Drama: Structure and Dramatic Irony

This is Unit Thirteen of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: drama, the band candidates neglect, beginning with structure and dramatic irony. Unit twelve closed the prose band and said drama carries fifteen to thirty percent of the paper. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off four lines after Hamlet leaves the stage: a play has no narrator, so nobody selects detail or reports a thought, and the reader assembles everything from speech, from stage directions, and above all from who knows what. Dramatic irony, the band's central device, is a matter of the audience holding information a character lacks, so the reliable way to find it is to find where the audience was told. We begin with what a play text gives and withholds, and three terms the glossary omits. Then the glossary's tragedy vocabulary, with a hamartia entry better than most. Then dramatic irony as the glossary defines it inside its Irony entry, and Oedipus cursing himself with full royal authority. Then Hamlet with a drawn sword, sparing a man on a premise the audience learns is false only after he has gone. Last, three shapes the device takes. By the end you will be able to read a play text for who can hear. To use the tragedy vocabulary and read hamartia as a blindness from strength. To find dramatic irony by finding the telling. To follow the prayer scene and its placement. And to name the device's three shapes.

Six entries to start: why the neglected band is an opportunity, what a play text gives, what the absence of a narrator means, act and scene, stage directions, and tracking who is present.

Fifteen to thirty percent, often skipped.

AIL 1201 The Band Candidates Neglect

Drama carries fifteen to thirty percent of the exam. Unit one warned it is the band most often left out of preparation, because candidates read poems and novels for pleasure and read plays only when set. That neglect is an opportunity for anyone who does prepare it, and neglect here is an opportunity.

Speech, names, directions. No narrator.

AIL 1202 What a Play Text Gives You

A printed play offers speech, speaker attributions and stage directions, and almost nothing else. No narrator describes anyone, and no one reports a character's thoughts. Everything must be inferred from what people say and from what they are told to do, because nobody reports a thought here.

The intermediary is gone.

AIL 1203 No Narrator Means No Guidance

Units ten and eleven rested on a narrator selecting detail and colouring it. A play removes that intermediary, so the reader assembles character from speech alone. It is harder and it is also cleaner, because there is no voice standing between the evidence and the reader; harder, but the evidence is direct.

Act, scene, line: the citation.

AIL 1204 Act and Scene

An act is a major division of a play; a scene is a division within an act, usually marked by a change of place or a clearing of the stage. The glossary defines neither. The exam cites passages by act, scene and line, so the notation has to be readable; both terms are absent from the glossary.

Instructions are evidence too.

AIL 1205 Stage Directions

Stage directions are the instructions telling actors what to do, printed apart from the speech. The glossary has no headword. They are evidence like any other, and a direction such as one telling a character to draw a sword carries as much information as a line does; the glossary omits this term.

Track who can hear.

AIL 1206 Who Is Present

Entrances and exits control who can hear what, and almost every irony in drama depends on that control. Track the stage as a room with people entering and leaving, and note when a character is alone, because alone is when plays let people tell the truth; alone is when the truth arrives.

Eight entries on the tragedy vocabulary: tragedy and comedy as the glossary defines them, catharsis, hamartia and the blindness from strength it names, the tragic hero, and then hubris and the chorus, which the glossary omits.

Significance twice, no sad ending.

AIL 1207 Tragedy, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary gives tragedy as a play telling the story of a significant event or series of events in the life of a significant person. The definition rests on significance twice and says nothing about an unhappy ending, which is a notable choice; the definition omits the ending altogether.

An outlook, not a joke count.

AIL 1208 Comedy, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary defines comedy as a form of drama characterised by some sense of optimism, fellowship, love and good humour. Note it is not defined by being funny. Comedy in this sense names a shape and an outlook, and a comedy can contain very little laughter; comedy does not mean funny.

What it does to the audience.

AIL 1209 Catharsis

The glossary defines catharsis as the purging of audience emotion in tragedy, the release of emotion and the final feeling of relief. It is a claim about what the form does to the people watching, not about what happens in the plot; a claim about effect, not plot.

