Blood Wedding Act 3

"A dramatist often creates a gap between what the audience knows and what teh characters know. With reference to at least two plays, discuss how and to what effect dramatists have used this technique."

Dramatic irony is a common feature in drama and tragedy. When dramatic irony occurs, the audience is aware of something that the characters in the play are not aware of. Dramatic irony is used in both "Oedipus" and "Blood Wedding

The story of "Oedipus" was a well-known myth to the ancient greeks who first converted it into a play, and the audience knew the basic plot of the story. Thus it was no surprise to them when they found out that it was Oedipus that murdered his father and slept with his mother. However, to the characters in the play, none of this was forseen, and they did not know what was going to happen in the end. All of this places the audience one step ahead of the characters, and it heightens the suspense of the story as they watch what they know are the futile efforts of Oedipus to find out if the prophecy is true.

Like "Oedipus", "Blood Wedding" also makes use of dramatic irony in the storyline. Unlike "Oedipus", most of the audience was probably not familiar with the play, and the irony instead comes when they watch the Bride talk to Leonardo in a scene that the Bridegroom cannot see. Like all dramtic irony, this results in the audience being aware of some thing that the characters (in this case the bridegroom) are not aware of. In this case, the suspense in the play is raised because the audience knows that a character (the Bridegroom) is acting on information that is false.