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How Does Shakespeare Use Dramatic Irony In A Midsummer Night's Dream

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William Shakespeare is a great playwright who is known by nearly everyone. His plays are very popular still today. In his play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses irony to affect the emotions of the audience and build tension. There are three types of irony, dramatic, verbal, and situational irony. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not know. Verbal irony is when someone says something and means the opposite, like sarcasm. The last type of irony is situational irony, and that is when the opposite of what is expected happens. The play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a comedy written by William Shakespeare. In the play, Shakespeare uses irony to build tension, add humor, and affect the readers emotions.
Irony is used when Bottom returns from behind a bush to the men with a donkey head. When he did this, everyone ran and screamed, because he literally had the head of a donkey. Bottom however did not know that looked this way. That is why this is an example of dramatic …show more content…

The juice was squeezed into Lysander's eyes and when he woke up and saw Helena the flower juice made him love her instead of Hermia. Helena did not know this and thought that Lysander was playing a trick on her. This would be another example of dramatic irony because neither Helena or Lysander know that the fairies have squeezed the juice into Lysander’s eyes. After that, when the fairies are trying to fix the mistake that they’ve made, Puck squeezes the same juice into Demetrius’s eyes and makes everything that much more confusing. The only people who know what’s happening are the fairies and the audience. In this example of dramatic irony, Shakespeare uses dramatic irony to build tension in the play. Dramatic irony is probably the most popular type of irony in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it is not the only type of irony in the

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