Question

Based on your understanding of the play, explain how a mistaken understanding of events can lead to confusion. How has the author used this unexpected combination of events in the situation to create humour?

Answer 1

Author C.V. Burgess is a master craftsman. He reveals only a few names. The first patient Joe and his wife Emily are the most dominant characters. Joe is inside the surgical room. Emily is apprehensive about their husband. Among two children the dramatist uses only the girl’s name Dorothea and the Dentist hospital becomes a play area for Dorothea and the little boy who claim the same magazine for reading. The snobbish woman who goes on showing her

photo album gives us an impression if she came to see the doctor or to show her photos. The whole play revolves around the dramatic irony of patients’ guess as to what happened inside the dentists’ room and what really happened. The pliers, hack saw and the huge hammer were taken inside the dentist’s room only for opening the tool cabinet. But the patients wondered how these tools would be used in surgery. The groaning noise from inside the dentist’s rooms and the vexation of Emily Joe add to the dramatic irony. A few women patients leave the waiting room scared of subjecting themselves to the torture of having their bad teeth extracted with carpentry tools. The nurse moves about with all feigned seriousness without disclosing the fact of the misplacement of the key which adds to the comic situation