Shakespearean Use of Dramatic Irony

C. Cheng, March, 1996

Shakespearean Use of Dramatic Irony, as in Twelfth Night

            In Poetics, Aristotle defined comedies as “the imitation of inferior people”. However, the loss of its extended text leaves a vacuum for further understanding on the nature of comedies. The term “inferior” embodies a series of meanings; it implies inferior in stature, in understanding, and in other painless, ill-fortune miseries. This inferiority translates to the humiliation and “fooling” of characters. As comedies evolve, plots are designed to exploit this inferiority. The most common form of such dramatic device is dramatic irony, where characters are ignorant of truths known to the audiences. In Shakespearean plays, the use of dramatic ironies often characterized and structured the plot and the impact of comedies; comedy such as Twelfth Night is a product of significant interweaving of dramatic ironies.           

            In all plays, dramatic irony is the device wherein certain characters are ignorant of certain facts within the play. The audiences must know these hidden facts and schemes. In Shakespearean plays, the purpose of dramatic irony is to create a stool for laughter through the imitation of unaware fools. Within an irony, three elements must persist. There must be an unsuspecting character against delusions, a drama to notify the audience of the truth, and a resolve of the irony. The unsuspecting character poses a comic relief and a purge of interest. This comic relief is frankly of no dramatic significance, but is rather designed to lighten the mood of the audiences and create laughter.

            However, to accomplish the desired effect of laughter and comic relief, Shakespeare must first put the truth in drama and informed the audiences of the fact lies therein. This is the very nature of dramatic irony. In Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare opens the comedy with the scene in court. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare accomplishes so by directly acting out the shipwreck in the second scene. It is noteworthy that Shakespearean plays always commence with a general introduction. And for a comedy of dramatic ironies, Shakespeare chooses to clarify the underlying causes of all further misunderstandings and provide a basis for comic laughter.

            The end of any plays is the final resolution. For comedies whose basis of conflict and change is dramatic irony, the resolution must be the resolve of the irony itself. At the ending, the bewildered characters must come to know the truths, whereabouts, and the courses of events. This type of blissful ending finishes the purpose of a comedy, and creates the joyous mood among audiences. In terms of Shakespearean use of dramatic irony, the playwright attempts to accomplish two main goals. First, he allows the plot to evolve. Second, it creates curiosity and anxiety among the audiences, and at the same time invokes excitement and interests.

            The comedy Twelfth Night revolves around the irony of Viola, and its plot progresses along with it. The structure of this comedy is fixated along the evolution of one dramatic irony. Hence, Shakespeare uses the impact of dramatic irony for the rising action, the vertex of confusion as the climax, and the resolution as the falling action.

The evolution of the plot around an irony is obvious in Twelfth Night. The irony of Viola’s disguise interweaves with other dramatic ironies and structured the romantic series. The presence of dramatic irony sets characters in a state of reasonable suspense. This suspense compels the characters to act accordingly, and thus, allows the plot to progress. In Twelfth Night, the play starts with the dramatic irony of Viola’s disguise, and ends with the resolution of all ironies. Viola’s disguise into a male directly sets a series of conflicts and changes in motion. This irony ignites two plights in parallel; her disguise brings her love towards Orsino and Olivia’s love towards her. Viola’s arrival at Orsino’s court complicates her lord’s pursuit of Olivia; Olivia fell in love with Viola in boy’s guise. As the characters press for love and marriage, and search for truth and the hidden schemes, the story unfolds and ends. It is with this fundamental irony and disguise that Shakespeare formulates the comedy.

The play starts with the dramatic irony itself. Shakespeare designs unsuspecting victims to fall into ironies. By doing so, the plot flows, as characters are being fooled and driven by “unforeseen” circumstances. Viola swears early in the play, “Yet, a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his [Orsino’s] wife.” (I, iv, 41) This determination allows the plot to evolve. By falling in love and pressing “to be his wife”, Viola motivates the play into further action: the meetings with Olivia, and the dual, which led to the recognition of her twin brother and the resolve of ironies. Viola repetitively and ironically hints at her guise and love of Orsino, “My father had a daughter loved a man– As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship.” (II, iv, 117) Viola continues to pursue Orsino through the course of the play, and she would run errands for her lord to Olivia for expressing the love and desire. Intentionally, her errand running is to dismiss Olivia’s chant and make herself wife of Orsino. It turns into Olivia’s preposterous admiring love toward herself. In act one scene five, Olivia gave a soliloquy concerning the disguised Viola, “Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit do give thee fivefold blazon…. Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections, with an invisible and subtle stealth, to creep in at mine eyes.” It is with these numerous ironies that Shakespeare composes the basis of the story line. And through these ironies, he creates potential of future change on the plot.

