Shakespeare uses irony in many of his plays, in different ways and with different types of irony. One such play is Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses situational irony. This is when the audience knows more than the characters, which creates an ironic effect when the character does the wrong thing, and the audience knows it. In Romeo and Juliet, the situational irony occurs when Romeo kills himself when he is convinced that Juliet is dead. From an earlier scene of the play, the audience knows that Juliet is only drugged, in order to fake her death and escape. Romeo does not know this though, and he kills himself in his despair.