Drama: Structure and Dramatic Irony

This is Unit Thirteen of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part two of two. Part one worked Oedipus and the prayer scene and named three shapes of dramatic irony. This part takes extracts, structure, and the traps. Part one's governing idea was that a play has no narrator, so who knows what is the evidence, and dramatic irony is found by finding where the audience was told. This part pays it off in a four-move procedure whose third move, asking what the audience has been told that a character has not, is where the band's marks are. First, the exam prints an extract, so the irony must be visible inside it, and dramatic irony has to be kept apart from the verbal and situational kinds by asking where the effect comes from. Then structure: five acts, five stage names, the prayer scene as the turn by a readable criterion, foreshadowing with its limit, conflict in three kinds, and a speech read as an argument. Then verse and prose on stage, thou and you, editorial apparatus left alone, and which of the anchor's four plays are held in full. Then four traps and the procedure. Last, the record at fifty-five omissions, the anchor's real strengths, and what to carry. By the end you will be able to demand the irony from the extract. To use the five-act vocabulary and read a speech as an argument. To hear verse and prose on stage. To defeat four traps and run four moves. And to state the record.

Three entries to start: answering from an extract, dramatic irony against verbal irony where the speaker is sincere, and against situational irony where the audience's knowledge is what creates the effect.

The irony must be in the extract.

AIL 1231 Answering From an Extract

The exam prints a passage, so any irony it asks about must be visible inside it or in the information the passage supplies. If an option depends on knowing the rest of the play, it is asking for recall the board says the exam does not require; options needing the whole play are wrong.

Sincere speaker, ironic situation.

AIL 1232 Dramatic Irony Against Verbal Irony

Verbal irony is a speaker meaning otherwise than the words say; dramatic irony is a character not knowing what the audience knows. Oedipus is not being ironic, he is being sincere, and the irony belongs to the situation. Unit four separated these and the exam tests the boundary; Oedipus is not speaking ironically.

Ask where the effect comes from.

AIL 1233 And Against Situational Irony

Situational irony is an outcome oddly fitting, which the glossary illustrates with a pickpocket having his own pocket picked. Oedipus cursing himself is close to that, but the device is dramatic because the audience's knowledge is what creates it. Ask where the effect comes from; audience knowledge marks the dramatic kind.

Seven entries on structure: the five-act shape, the five stage names the glossary omits, why the prayer scene is the turn, foreshadowing and the limit on claiming it, conflict in three kinds, and reading a speech as an argument.

Five acts, the turn near the middle.

AIL 1234 Five Acts

English tragedy inherited a five-act shape: a situation established, complications developed, a turning point, consequences unfolding, and a resolution. Hamlet's prayer scene sits in act three, which is where turning points conventionally fall. The convention is a reading aid, not a rule, a convention and not a rule.

Five stage names, none in the glossary.

AIL 1235 Exposition, Climax, Resolution

The stages have standard names: exposition setting the situation, rising action complicating it, climax at the turn, falling action, and resolution or denouement. The glossary defines none of them, though it defines plot. They are the vocabulary a structure question will use, and the question will use these words.

After it, nothing is avoidable.

AIL 1236 Why the Prayer Scene Is the Turn

Before it, Hamlet is gathering certainty; after it, events run away from him. The scene is where the play could have ended and does not. Naming a climax means finding the point after which the outcome is no longer avoidable, and that is a readable criterion, readable and not felt.

An early detail, preparing a later one.

AIL 1237 Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is an early detail that prepares a later event. The glossary has no headword, though it defines flashback, which is its mirror. Oedipus's curse foreshadows his own exile, and the audience recognises it as foreshadowing only because it already knows; flashback is defined and this is not.

Conspicuous, and actually matched.

AIL 1238 The Limits of Foreshadowing Claims

Almost any early detail can be read as preparing something later, so the claim is easy to make and hard to support. Require that the detail be conspicuous and that the later event actually match it. An option calling something foreshadowing on a thin resemblance is overreaching; it is an easy claim to overreach on.

Between people, against fate, or within.

