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Dramatic Irony In A Midsummer Night's Dream

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William Shakespeare is one of the world’s greatest writers but he isn’t known for just one genre. Shakespeare was popular in many genres: tragedy, comedy, history, and romance. Two of the most popular comedies he wrote were Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both are light hearted and enjoyable because of their humor and romance elements. Twelfth Night is a play about confusion, love triangles, and goofing around. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play about love, humor, and fairies that can alter feelings quite easily. Shakespeare had to use irony as a very big element in both comedies. The use of irony creates confusion which illustrates Shakespeare’s point about the madness of love and how messy life can get. In Twelfth Night dramatic irony was used as comic relief and to help the audience understand how the love triangle worked. When Viola professed her love for Orsino the audience realized she was describing him while he was clueless. Viola professes her love when she says “Say that some lady, perhaps there is, /Hath for your love as great a pang of heart /As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her; /You tell her so; must she not then be answer’d? (II, iv, 96-99).” Also earlier when Orsino asks her who she loves she describes them as “of your complexion (II, iv, …show more content…

When the fool put the drops of the flower into Lysander and Demetrius eyes they wake up and fall in Helena. In the beginning of the play, Helena wanted nothing more than to be loved by both men. When the men however finally are in love with her she is angry. Helena thinks the men are mocking her because they both wanted nothing to do with her but now they are acting desperate as she was in the beginning of the play. This is ironic because what Helena throughout she had wanted from the start she turned out to not want at all. Their love was too much for her and made her very

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