Irony: can be verbal, situational, sarcastic, or dramatic. This is when the meaning, situation or action is one thing but means something different.

Dramatic irony can create suspense or tension for the audience. Dramatic irony can stimulate strong emotions in a reader because the reader knows what awaits a character and may see the character act against his or her own well-being.

By allowing the audience to know important facts ahead of the leading characters, dramatic irony puts the audience and readers above the characters, and also encourages them to anticipate, hope, and fear the moment when a character would learn the truth behind events and situations of the story.

What is ironic about Romeo’s soliloquy in light of the news he soon hears? It is ironic because he said he had a dream that Juliet kissed him and brought him back from the dead, when he’s about to hear news that Juliet has died.

One example of dramatic irony in Romeo and Juliet is Romeo’s attempt to dismiss the danger of his and Juliet’s relationship: “Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye / Than twenty of their swords! Look thou but sweet, / And I am proof against their enmity” (act 2, scene 2).

Characterized as one of the hallmarks of Shakespearean tragedies, dramatic irony is used to build and sustain audience’s interest thereby keeping them actively engaged in the play. Some of its examples in “Romeo and Juliet” are given below with analysis.

Dramatic irony achieves suspense by giving the audience information, often awareness of a threat, that a character they are watching does not have. True dramatic irony occurs when a character tries to address a problem in a way that actually makes it worse.

The answers are: “Juliet’s mother thinks that Juliet is preparing for her wedding to Paris, but Juliet actually plans to drink the sleeping potion that night.” “Juliet’s father arranges for her to marry Paris, but Juliet has already secretly married Romeo.”

When Juliet awakes, she finds Romeo dead after which she too stabs herself with a dagger. This event was an example of Dramatic irony as the audience knew very well that Juliet is feigning her death but Romeo finds it to be the reality.

To fully appreciate the dramatic irony of Juliet’s conversation with her mother you need to know that “death” and “dying” were, in the time period, typical metaphors for “orgasm” and “having an orgasm.” Hence the dramatic irony when Juliet tells her mother that she wants to be responsible for Romeo’s “death.”

Romeo says that he has a bad feeling about going to the party and he says that he fears for his own life. This foreshadows his death, which is also an example of dramatic irony because the reader knows that Romeo will die during the play.

The dramatic irony of Act 11 Scene 1, is that Romeo is totally in love with Juliet now. Mercutio and Benvolio, unaware of this new twist, try to find Romeo, who is hiding in the orchard. Romeo is thinking of nothing else but Juliet.

Answer Expert Verified The correct answer is: Readers know something about a situation that the character does not know. Indeed, the very definition of dramatic irony is when the audience, spectators or readers know something that then intra-diegetic (inside the fiction) characters ignore.

How to Write Dramatic Irony

1. Decide what information you want the audience to have.
2. For inside information, show; don’t tell.
3. Craft some dialogue that reveals the characters’ ignorance of what’s really going on.