AIL 1239 Conflict in Drama

Conflict is the opposition that drives a play, whether between characters, between a character and a circumstance, or inside one person. The glossary has no headword. Hamlet's act three speech is the third kind, a man arguing with himself while holding a sword; the glossary omits this term too.

Opportunity, proposal, objection, decision.

AIL 1240 Reading a Speech for Its Argument

Hamlet's speech is structured as a case: an opportunity, a proposal to act, an objection, and a decision. Treating a dramatic speech as an argument with steps, as unit nine treated a sonnet, is the most reliable way into it, so read a speech as an argument.

Six entries on the page: blank verse and the broken line, the drop into prose, thou and you, the editor's numbers and brackets, and which of the anchor's four plays are held on disk in full.

A broken line marks a break in the speaker.

AIL 1241 Blank Verse on Stage

Unit six defined blank verse as unrhymed iambic pentameter and unit eight explained why it suited the stage. Both worked speeches are in it. Knowing the metre lets you hear where a line runs short, and a broken line usually marks a character interrupting or faltering; units six and eight are needed here.

A shift on the page, before the sense.

AIL 1242 When a Play Drops Into Prose

Shakespeare moves between verse and prose within a play, often giving prose to lower-ranking characters, to comic scenes, or to a character whose composure has gone. A shift from verse to prose is visible on the page and is worth noticing before reading for sense; the shift itself carries meaning.

Thou marks intimacy or contempt.

AIL 1243 The Pronouns and Verb Endings

Thou and thee, hast and doth, and the contracted a for he all appear in these texts. Unit two taught the parsing. In drama the thou and you distinction also carries social information, since thou could mark either intimacy or condescension depending on who used it to whom; who says it to whom decides.

Brackets belong to the editor.

AIL 1244 Numbers and Brackets in the Text

The anchor's Hamlet prints line numbers and bracketed note markers inside the verse. Those belong to the edition, not to Shakespeare. Amendment V-9 applies: typography is never made a teaching point, and an exam passage will be cleaner than a scholarly one; never a teaching point, per V-9.

Two complete plays, two chapters.

AIL 1245 What Else the Anchor Carries

Besides Hamlet the anchor gives the complete Twelfth Night. It also has chapters on Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest and Shaw's Major Barbara, but those carry biography and a link rather than the plays, so two complete texts are on disk and two are not; Wilde and Shaw are not on disk.

Two held in full, two not held.

AIL 1246 The Dates of Those Four

Hamlet and Twelfth Night are Renaissance and both are on disk in full. Wilde's play is eighteen ninety-five and Shaw's nineteen five, and both are public domain, but neither text is held here, so unit nineteen names them rather than quoting them; unit nineteen names the other two.

Five entries on traps and procedure: the speech as the author's view, the audience assumed to know, the flaw as a vice, the plot summary, and then four moves for any dramatic extract.

Every line belongs to a position.

AIL 1247 Trap: Reading a Speech as the Author's View

A character is not a mouthpiece. Unit five's separation of speaker from author applies with full force in drama, where every line belongs to someone with a position. Claudius says true things about prayer, and he is still the murderer; true lines can come from villains.

Check the extract supplies the knowing.

AIL 1248 Trap: Assuming the Audience Knows

Dramatic irony requires the audience to have been told. An option claiming irony where the extract has not supplied the knowledge is asserting something the passage does not support. Check that the printed text contains the audience's information: no telling, no dramatic irony.

An error of seeing, not a vice.

AIL 1249 Trap: The Tragic Flaw as a Vice

The glossary is careful that hamartia is often a blindness arising from a strength. Options naming an ordinary vice, greed or cruelty, are usually weaker than options naming a misperception. Read the flaw as an error of seeing before reading it as a moral failing; this is the glossary's own emphasis.

Familiarity is a temptation, not evidence.

AIL 1250 Trap: Answering From the Plot Summary

Hamlet is a play most candidates know something about, and that knowledge tempts answers the printed scene does not support. The board says the exam requires no familiarity with specific works, which means the extract must be sufficient, and outside knowledge is not evidence; the extract must be sufficient.

Stage, directions, knowledge, argument.

