The School for Scandal: Dramatic Irony 4 key examples

Sir Oliver’s disguised interaction with his nephew Charles Surface in Act 4, Scene 1 is an instance of dramatic irony:

Sir Oliver. Well, well, anything to accommodate you;—they are mine. But there is one portrait which you have always passed over. 

Careless. What, that ill-looking little fellow over the settee? 

Sir Oliver. Yes, sir, I mean that, though I don’t think him so ill-looking a little fellow, by any means.

[...]

Charles. No, hang it; I’ll not part with poor Noll. The old fellow has been very good to me, and, egad, I’ll keep his picture while I’ve a room to put it in. 

Sir Oliver. The rogue’s my nephew after all! [Aside.]—But, sir, I have somehow taken a fancy to that picture.

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Act 4, Scene 3 of The School for Scandal, otherwise known as the “screen scene,” is the most sensational and well-known scene in the entire play. Uproarious and chaotic in equal measure, it is also a quintessential example of dramatic irony. In the passage below, Sheridan utilizes staging and timing to hilarious effect, playing each character’s differing amounts of knowledge against both each other and the audience’s fuller awareness of the entire picture:  

Sir Peter: Come, you shall not refuse me: here, behind this screen will be—Hey! what the devil! there seems to be one listener there already—I’ll swear I saw a petticoat! 

Joseph: Ha! ha! ha! Well, this is ridiculous enough. [...] Hark’ee, ’tis a little French milliner—a silly rogue that plagues me,—and having some character to lose, on your coming, sir, she ran behind the screen. 

Sir Peter: Ah! you rogue! But, egad, she has overheard all I have been saying of my wife. 

Joseph: Oh, ’twill never go any farther, you may depend upon it. 

Sir Peter: No! then, faith, let her hear it out.—Here’s a closet will do as well.

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Sir Oliver disguises himself as Mr. Premium the moneylender to test the character of his nephew Charles Surface in Act 4, Scene 1. Similarly, he dons another disguise in Act 5, Scene 1 in order to ascertain the heart of his other nephew, Joseph. This time, he poses as a poor relative named Mr. Stanley and suggests that he's in need of charity. As in Sir Oliver’s first attempt at reconnaissance, the audience is fully aware that “Mr. Stanley” is nothing more than a disguise. Thus, the interaction between uncle and nephew below is an instance of dramatic irony:

Joseph: My dear sir, you were strangely misinformed. Sir Oliver is a worthy man, a very worthy man; but avarice, Mr. Stanley, is the vice of age. I will tell you, my good sir, in confidence, what he has done for me has been a mere nothing; though people, I know, have thought otherwise, and, for my part, I never chose to contradict the report. 

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The first half of Act 5, Scene 2 is an example of dramatic irony. Mrs. Candour, the maid, Benjamin Backbite, Lady Sneerwell, and Mr. Crabtree all gather to postulate on what they think may have happened between the Teazles and the Surface brothers in Act 4. Each of their suggested versions of events grow more and more outlandish with every false re-telling, culminating in Sir Benjamin’s ludicrous invention of a duel: 

Sir Benjamin: Well, I’ll not dispute with you, Mrs. Candour; but, be it which it may, I hope that Sir Peter’s wound will not— 

Mrs. Candour: Sir Peter’s wound! Oh, mercy! I didn’t hear a word of their fighting. 

Lady Sneerwell:. Nor I, a syllable. 

Sir Benjamin: No! what, no mention of the duel?

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