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Definition of Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given situation, and that of the... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a... read full definition
Act 1, Scene 3
Explanation and Analysis—The Only Daughter:
In a scene rife with dramatic irony, Lussurioso unknowingly orders a disguised Vindice to serve as a “panderer” (or a “middleman” between a sex worker and a client) for his own sister. After offering to set up Lussurioso with any woman he chooses, the Duke’s eldest son reveals his deep desire for Castiza:
Vindice. You have gi’en it the tang, i’faith, my lord.
Make known the lady to me, and my brain
Shall swell with strange invention; I will move it
Till I expire with speaking, and drop down
Without a word to save me; – but I’ll work –Lussurioso. We thank thee, and will raise thee.
Receive her name: it is the only daughter to
Madam Graziana, the late widow.Vindice. [Aside] Oh, my sister, my sister!
Lussurioso. Why dost walk aside?
Vindice. My lord, I was thinking how I might begin,
As thus, ‘oh lady’ – or twenty hundred devices:
Playing the role of panderer in order to infiltrate the royal family and execute his revenge, Vindice promises to use an ingenious scheme or “strange invention” to procure whatever lady Lussurioso desires. When Lussurioso names the daughter of “Madam Graziana” as the object of his lust, the audience and Vindice both realize that he desires Vindice’s sister Castiza. Much of the dark humor and dramatic tension of this scene stems from his ignorance that he is speaking to Vindice and has made of him a request that Vindice would never satisfy.
Related Themes:
Act 2, Scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—The Panderer:
The scenes in which Vindice assumes the disguise of a “panderer” (similar to a “pimp”) are heavily suffused with dramatic irony, as other characters do not realize that they are speaking with Vindice and behave very differently than they ordinarily would in his company. When Lussurioso unknowingly requests that Vindice “pander” his own sister and insinuates that Gratiana would approve, Vindice decides to test his mother’s virtue:
Vindice. You took great pains for her once when it was:
Let her requite it now, though it be but some.
You brought her forth, she may well bring you home.Mother. O heavens! This overcomes me.
Vindice. [Aside] Not, I hope, already?
Mother. It is too strong for me. Men know that know us,
We are so weak their words can overthrow us.
He touched me nearly, made my virtues ’bate
When his tongue struck upon my poor estate.Vindice. [Aside] I e’en quake to proceed.
My spirit turns edge? I fear me she’s unmothered, yet I’ll venture:
Though it pains him to do so, Vindice approaches his mother and attempts to “acquire” Castiza on behalf of Lussurioso. In respect of the “great pains” of childbirth, Vindice argues, Castiza can repay her mother by providing her with funding and housing in her old age. When Gratiana states that she is overwhelmed by this painful offer, Vindice notes in an aside that he hopes she will not be so easily persuaded. To his horror, Gratiana is indeed persuaded by his offer, citing her “poor estate” (that is, her poverty) as a compelling motivation. Vindice’s horror grows as his arguments win over Gratiana, who does not realize she is offering to “sell” her daughter to her own son. Her later denial of the conversation reflects her deep sense of shame and suggests that she would never knowingly behave in such a manner in front of Vindice.
Related Themes:
Act 4, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Satire of Lawyers:
In Act 4, Scene 2, Lussurioso orders the death of “Piato” who is in fact Vindice in disguise. In a turn of both dramatic and situational irony, he decides to find a new “panderer” and asks Hippolito about Vindice, who then assumes a new disguise as a lawyer. In their “first” meeting, Vindice offers a harsh satire of lawyers, a conventional target for satirical works in the early modern period:
Lussurioso. What, three and twenty years in law?
Vindice. I have known those that have been five and fifty, and all about pullin and pigs.
Lussurioso. May it be possible such men should breathe,
To vex the terms so much?Vindice. ’Tis food to some, my lord. There are old men at the present, that are so poisoned with the affectation of law-words – have had many suits canvassed – that their common talk is nothing but Barbary latin. They cannot so much as pray, but in law, that their sins may be removed, with a writ of error; and their souls fetched up on heaven with a sasarara.
Vindice claims that he has spent 23 years studying law, a comic exaggeration of the lengthy education and training of lawyers. Upping the ante of this satirical exaggeration, he also claims to know other lawyers who have spent 55 years studying the arcane laws that regulate animal husbandry (“pullin,” or poultry, and “pigs.”) Lussurioso responds with shock, asking if it could really be possible that men “vex” or litigate such minor concerns so extensively as to require such an arcane and complex legal code. Further developing his satire of the legal profession, Vindice adds that many elderly lawyers are "so poisoned with the affectation" of legal language through their extensive experience handling “suits” that they can only speak in a corrupt form of Latin, the language used in legal courts throughout Europe at the time. Further, they speak to God as if at trial, offering a “writ of error” to expiate their sins, and they are summoned to heaven by a “sasarara,” or a legal summons. The play's satire of lawyers suggest that they reduce spiritual mysteries to mere legal procedure.