AIL 1251 A Procedure for a Dramatic Extract

Note who is on stage and who can hear. Read the stage directions. Ask what the audience has been told that a character has not. Then read the speech as an argument with steps. Four moves, and the third is where the band's marks are; here the governing idea pays off.

Nine entries to close: ten more omissions for fifty-five in total, what the anchor supplied, what to carry, why the band rewards preparation, reading aloud, the study guides under D6, drama as verse, and the handoff to soliloquy and aside.

Ten more, fifty-five in total.

AIL 1252 What the Glossary Left Out Here

Act, scene, stage direction, hubris, chorus, exposition, climax, resolution, foreshadowing and conflict, plus dramatic irony having no headword of its own. Ten more gaps, bringing the running total across five units to fifty-five standard terms this anchor omits, and the running total is recorded.

Two plays, and a careful tragedy set.

AIL 1253 What the Anchor Supplied Instead

Two complete plays with study guides, and a tragedy vocabulary, catharsis, hamartia, tragic hero, more careful than most short glossaries manage. The hamartia entry in particular is better than the usual one-line tragic flaw. Its strengths and its gaps are both real, and both are stated.

Four moves, three shapes, three ironies.

AIL 1254 What to Carry Forward

Carry the four-move procedure, the three shapes dramatic irony takes, the distinction between it and the other two ironies, and the glossary's tragedy terms. Those answer the band without any play having been read in full, and no play need be read entire.

Narrow ground, reliable marks.

AIL 1255 Why This Band Rewards Preparation

Drama's questions concentrate on a small number of devices, chiefly dramatic irony and the tragedy vocabulary, so the ground to cover is narrower than in poetry or prose. A candidate who prepares it properly converts a neglected band into a reliable one, on ground narrower than poetry or prose.

Read aloud, or track the stage.

AIL 1256 Reading Plays for Practice

Read a scene aloud, or hear it. A play's meaning sits in delivery and in who is present, and silent reading loses both. Where that is impractical, at least track entrances and exits in the margin, which is where the irony lives; silent reading loses the delivery.

A guide's reading is the guide's.

AIL 1257 Using the Anchor's Study Guides

Each play in the anchor comes with a study guide offering readings and questions. Those are interpretations and decision D6 applies: a guide's reading is attributed to the guide. They are useful for direction and are not evidence about an exam passage; useful direction, not evidence.

The poetry units apply here too.

AIL 1258 Drama Is Also Verse

Shakespeare's plays are poems in the sense unit six meant: metre, figure and structure all operate. A question on a Hamlet passage may be a metre question or a figure question. The bands overlap, and the poetry units are not spent when drama begins; a drama item may test metre.

Next: speaking past the others.

AIL 1259 What the Next Drama Unit Does

This unit took structure and the irony that depends on who knows what. The next takes the devices by which a play lets a character speak past the other characters: soliloquy, aside and stagecraft, with Marlowe and Sheridan joining Shakespeare, and Marlowe and Sheridan join in there.

Next: soliloquy and aside, defined.

AIL 1260 What the Next Unit Does

Soliloquy and aside are the two devices the glossary omits that drama candidates most need, and both were touched here without being defined. Unit fourteen supplies them, works Hamlet's best-known speech, and adds Faustus and The School for Scandal; both are omitted by the glossary.

That is extracts, the three ironies, structure, the page, the traps, the procedure and the record, with the governing idea paid off at the third move. You can demand that an irony be visible in the extract, and keep dramatic irony apart from verbal by the speaker's sincerity and from situational by where the effect comes from. You can use five acts and five stage names, name the prayer scene as the turn because nothing after it is avoidable, claim foreshadowing only when conspicuous and matched, name conflict in three kinds, and read a speech as opportunity, proposal, objection, decision. You can hear a broken line of blank verse, notice a drop into prose, read thou by who says it to whom, leave the editor's brackets alone, and say that Hamlet and Twelfth Night are held while Wilde and Shaw are named. You can refuse the mouthpiece, the untold audience, the flaw as vice and the plot summary, and run stage, directions, knowledge, argument. And you can state fifty-five omissions against two plays and a careful tragedy set, carry four things, read aloud, attribute the guides, and remember drama is also verse. Unit fourteen takes soliloquy and aside.