An important means of emphasis is contrast--in character, situation, and even dialogue. Melodrama has always rested, in large part, for its definite emotional appeals on sharply contrasted characters--the spotless hero, the double-dyed villain, the adventuress, and the heroine so innocent of the world as to provide unlimited dramatic situations. Recall the impetuous Julia and the gentle Sylvia of _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_. If it be said that such direct contrasting of dissimilar figures belongs more to the earlier plays of dramatists, this is not true. In _The Gay Lord Quex_,[32] contrast of the old and the young roués, Quex and Bastling, helps to make clear and to emphasize the point of the play. _The Princess and the Butterfly_[33] largely depends upon contrast,--among the restless women of Act I, the restless men of Act II, between the Princess and Sir George, between the love of Fay Zuliani for Sir George and that of Edward for the Princess.
Contrast in situation was a great reliance with the Elizabethans and, even when very crudely used, remains popular with the American public today. So much pleasure did the Elizabethan derive from contrasted situation that he was willing to have it worked up as a separate sub-plot, at times very slightly connected with the main plot. Take _The Changeling_ of Middleton: the titular part, written for comic value, deals with scenes in a madhouse; the other intensely tragic plot of De Flores and Beatrice-Joanna is but slightly connected with it. Think of the grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, just before the burial of Ophelia, and, above all, consider in _Macbeth_ the consummate use of a contrasting scene, in the porter at the gate just after the murder of Duncan.
It is a sense of the value of contrasting situation which produces the best dramatic irony. When in Scene 2, Act I, of _Hindle Wakes_, we listen to Alan Jeffcote's father and mother planning for his marriage, the fine dramatic irony comes from the contrast we feel with the facts of his conduct, known to us from the preceding scene, which may make his marriage impossible. Dramatic irony depends on a preceding planting in the minds of the auditors of information which makes what is true contrast sharply with what the characters of the particular scene suppose to be true. Contrast, then, underlies dramatic irony. An audience, feeling the dramatic irony of a scene, is put into a state of suspense as to how and when the blow they anticipate will fall. Evidently, then, emphasis by means of contrast, when it results in dramatic irony, makes for dramatic suspense.