Tragedy

Tragedy Essay

Irony is the most widely employed literary device in today’s literature. According to Jack C. Gray, author of Irony: A Practical Definition “There are almost as many different kinds of irony as there are instances of it, and it can produce emotional and intellectual effects in endless variety” (Gray, 220). One example of irony of irony found in tragedies is dramatic irony, which creates a double audience. The double audience is a literary device that depends upon the fact that in classical tragedies the audience already knows the myths and stories on which the play is based. In other words, the members in the audience know more about the characters and the situations played out on stage, than the actual actors do. One author who uses irony in his plays is Sophocles. In one of his most famous plays Oedipus Rex, there is an obvious sense of irony. In the play Oedipus Rex the story is based on the on the ancient Greek myths and stories that the audience already knows plenty about, therefore it is not acted out on stage. Sophocles writes it so that the characters don’t know each others stories, which is a good example of the double audience. One of the best places where it is shown is when Oedipus realizes his own fate. Through the whole play the audience knows he killed his father and impregnated his mother, just like the myth said. But no one on the stage has the slightest idea. The moment both the audience and characters are equal in understanding is when Oedipus says “Ah God! It was true! All the prophecies!” (Arp, Johnson 1347). Another author who use’s irony and the device of the double audience is Shakespeare. In contrast with Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare’s play Othello presents the double audience in a very different way.

The first example of double audience in the play Othello is when the villain and traitor Iago begins his lies of deceit. It is obvious that Iago is the corrupt character but the other characters cannot realize it. One difference between the ways Shakespeare and Sophocles use the double audience is the way in which the information is given out. Shakespeare’s method is best defined by Fowler’s Modern English Usage. They define it as “… a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware of that more and of the outsider’s incomprehension.” In other words, the audience gathers information not through previous knowledge, but through the actors sideways talking on stage. In Act I Scene 3, Othello addresses Iago as “Honest Iago” (291). This is clearly not true to the audience, because we already know everything that comes out of Iago’s mouth has been a lie so far.

Another area in this play in which we the reader can vividly see the double audience is in the infamous handkerchief scene. Author Ferial J. Ghazoul describes this scene in the play as a type of “double circulation” (1). In other words, the readers know about the handkerchief but none of the actors except Iago, who has been giving us the information the whole time, know about the handkerchief being