Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony is contingent upon a third party witnessing the actions of others and interpreting them as ironic, thus you see it most regularly in artistic productions. Dramatic irony is a big bundle of miscommunication, manufactured by a character or circumstance clandestine to another character, and revealed to the audience. Having this type of concealed action be available to the audience gives it the ability to know more than what certain characters know. The ideas of being unbeknownst and under the wrong impression are ideas that surround dramatic irony. It is the disconnect, or the contrast between what the character says, thinks, or does and the true situation that is being faced. Often times, the character, or characters, cannot see or understand the contrast, but the audience or reader can. For example, in Othello, Othello addresses Iago as "honest Iago." Of course, Othello does not know that Iago is the conniving villain who leads him to believe through trickery and deception that Othello's wife, Desdemona has been unfaithful. The audience has witnessed Iago's high jinks in a way Othello cannot, since he has not been "watching" the rest of the play as the audience has. For this, Othello unjustly kills his wife, believing the whole time in Iago's honesty, which makes this instance in literature both an act of dramatic irony and an act the leads to tragic irony.