Verbal Irony in Tawfiq al-Hakim's Plays

Irony is a western expression derived from the ancient Greece, which has been introduced through translation into Arabic language and literature in the contemporary period. Irony may be divided into categories and verbal irony is one of them. In this literary device, the writer says something but means something else. The approach of the writer is to use inversion with humor. Tawfiq al-Hakim is one of the most famous contemporary Arabic playwrights who in most of his plays deals with an uncanny intelligence on a variety of social and cultural issues, the discrepancies and uncertainties in societies. Tawfik al-Hakim is a prominent Egyptian writer and one of the pioneers in the Arabic novel and drama. This article examines his most important plays from the perspective of verbal irony to reveal their content. The result shows that the author has used verbal irony in most of his plays, and secondly, through this approach he narrates the problem of human communities.