(a) The term ‘irony’ means ‘hiding’ or dissembling what actually is the case, not in order to deceive but to achieve special rhetorical or artistic effects.
In the one-act play, ‘A Sunny Morning’ irony is cleverly built into the play. After settling in her bench, Dona Laura sends away Petra, her maidservant, to chat with the guard. Soon after that, she glances towards the trees at right and says “Here they come; they know just when to expect me”. Though the old lady is referring to the arrival of the birds, it also hints at the entry of Don Gonzalo and Juanito, who are needed for the action to move forward. Dona Laura throws three handfuls of crumbs for the pigeons to eat and soon after that we see Don Gonzalo and Juanito entering the scene.
(b) We come across the next instance of irony when Don Gonzalo starts reading aloud statements supposedly from Campoamor’* work. Don Gonzalo reads aloud the following:
“All love is sad but sad as it is, it is the best thing that we know”.
“Twenty years pass. He returns. And each, beholding the other, exclaims can it be that this is he? Heavens, is it she?” These lines can be taken as examples of ‘Dramatic irony’.
(c) There are two more instances of irony in the play.
They are:
1. When Dona Laura tells Don Gonzalo that Laura Llorente was called ‘The Silver Maiden’ in that locality, he tells her “I seem to see her as if she were before me now, at that window with the red roses”.
2. He starts giving a description of her beauty, “She was ideal, fair as a lily, jet hair and eyes…” and finally says “what forms of sovereign beauty *** models in human clay! She was a dream”.
On hearing Don Gonzalo say so, Dona Laura mutters to herself “if you but knew that dream was now by your side, you would realize what dreams come to”.
3. “Here are you and I, complete strangers, met by chance, discussing the romance of old friends of long ago! We have been conversing as if we were old friends”, Dona Laura tells Don Gonzalo after both of them have told their made-up stories.
A careful reading of the play reveals that there is a relationship between the old lady and the old gentleman. When I read the play a second time paying attention to the story and the instances of irony highlighted here, I was able to guess the characters' past.
