The Winter's Tale

While on trial in Act 3, Scene 2, Hermione declares that Leontes has conjured false accusations against her, as if dreaming them up: "My life stands in the level of your dreams." Leontes's response—"Your actions are my dreams"—is a source of dramatic irony: his intended meaning is that Hermione has enacted in reality what he has dreamed, that is, adultery. However, the audience knows that an alternative meaning of his response is true: Hermione's purported adultery is a mere figment of his imagination. Hermione never committed adultery, and Leontes has indeed "dream[ed]" her actions.

In Act 4, Scene 4, Polixenes and Camillo conceal their identities to visit Florizell and Perdita at the Shepherd's home. This is an example of dramatic irony because the audience knows their identities while the characters do not. In fact, oblivious to his father's disguise, Florizell reveals his plan to marry Perdita even without Polixenes's permission. 

Act 5, Scene 1 features the long-awaited reunion of Leontes with his daughter Perdita, who is accompanied by Florizell. However, since both Florizell and Perdita are in disguise and Leontes does not know that Florizell's bride-to-be is his own daughter,  this creates dramatic irony that generates humor as well as increases the suspense of the scene. For example, when Leontes expresses his longing for children like Florizell and Perdita, wondering, "What might I have been / Might I a son and daughter now have looked on, / Such goodly things as you?", the audience knows that Florizell may soon be his son-in-law and Perdita is his daughter, but Leontes does not. This use of dramatic irony increases the audience's anticipation for the reunion of father with daughter.

In Acts 4 and 5, multiple characters disguise themselves: Camillo and Polixenes to spy on Florizell and Perdita at the shepherd's cottage, Autolycus as a nobleman to swindle the Shepherd and his son, and Perdita and Florizell to travel to Sicily. A generic convention of the Shakespearean comedy, this use of disguises generates dramatic irony, thus contributing to both the suspense and the humorous tone of the last two Acts. Moreover, by creating mishaps around mistaken identities and obstructing the characters' access to the truth, the use of disguises highlights the unreliability of perception that provoked Leontes's downfall: once convinced of Hermione's unfaithfulness, no amount of evidence could persuade him to see the truth. 

Leontes's repeated characterization of the adulterous behavior he claims to have perceived—but has largely imagined—between his wife and Polixenes as "nothing" is an example of dramatic irony. When Camillo attempts to refute Leontes's claims of Hermione's infidelity in Act 1, Scene 2, Leontes demands: 

Is whispering nothing? 
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?   
Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career 
Of laughter with a sigh?—a note infallible 
Of breaking honesty. Horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift? Hours minutes? Noon midnight? And all eyes Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only, 
That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that’s in ’t is nothing, The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing, 
My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings, 
If this be nothing. 

Cite this Quote

In Act 4, Scene 3, Autolycus pretends to have been beaten and robbed so that he himself might rob the Shepherd's son. The dramatic irony here derives from the fact that the audience knows that Autolycus is scheming to commit a robbery because they are privy to his aside earlier in the scene—"If the springe hold, the cock’s / mine"—whereas the Shepherd's son is oblivious. The comedy of this encounter heightens when the Shepherd's son, unaware of Autolycus's machinations, offers him money, to which Autolycus responds, "Offer me no money, I pray you; that kills my heart." This is ironic not only because Autolycus is refusing money from the Shepherd's son despite intending to steal from him, but also because Autolycus is being offered a simpler and legal means of achieving his original goal—and is foolishly refusing it.