Dramatic Irony

A technique in which the audience possesses knowledge that the character on stage does not. Oedipus Rex is perhaps the supreme example in all of world drama: the audience knows from mythology that Oedipus is the killer of his father and the husband of his mother long before Oedipus discovers it himself. Every confident speech he makes becomes an inadvertent confession. Shakespeare uses dramatic irony in Macbeth more sparingly, most memorably when Duncan praises Macbeth’s castle as Macbeth’s wife is already planning his murder inside it.