Missing the mark, as an archer does.

AIL 1210 Hamartia

The glossary gives hamartia as a term from Greek tragedy literally meaning missing the mark, first used of an archer. It came to signify a tragic flaw, especially a misperception, a lack of insight, or a blindness that ironically results from one's own strengths, often a blindness born of strength.

The virtue produces the fall.

AIL 1211 A Blindness From Strength

The glossary's phrasing is worth keeping: the flaw often arises from what makes the character admirable. Oedipus is undone by the determination that made him a good king. Reading hamartia as a simple defect misses the ironic structure the term was built to name; not a defect, an excess of a strength.

Tragic hero against epic hero.

AIL 1212 The Tragic Hero

The glossary defines the tragic hero as the main character of a Greek or Roman tragedy, typically admirable, undone by a hamartia. It contrasts this with the epic hero, who embodies a culture's values and appears in an epic poem. Two heroes, two genres, one distinction worth holding, and the contrast is the glossary's own.

Hubris is one hamartia among many.

AIL 1213 Hubris

Hubris is overweening pride, the presumption of a mortal who oversteps proper limits. The glossary has no headword for it, though it defines hamartia. The two are often confused: hubris names a particular flaw, hamartia names the category any flaw falls into, a kind and not a synonym.

The community, speaking together.

AIL 1214 The Chorus

The chorus is a group speaking together in Greek drama, commenting on the action and often voicing the community. The glossary has no headword. On the exam a choral passage is a place where a play states its own themes, which makes it unusually quotable; plays state their themes here.

Eight entries on dramatic irony and Oedipus: the glossary's definition inside its Irony entry, the telling that must precede the device, the standard case, the ban, the curse, the self-condition, why it is made so plain, and what the exam would ask.

The audience knows; the character does not.

AIL 1215 Dramatic Irony, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary gives dramatic irony inside its Irony entry: a situation where the reader knows something about circumstances that a character does not, so the character acts in a way we recognise as grossly inappropriate. It has no headword of its own despite being the band's central device, defined inside another entry.

Find where the audience was told.

AIL 1216 The Audience Must Be Told First

Dramatic irony needs the audience to hold information the character lacks, so a play has to deliver that information before the ironic scene. Finding where the audience was told is the reliable way to locate the irony, and the telling is usually recent; the telling comes shortly before.

The hunter is the hunted.

AIL 1217 Oedipus, the Standard Case

The glossary names Oedipus as probably the most famous example of dramatic irony. The play has a king seeking the murderer of his predecessor, and the audience knows before he does that the murderer is himself. Every line he speaks about the hunt is doubled, and every line about the hunt is doubled.

An absolute ban, aimed at himself.

AIL 1218 "I Lay My Ban on the Assassin"

Oedipus proclaims that he lays his ban on the assassin whosoever he be, and orders that no man in the land harbour him or speak to him or give him part in prayer or sacrifice. The order is absolute and it is aimed at himself, and he does not know whom he names.

He curses himself, publicly.

AIL 1219 "Wretch, May He Pine in Utter Wretchedness"

He lays a curse on the murderer and on all partners in his guilt, wishing the wretch may pine in utter wretchedness. The audience hears a man curse himself in the strongest terms available to him, and hears him do it publicly and with authority, with all his royal authority behind it.

A condition already satisfied.

AIL 1220 "The Curse I Laid on Others Fall on Me"

He adds that if the murderer should gain admittance to his own hearth with his knowledge, he prays the curse he laid on others fall on him. The condition is stated as impossible and the audience knows it is already met. The play cannot be more explicit; he offers it as unthinkable.

Maximised, not concealed.

AIL 1221 Why the Irony Is Made So Plain

Sophocles is not hiding the irony; he is maximising it. An audience that knows the story watches a man walk into a trap he builds himself, line by line. The pleasure and the dread both come from knowing, which is what the device is for; knowing is the point, not a spoiler.

Three items, all from the page.

