Dramatic Irony in hamlet and Trifles The plays Hamlet and Trifles have many aspects in which they can be linked together. One key aspect I will be linking between the two plays is their use of dramatic irony. Although Trifles is much shorter than Hamlet and is only one act long we can clearly see dramatic irony and how it is key to the stories. Dramatic irony is when the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters. For example when Hamlet sees the ghost of his father. His father and former king of Denmark tells him to avenge his death. He tells Hamlet that the present king Claudius killed him to take the thrown. We as the audience know that Hamlets reasoning for almost everything he does is in spite of what the ghost said but the people in the story have not a clue of this. By act II, the audience knows that Claudius killed the former king. The ghost has told him so, sending Hamlet into frenzy. However, Claudius and the others, apart from Horatio, a special case, do not. Therefore, when Hamlet puts his antic disposition on Polonius, Claudius, and Ophelia, all believe that he is mad; their misunderstanding is an instance of dramatic irony: the audience knows he is not mad in the way they believe him to be. Dramatic irony can also be clearly seen in Trifles. Dramatic irony is one of many ways it directly links Trifles and Hamlet together. In Trifles we (the audience) know that the women in the story find evidence of the murder that would of proven that Mrs. Wright killed her husband, but the men in the story never find out about the evidence. They never have so much as a clue that the women are hiding evidence but the whole time as we read we know they are. In Trifles when Mrs. Hale says “We think the cat got it” (117). We know that what really happened is that Mr. Wright wrung