Every dramatic poet is necessarily in some degree ironical. In speaking, then, of the dramatic irony of Sophocles it is not meant that this quality is peculiar to him. It is only meant that in him this quality is especially noticeable and especially artistic.
Irony depends on a contrast; the irony of tragedy depends mainly on a contrast between the beliefs or purposes of men and those issues to which their actions are overruled by higher powers. Sophocles has the art of making this contrast, throughout the whole course of a drama, peculiarly suggestive and forcible. In his seven extant plays, the contrasts thus worked out have different degrees of complexity. The "Trachiniæ" and "Electra" may be taken as those in which the dramatic irony is simplest. In the "Trachiniæ" there is a twofold contrast of a direct kind: first, between the love of Deianeira for Heracles and the mortal agony into which she unwittingly throws him; then, between the meaning of the oracle (promising rest to Heracles), as understood by him and Deianeira, and its real import. In the "Electra" there is a particular and a general contrast, both direct; the sister is mourning the supposed death of her brother at the very moment when he is about to enter the house as an avenger; and the situation with which the play ends is the exact reversal of that with which it opened.
The "Ajax" and the two Œdipus plays, again, might be classed together in respect of dramatic