AIL 1222 What the Exam Would Ask of Oedipus

Likely items: what the audience knows that the speaker does not, what effect the proclamation has given that knowledge, and what the curse foreshadows. All three are answerable from the printed passage, provided the candidate has the term, and the term is what unlocks them.

Six entries on Hamlet's prayer scene: the one chance, three nows, the reasoning that stops him, Claudius's confession after the exit, the irony that produces, and why Claudius speaks last.

Alone, kneeling, and a drawn sword.

AIL 1223 Hamlet's One Chance

In act three Hamlet comes upon Claudius alone and kneeling. He has, by this point in the play, satisfied himself of the king's guilt. He draws his sword. The scene is the single clearest opportunity he is given in five acts, his clearest opportunity in the play.

Three nows, and a drawn sword.

AIL 1224 "Now Might I Do It Pat"

Hamlet says now might he do it pat, now the man is praying, and now he will do it. Pat means neatly or conveniently. Three nows in one line and a half, and the repetition marks a man talking himself toward an act; pat means neatly, not affectionately.

Killing him now would reward him.

AIL 1225 The Reasoning That Stops Him

He reasons that a man killed at prayer goes to heaven, so killing Claudius now would send his father's murderer to heaven while his father suffers. He calls this a thing that would be scanned, meaning examined closely. Then he leaves, and scanned means examined.

The prayer was empty all along.

AIL 1226 "My Words Fly Up, My Thoughts Remain Below"

Hamlet exits, and Claudius rises and says his words fly up while his thoughts remain below, and that words without thoughts never to heaven go. The king has not been praying at all. The audience learns it four lines after Hamlet has gone, and here the governing idea pays off.

The premise was false; he cannot know.

AIL 1227 The Irony of the Prayer Scene

Hamlet spares Claudius on a premise the audience discovers to be false. Had he struck, the outcome he feared could not have followed. The one action that would have ended the play is withheld for a reason that is not true, and only the audience can see it; the reason he spares him is wrong.

The order makes it retrospective.

AIL 1228 Why Claudius Speaks Last

The order is deliberate. If Claudius admitted the prayer's emptiness first, the audience would spend Hamlet's speech waiting. Placing it after makes the revelation retrospective and turns the whole speech, on a second reading, into a mistake being made in front of us; sequence is a writer's choice.

Two entries to close: Oedipus against Hamlet, one irony sustained across a play and one sprung in a scene, and a third shape the audience assembles from pieces no character holds together.

Sustained, or sprung.

AIL 1229 Oedipus Against Hamlet

Oedipus speaks in ignorance the audience already holds; Hamlet acts on a belief the audience is given moments later. One irony is sustained across a play and the other is sprung in a scene. Both are dramatic irony, and the exam can ask which shape a passage uses; two shapes, one device.

Knowledge assembled across scenes.

AIL 1230 Irony the Audience Assembles

A third shape gives the audience pieces from several scenes that no character has together. Nobody is told anything directly; the knowledge is accumulated. This is the hardest to spot in an extract, because the extract may not contain the pieces, and an extract may not hold the pieces.

That is the play text, the tragedy vocabulary, dramatic irony on Oedipus and Hamlet, and its three shapes, with the governing idea paid off after Hamlet's exit. You can treat drama as an opportunity, read a play text as speech, names and directions with no narrator, supply act, scene and stage direction, and track who can hear. You can define tragedy by significance and comedy by outlook, catharsis as an effect on the audience, hamartia as missing the mark and a blindness born of strength, and the tragic hero against the epic hero, and supply hubris as one hamartia and the chorus as where a play states its themes. You can define dramatic irony from inside the glossary's Irony entry, find it by finding where the audience was told, and follow Oedipus's ban, curse and self-condition as an irony maximised rather than concealed. You can follow Hamlet's three nows and the reasoning that stops him to Claudius's empty prayer, confessed four lines after he leaves, and see why that order is a choice. And you can tell sustained from sprung from assembled. Part two takes extracts and the traps.