The climax of the comedy is at act three scene four, the vertex where unsuspecting characters sensed the irony and search for the truth embodied. In this scene, Viola is challenged to a duel, where through confusion, Viola knew that her brother Sabastian survives the shipwreck. “I my brother know yet living in my grass,” (III, iv, 370) thought Viola. From then on, ironies start to fall apart beginning with the irony of Olivia’s love. To further intensify the falling action, Shakespeare imposes Olivia’s hasty marriage where she mistook Sabastian as the groom. This ends her tangled relationship with Viola and with Orsino. Sabastian explains to Olivia in the last scene, “So comes it, lady, you have been mistook. But nature to her bias drew in that. You would have been contracted to a maid. Now are you therein, by my life, deceived: You are betrothed both to a maid and a man.” (V, i, 255) The final scene on act five displays the resolve of all misunderstandings, and “all’s end that ends well”. Viola achieves her goal, and Orsino willingly marries her, “Your master quits you; and for your service done him so much against the mettle of your sex, so far beneath your soft and tender breeding, and since you called me master for so long, here is my hand; you shall from this time be your master’s mistress.” Happy marriages mark the completion of the romantic comedies and fulfill the plot.

 Aside from formulating the plot, dramatic ironies are designed for entertaining the audiences. In Twelfth Night, the bewildered Olivia and the fooled lord Orsino fully provide comic interests and laughter. This also marks the common interest of Shakespearean comedies. It is noteworthy that Twelfth Night is written as a play for the festive season after Christmas. And from the prospect of dramatic romance, which is dominant in other later works of Shakespearean comedies, Victorian England is a place where drama and romance are closely linked. The comedy of Twelfth Night is unlike As You Like It and Midsummer Night’s Dream. Rather than having supernatural and fatalistic forces as sources of dramatic irony, i.e. fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night is based on concrete human efforts and schemes. As a comedy structured by dramatic irony, Twelfth Night ignites interests with curiosity and anxiety.

Shakespeare has dedicated comedies to romance and love. Within construction of plays, methods vary. Twelfth Night accomplishes a mysterious tone to portray love through the use of ironies. Indeed, the overwhelming success and the wide reputation of the play suggest that mysterious irony and surprising love are widely appreciated. The famous confession of love by Viola in act two scene four displays this fact:

Too well what love women to men may owe:
In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter loved a man,
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship. A blank, my lord.
She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
We men may say more, swear more: but indeed
Our shows are more than will; for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love. (II, iv, 104-115)

This is an irony speech, in that the lady she talks of is herself and the lord she talks of is Orsino, the one listening. Other short lines also create ironic interests, designed to invoke humiliating laughter. This include the Orsino’s instruction to Viola concerning how to gain favour of ladies, “Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, than women's are.” It is ironic that he is telling such chauvinistic comments to a lady who admires him in secret. Such are but two minor examples, but surely, such similar verses are designed to accomplish the impact of romantic laughter and ironic interests among audiences. In other plays such as Midsummer Night’s Dreams, irony is also added onto the flavour of love. These parallel structures point to the impact of dramatic ironies in enforcing the plot and comic effects. This fact is common in all late comedies by Shakespeare, and Twelfth Night is but one of the many examples.

            Through the use of dramatic ironies, Shakespeare formulates skeletal plot and comic effects. Shakespeare has expanded Aristotle’s thesis on comedies, and extends “imitation of the inferior” to “designation of the unsuspected”. Shakespeare has rooted the definition of comedies hitherto. And although comedies evolve, the fundamental use of ironies remains. These traits are relevant in most of his comedies, especially in Twelfth Night. It is through irony that love is produced. And it is through irony that love is intensified. It is also through irony that the play ends as a comedy.