In an example of dramatic irony, the Rocket consistently believes that other characters think more highly of him than they really do. This is dramatic irony because readers are aware that characters are maligning the Rocket, even if he doesn't know this. Take the following passage, for example, which comes as a pair of workmen toss the Rocket outside the walls of the Court:
[T]hey took no notice of him at all till they were just going away. Then one of them caught sight of him. “Hallo!” he cried, “what a bad rocket!” and he threw him over the wall into the ditch.
“Bad Rocket? Bad Rocket?” he said, as he whirled through the air; “impossible! Grand Rocket, that is what the man said. Bad and Grand sound very much the same, indeed they often are the same”; and he fell into the mud.
Here, the workman refers to the Rocket as a “bad rocket” because, unlike the other fireworks used in the wedding festivities, he did not successfully go off. The dramatic irony comes into play when the Rocket decides that what the man really said was “grand rocket,” convincing himself that “Bad and Grand sound very much the same.” Because readers know that this is not what happened, they can see just how delusional the Rocket is. He is so convinced of his own importance that he cannot see the truth—namely, that he is unwanted and alone.
In an example of dramatic irony, the King believes that he is an excellent flute player when, in reality, he is quite bad at it, a fact that the other characters and readers are all aware of. The irony comes across in the following passage:
After the banquet there was to be a Ball. The bride and bridegroom were to dance the Rose-dance together, and the King had promised to play the flute. He played very badly, but no one had ever dared to tell him so, because he was the King. Indeed, he knew only two airs, and was never quite certain which one he was playing; but it made no matter, for, whatever he did, everybody cried out, “Charming! charming!”
The narrator directly states here that the King “play[s] very badly” and is “never quite certain” what song he's even playing, clearly establishing for readers that, when the King receives positive feedback (“Charming! charming!”), it is only because people don’t want to question the authority of the king. In this way, readers can laugh at the irony of the King’s ignorance while also grasping Wilde’s underlying message about how power and status can keep people in a permanent state of delusion about their abilities (flute playing and otherwise).
