Dramatic Irony In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Dramatic irony is a literary technique used to instigate and sustain the interest of the viewers/readers throughout the play by letting them know more about the events on it than the characters themselves. It is mostly used in tragedy and according to Aristotle it excites the viewer with pity and fear and its structure is composed of: the tragic hero, the katharis (purgation) and the recognition and reversal. The tragic hero is the protagonist and he/she is a member of a royal family so throughout the play it has a high position to fall from - power and happiness. This will illustrate the main character’s weakness when at the beginning it is shown as infallible. Moving on, the katharis also called purgation, is the events on the play that …show more content…
This illustrates when Romeo and Juliet are getting married in secrecy, and Romeo states that for him it doesn’t matter what tragedy their decision may bring it could never be compared with the joyfulness he was experiencing in that moment; to what Friar Lawrence advised and warned him not love so intensely because “these violent delights have violent ends.” Here there is foreshadowing and dramatic irony at the same time because Romeo and Juliet’s love is a delight to them that is not accepted by neither the society nor their families which makes it a “violent delight” Which leads to Juliet wanting to find a way of escaping from the opposition - faking her death – that resulted on the real death of both of them. A violent end. Later, in Act 3 Scene 5 after the night they consummated their marriage Romeo and Juliet were saying their goodbyes when he was trying to lower himself from her window and he promised her they will see each other again when she told him that he looked pale as “one dead in the bottom of a tomb.” To this he answered that she looked the same way, and begged fate to bring them back together. Here, the used of dramatic irony can be seen in how Romeo and Juliet say the other looks like is the same way they’ll look at the end of the play, when they die. Rome would be dead from the poison in the bottom of the tomb where Juliet was faking her death in and Juliet seeing her lover dead made the decision to take her own life, making her look pale as dead too. Also, the mentioned of fate in this scene contributes to one of the themes of the play which is fate indeed. It foreshadows and portrays the ending of the play because Romeo and Juliet’s fate was to die for their love, together, and every situation they were in led to the same consequences. Their fate was something they couldn’t escape from even though they didn’t know