Dramatic Irony In The Cask Of Amontillado

Edgar Allen Poe is a man that had written many stories and plays in his lifetime. One of them was a play called, "The Cask of Amontillado". In Poe's play, "The Cask of Amontillado", dramatic, situational, and verbal irony is vital to making the story.
Dramatic Irony is irony that the audience knows something that the characters in the play do not. It is important to use in plays because it lets the audience guess when it will happen or if the plan will ever work. In "The Cask of Amontillado", it is important because it helps the audience get the jokes being made about Fortunato's death. For example, Fortunato tells Montresor not to worry about his health, that “the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill [him]. [He] will not die of a cough”(238).

Montresor then replies to him, “True–true”(238). At this part in the play, the audience knows that Montresor wants to kill Fortunato. Another example is when Montresor is thinking to himself about Fortunato. In the play, it must be understood that, "I continued as was my wont, to smile in his [Fortunato's] face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation"(236). This has two reasons why it is dramatic irony, one of them is that the audience understands that Fortunato, because of the unidentified "insult," has been fooled into believing that Montresor has not been offended by Fortunato's actions. The other reason is, the word immolation, however, means to sacrifice, so the audience is aware of both Montresor's goal and of Fortunato's ignorance of that goal.
Another irony that makes this play is situational irony. Situational irony is when the outcome is contradictory to what is expected to happen. In the play, the name Fortunato is translated, from Italian, to fortunate, but it is ironic because he is not fortunate at the end of the play because he gets killed. Another example of this type of irony is in the title, the word "cask"(236) means wine barrel, but it also means casket of a coffin. At the end of the play, Fortunato believes that he is going to reach the cask of wine, but he actually goes to his casket where he will be killed.
The last type of irony used in the play is verbal irony. Verbal irony is when a person says something that is opposite of what they actually mean. An example of this is when Fortunato and Montresor meet. Montresor runs into Fortunato at the beginning of the story and he says, “My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met”(237). However, Montresor actually means that he is happy to see Fortunato because he will profit from this meeting, not Fortunato. Another example of this is when Fortunato and Montresor talk about the "masons"(239). Fortunato asks Montresor if he is a mason, meaning a Freemason, and Montresor says yes. However, Montresor means that he is a craftsman, since he will be entombing Fortunato with stone and mortar, not a Freemason.
Edgar Allen Poe used irony throughout the entire play or "The Cask of Amontillado". He expressed different types of irony; such as dramatic, situational, and verbal irony.