Socrates: a man of Irony

I learned as a student of German Literature that the German Romanticism applies the method of irony, which is not to be understood as a rhetoric figure. Instead, it is a kind of philosophical method described once by Sören Kierkegaard. But silly me I forgot what exactly the description of Kierkegaard was and where he said this. Have to look up for it. But what occurs to me recently is, that this kind of irony is well documented in the Socratic dialogs of Plato. One place is the final part of Symposium, where Socrates remained awake together with Agathon, the winner of the contest for Tragic dramas, and Aristophanes, the winner of the contest for Comedy, and tried to persuade them that a good drama writer should be writing Tragedy and Comedy both at the same time.

And isn't it already an anticipation of the Tragic-Comedy of later eras? Lenz's Hofmeister is an example, written in the epoch of Sturm und Drang, which laid the foundations for the movement of Romanticism. Well, will be more careful while reading Plato. If I find more places indicating the "Socratic Irony", I will add them to this note.