What is dramatic irony?

Dramatic Irony is when the audience or the reader is aware of information a character in the story is not.

For example in The Tempest, Miranda is unaware Gonzalo is with her on the island. The audience however learn this early.

Dramatic irony is a literary technique where it is clear to the audience or the reader what the character is saying or doing by it is unknown to the other characters

It is a literary technique to keep the audience engaged that is normally applied in films, books or plays. In which the character is unaware of the scenario but the audience is not. A good exmaple of dramatic irony can be seen in William Shakespeare's plays A Midsomer Nights Dream , Othello and Romeo and Juliet.

Hi Justice, it's a technique. It's when the audience knows something that the characters on stage don't know because they learned something that the characters didn't. For example, maybe the audience saw a scene where a killer was preparing to kill someone. After the death, the audience knows who the killer is but the characters on stage investigating the death don't know who the killer was. Writers use it a lot in their plays and screen writers use it a lot too. Most of the time it is used to create suspense and tension.

Hi Justice! Dramatic irony is a literary technique often used to create tension and/ or suspense. It is where the audience is aware of information that is unknown to the character/s

Dramatic irony is when the audience or readers know more about a situation than the character does.

Dramatic Irony occurs in a text when we (the reader) know something that the characters in the text do not.

Dramatic irony is when the audience or reader knows more than a character.

Think about how Priestley effectively uses irony through Mr Birling's speech in Act 1 of his play, 'An Inspector Calls'. Priestley evokes dramatic irony when he makes Mr Birling say all the wrong predictions of the outcomes of events, i.e. the Titanic and the wars, in his speech.

Examples of the direct quotes:

1) The Titanic is "unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable." (Later that year, 1912, when the play was set the Titanic sinks when it hit an iceberg causing at least 1,500 deaths.)

2) "The Germans don't want war. Nobody wants war..." (Of course, the two world wars happen soon after the book was set, from 1914...)

Hi there!

Dramatic irony occurs in everyday life when a situation is happening and yet the person within the situation is unaware of what is occurring.

For example, if a person were to be mocking a friend for losing his wallet, but did not realize that he had also lost his own wallet, this would be dramatic irony.

This is a literary device in which the audience/reader has an understanding of the events or a character's actions before the characters know.

Dramatic irony is the expression used to describe a situation in which the audience in a movie is aware of something the characters aren’t.

Dramatic Irony is a situation in which the audience of a play, or the reader of a story, knows more about a character or a situation than the character does. A great example is Othello in the Shakespeare play of the same name, as the character does not know who the villain of the play is, whilst the audience is made aware of the villain early on in the play. Shakespeare was great at using dramatic irony and many of his plays contain examples of it.

Dramatic irony is a powerful literary device used in literature, usually in novels and plays. This is when the audience or reader is aware of information that the characters are not. For example, in Shakespeare's Macbeth, the play is rich with dramatic irony due to the Macbeths planning and committing the murder of King Duncan. Throughout the play, Shakespeare intersperses scenes where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are planning, reflecting on and discussing the murder. Until later in the play when the couple's culpability becomes more and more revealed, the other characters are unaware of the true events. Using dramatic irony creates a powerful sense of tension and drama, as the audience or reader is constantly questioning when the truth will be revealed. It creates a complex and intricate narrative for the audience or reader to become engaged with.

The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite.

A technique used to express one's feelings through language that possess a humorous and emphasised effect