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How Does Lawrence Rattigan Use Dramatic Irony In The Play

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How Terence Rattigan uses dramatic irony to present truth and deception in The Browning Version to create audience's expectations. Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version (1949) is a what play set in a schoolmaster’s house in England. Dramatic irony is the audience’s awareness of a situation within a play that the characters do not know about. The essay explores how dramatic irony is used to portray truth and deception to create audience’s expectations of tension. The playwright uses dramatic irony to comment on the duplicitous nature of individuals within society and the universalisation of the facades as well as the fact that truth will always prevail despite the multiple facades. Rattigan uses dramatic irony to comment on duplicitous …show more content…

He also acts in this way to distract Andrew from the reality as well as to assure himself that he has not been found out. They are very …show more content…

The audience assumes that Andrew is oblivious to the relationship giving no indication he was aware of their relationship. The audience has expectations of tension between Frank and Andrew and implies a climactic revelation at the end when Andrew finds out. However, in a twist, Andrew appears to have already known about it seven months ago and wittily comments, “so that you may more easily carry on your intrigue with her?”. Even more surprising is Andrew’s almost calm and docile reaction to the situation, where Frank shares the audience expectations, anticipating him to have ‘made a scene, knocked [him] down’ for behaving inappropriately with his wife. The fact that he knew of this from his wife herself, shows that her wife was truthful to her husband and while also deceiving Frank, using multiple facades to protect her interests. The use of dramatic irony to create audience’s expectations than subverting them suggests that truth will ultimately prevail and the multiple facades of deception are not advantageous to either

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