In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare uses irony in different ways. Sometimes it is used for humorous purposes, and sometimes for dramatic purposes. It works because the audience hears the character saying one thing, and yet the audience knows that the literal meaning is not true, and in fact the opposite is true. By using irony in both humorous and dramatic scenes, Shakespeare allows the audience to enjoy the experience of sometimes knowing more than another character does about what is really happening. In contrast, the irony in Trifles is not so much a play on words as it is in Shakespeare’s work. The irony comes from the word “trifle” being applied to things that are not in any way trivial.
One of the first extended examples of irony occurs at the masked ball, in Act 1. Benedick wears a mask and converses with Beatrice; he believes she does not know who he actually is. She does in fact know him. For example, when she says, “I am sure you know him well enough,” and Benedick responds, “Not I, believe me,” the irony is that of course Benedick does know who Benedick is, because it is himself. Beatrice takes advantage of the situation to give a very unflattering description of Benedick:
Why, he is the prince's jester: a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders: none but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet: I would he had boarded me. (2.1)
The audience would appreciate the irony of these statements because Benedick cannot refute her comments without either admitting that he just lied when he said he did not know Benedick, or admitting that he himself is Benedick.
A more dramatic use of irony occurs soon after the conversation between Beatrice and Benedick. Don John has determined to wreck the possible marriage between Claudio and Hero, and speaks to a masked Claudio who is pretending to be someone else. Don John, knowing full well that he is actually speaking to Claudio, says to him, “Are you not Signior Benedick?” and Claudio responds, “You know me well; I am he” (2.2). In Claudio’s response, it is ironic that he mentions Don John knowing him well, when that is obviously untrue, and then it is also ironic that he identifies himself as Benedick, when the audience and Don John know his real identity. Unlike the previous scene with Benedick and Beatrice, this scene is used to increase the dramatic suspense of the play. The audience knows that Don John intends something bad to happen, and even as they know Claudio is lying, they also see him being dragged into Don John’s manipulations.
In the last act of the play, Shakespeare returns to a more humorous use of irony. Throughout the play, Benedick and Beatrice have had a love/hate relationship; initially each declares an intention never to marry or to fall in love. They have a history of arguing with each other, but they both have been tricked by friends into believing the other is in love with them. When they finally meet at the end of the play, they hesitate to state their true feelings. Benedick asks, “Do you not love me?” and Beatrice replies, “Why, no; no more than reason”; Beatrice then asks, “Do you not love me?” and it is Benedick’s turn to reply, “Troth, no; no more than reason” (5.4). The irony is that each of them does love the other one, and the audience is aware of the disconnect between what they are saying and what they actually feel.
In Glaspell’s play Trifles, the irony comes from the title of the play. As the play unfolds, it becomes clear that a man, Mr. Wright, has been murdered by his wife. Local law enforcement officials, who are at the scene, make snide remarks about how messy the kitchen is, while two women are there strictly as observers. One of the men comments that Mrs. Wright was worried about her preserves, and the man who discovered the murder replies, “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.” To him and to the other men, the preserves represent something completely unimportant. However, as the two women talk to each other, one of them remembers how much work Mrs. Wright had done to make the preserves. So the preserves were not really trifles; they were something Mrs. Wright had spent a lot of time and energy preparing.
A contrast to this characterization of something as a trifle occurs when the male law enforcement officials are going around the house and the farm itself, looking for evidence in all the wrong places. One of the two wives says of the men, “Of course they've got awful important things on their minds.” The irony here is that the men, who are supposedly doing something important, are completely clueless about why Mrs. Wright would have killed her husband and they don’t bother to look around the kitchen, where Mrs. Wright spent most of her time, to see if there is any evidence of motive. What the men are doing is ultimately of no use; it is their activity which is really trifling.
The final moments of irony come toward the end of the play, when the two wives discover the broken bird cage and then the dead bird. They quickly figure out that Mr. Wright must have killed the bird, and that the bird was precious to Mrs. Wright because she had never had children and lacked any close friends. The men would regard killing a husband over a dead bird to be committing murder over something trivial. And yet the women sympathize with Mrs. Wright because they both know what it is like to have something loved taken away. Knowing that the dead bird would provide a motive for murder, the women conceal the bird from the men and distract them with chatter about another trifle, whether Mrs. Wright was planning to quilt or knot the pieces of cloth she had assembled. The women deliberately reinforce the idea that the kitchen contained nothing of importance, only trifles, when just the opposite is true.
Works Cited
Glaspell, Susan. “Trifles”. Plays. New York: BiblioBazaar, 2006. Kindle Edition.
Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. New York: Digireads.com Publishing, 2009. Kindle Edition.
