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Definition of Verbal Irony
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging outside and someone remarks "what... read full definition
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging... read full definition
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean... read full definition
Act 5, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Feast with Me:
After Titus captures and gags Chiron and Demetrius near the end of Act 5, Scene 2, he begins to formulate his plan to kill his daughter’s rapists and feed them to their mother. This moment is full of verbal irony:
You know your mother means to feast with me,
And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad.
Hark, villains, I will grind your bones to dust,
And with your blood and it I’ll make a paste,
And of the paste a coffin I will rear,
And make two pasties of your shameful heads,
And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam,
Like to the earth swallow her own increase.
This is the feast that I have bid her to,
And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;
Overcome with madness in his pursuit of revenge, Titus outlines his plans to Chiron and Demetrius, repeatedly referring to his plan to hold a “feast” with Tamora. The irony, of course, is that the "feast" she will be attending is not one in which the attendees will meet to make merry and break bread, but rather to glut themselves on vengeance (which can never fulfill anyone enough to satisfaction). Instead of gathering the Roman elite for a celebratory and enjoyable, sumptuous meal, Titus informs Tamora’s sons that his guests will dine on their ground bones and blood—this gruesome meal is the “banquet” their mother will eat.
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