"Wasn't That Ironic?"

"To be? Or not to be? That is the question." Can you remember who made these words? YUP! It was Shakespeare. Still, looking at things like this make me wonder if he had a life beyond writing excellent Literature...guess not. I mean, do you wake up every morning and ask yourself that question...I would hope not. Well, with the exception of saying some wierd yet extraordinary phrases, Shakespeare also made some extraordinary plays. Let's take Romeo & Juliet; the two lovers who died due to their rash decisions and Family Conflict. Let's take a short re-cap: After a night of passion and sex, Romeo runs off(He was definitely a "Player") becuase he is exiled from his city. Juliet wants to free herself from her family and find Romeo, so she takes a potion that will make them think she is dead when she is really under a deep sleep.(Good idea girl, your just lucky they didn't throw your dumb ass in the furnace and put your ashes in a jar) Romeo comes back and finds his true love dead in the tomb, so he kills himself (Can you say "Moron!"). Five seconds after he dies, Juliet wakes up and finds her true love dead, so she kills herself (Stupid...). This whole scene at the end of the play is...Dramatically Ironic...

irony (i-RAH-nee): a literary term referring to how a person, situation, statement, or circumstance is not as it would actually seem. Many times it is the exact opposite of what it appears to be. There are many types of irony, the three most common being verbal irony, dramatic irony, and cosmic irony. Verbal irony occurs when either the speaker means something totally different than what he is saying or the audience realizes, because of their knowledge of the particular situation to which the speaker is referring, that the opposite of what a character is saying is true. Verbal irony also occurs when a character says something in jest that, in actuality, is true. In Julius Caesar, Marc Antony’s reference to Brutus being an honorable man is an example of verbal irony. Marc Antony notes all of the good deeds Julius Caesar did for his people while, more than once, he asks the rhetorical question, “Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?” Antony uses this rhetorical question to try to convince his audience that Caesar is not ambitious, presenting Brutus as a dishonorable man because of his claim that Caesar was ambitious. Dramatic irony occurs when facts are not known to the characters in a work of literature but are known by the audience. In The Gospel According to St. John, the Pharisees say of Jesus, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” This is dramatic irony for the reader already knows, according to the author, that Jesus is the Savior of the world and has already done much good for the people by forgiving their sins and healing the sick and oppressed. The Pharisees are too blinded to see what good actually has come out of Nazareth. Cosmic irony suggests that some unknown force brings about dire and dreadful events. Cosmic irony can be seen in Shakespeare’s Othello.