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Three Types of Irony — All in One Story
When I first began teaching over 40 years ago, I taught high-school English to freshmen and sophomores. Each day was exciting because those fresh, young faces were alive and curious and enthusiastic, and I was eager to share with them my love for literature and for writing. One of the works that we thoroughly enjoyed was William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet because my students could easily and clearly identify with the young love and passion of those “star-crossed” lovers. Naturally, I, too, could appreciate that passion, but quite honestly, I was even more intrigued by Shakespeare’s crafting of his work and especially by his use of irony in all its forms.
We began by talking about verbal irony where a character says the opposite of what is intended. I’d introduce the technique by pointing out that my students probably used verbal irony themselves without realizing it: “If you received a 50 on a vocabulary quiz, for instance, you might say to your friends: ‘I did a great job on that test.’” Obviously, they could hear a touch of sarcasm in that example, and together, we looked at the Bard’s use of verbal irony.
At the beginning of the play, Romeo is mourning the unrequited love of Rosaline, and he describes her in this way: “One fairer than my love — the all-seeing sun Never saw her match, since first the world begun” (Act 1, Scene 2, Lines 97–98)…
