposes since at least the eighth century BCE; Homer’s Odyssey (ca. 725 BCE; English translation, 1614) is saturated with dramatic irony, beginning with the audience’s initial knowledge that Odysseus is alive. Dramatic irony flourished in the works of Shakespeare, permeating Macbeth (1606), from Duncan’s arrival through Macbeth’s comfort in the witches’ deceptive prophesies. Dramatic irony also found a place in Victorian era and in dramatic monologues such as Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” (1842), in which the Duke of Ferrara unwittingly reveals himself as arrogant and controlling.

Dramatic irony is a technique still employed, and it figured prominently in the literature and film of the twentieth century. Just as the audience knows Macbeth’s murderous intentions before the characters do, the audience knows before his family does that the charming Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) in the Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt (1943) is a murderer on the run. Just as the reader’s understanding of Huck Finn’s choice is much deeper than the character’s understanding, the reader of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951) understands that Holden Caulfield reveals his participation in the consumer culture he opposes in his purchases, in his longings, and in his attitudes, although this awareness escapes Holden. From Homer to Hitchcock to Lemony Snicket, artists understand the role of the audience in the effectiveness of dramatic irony.

Bibliography

Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974. Print.

Colebrook, Claire. Irony. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Dane, J. A. The Critical Mythology of Irony. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1991. Print.

Hirsch, Edward. A Poet’s Glossary. Boston: Houghton, 2014. Print.

Holland, Glenn Stanfield. Divine Irony. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna UP, 2000. Print.

Sell, Roger D. Communicational Criticism: Studies in Literature as Dialogue. Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2011. Print.

Sheehan, Sean. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum, 2012. Print.

Trites, Roberta Seelinger. “The Metaphor of the Adolescent Reformer: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Little Women.” Twain, Alcott, and the Birth of the Adolescent Reform Novel. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2007. 31–53. Print.