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Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that
is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; ... in the form of
action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper
purgation of these emotions.
...
Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies
personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities
both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify
actions themselves, and these- thought and character- are the two
natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all
success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the
action- for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. By
Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities
to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or,
it may be, a general truth enunciated. Every Tragedy, therefore, must
have six parts, which parts determine its quality- namely, Plot,
Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song. Two of the parts
constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the
objects of imitation. And these complete the fist. These elements have
been employed, we may say, by the poets to a man; in fact, every play
contains Spectacular elements as well as Character, Plot, Diction,
Song, and Thought.
But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy
is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and
life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a
quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their
actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action,
therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character:
character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents
and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing
of all. Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be
without character. The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in
the rendering of character; and of poets in general this is often
true. It is the same in painting; and here lies the difference between
Zeuxis and Polygnotus. Polygnotus delineates character well; the style
of Zeuxis is devoid of ethical quality. Again, if you string together
a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point
of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic
effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these
respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.
Besides which, the most powerful elements of emotional interest in
Tragedy- Peripeteia or Reversal of the Situation, and
Recognition scenes- are parts of the plot. A further proof is,
that novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of
portraiture before they can construct the plot. It is the same with
almost all the early poets.
The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul
of a tragedy; Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen
in painting. The most beautiful colors, laid on confusedly, will not
give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus Tragedy
is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to
the action.
Third in order is Thought- that is, the faculty of saying what is
possible and pertinent in given circumstances. In the case of oratory,
this is the function of the political art and of the art of rhetoric:
and so indeed the older poets make their characters speak the language
of civic life; the poets of our time, the language of the
rhetoricians. Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing
what kind of things a man chooses or avoids. Speeches, therefore,
which do not make this manifest, or in which the speaker does not
choose or avoid anything whatever, are not expressive of character.
Thought, on the other hand, is found where something is proved to be
or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated.
Fourth among the elements enumerated comes Diction; by which I
mean, as has been already said, the expression of the meaning in
words; and its essence is the same both in verse and prose.
Of the remaining elements Song holds the chief place among the
embellishments
The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but,
of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with
the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt
even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of
spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist
than on that of the poet.
These principles being established, let us now discuss the
proper structure of the Plot, since this is the first and most
important thing in Tragedy.
Now, according to our definition Tragedy
is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a
certain magnitude; for there may be a whole that is wanting in
magnitude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an
end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by
causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to
be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows
some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing
following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other
thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither
begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.
Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any
whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of
parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on
magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be
beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an
almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size
be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity
and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if
there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of
animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a
magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a
certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced
by the memory. The limit of length in relation to dramatic competition
and sensuous presentment is no part of artistic theory. For had it
been the rule for a hundred tragedies to compete together, the
performance would have been regulated by the water-clock- as indeed we
are told was formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of
the drama itself is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful
will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be
perspicuous. And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the
proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of
events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit
of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.
Aristotle praises Homer for the unity of his plots
Unity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity
of the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents in one man's
life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many
actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence the
error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a
Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was
one man, the story of Heracles must also be a unity. But Homer, as in
all else he is of surpassing merit, here too- whether from art or
natural genius- seems to have happily discerned the truth. In
composing the Odyssey he did not include all the adventures of
Odysseus- such as his wound on Parnassus, or his feigned madness at
the mustering of the host- incidents between which there was no
necessary or probable connection: but he made the Odyssey, and
likewise the Iliad, to center round an action that in our sense of the
word is one. As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation
is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an
imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the
structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is
displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For
a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not
an organic part of the whole.
It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not
the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may
happen- what is possible according to the law of probability or
necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse
or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it
would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without
it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the
other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and
a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the
universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a
person of a certain type on occasion speak or act, according to the
law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which
poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. The
particular is- for example- what Alcibiades did or suffered. In Comedy
this is already apparent: for here the poet first constructs the plot
on the lines of probability, and then inserts characteristic names-
unlike the lampooners who write about particular individuals. But
tragedians still keep to real names, the reason being that what is
possible is credible: what has not happened we do not at once feel
sure to be possible; but what has happened is manifestly possible:
otherwise it would not have happened. Still there are even some
tragedies in which there are only one or two well-known names, the
rest being fictitious. In others, none are well known- as in Agathon's
Antheus, where incidents and names alike are fictitious, and yet they
give none the less pleasure. We must not, therefore, at all costs keep
to the received legends, which are the usual subjects of Tragedy.
Indeed, it would be absurd to attempt it; for even subjects that are
known are known only to a few, and yet give pleasure to all. It
clearly follows that the poet or 'maker' should be the maker of plots
rather than of verses; since he is a poet because he imitates, and
what he imitates are actions. And even if he chances to take a
historical subject, he is none the less a poet; for there is no reason
why some events that have actually happened should not conform to the
law of the probable and possible, and in virtue of that quality in
them he is their poet or maker.
Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a plot
'episodic' in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without
probable or necessary sequence. Bad poets compose such pieces by their
own fault, good poets, to please the players; for, as they write show
pieces for competition, they stretch the plot beyond its capacity, and
are often forced to break the natural continuity.
But again, Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action,
but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced
when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened
when, at the same time, they follows as cause and effect. The tragic
wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by
accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an
air of design. We may instance the statue of Mitys at Argos, which
fell upon his murderer while he was a spectator at a festival, and
killed him. Such events seem not to be due to mere chance. Plots,
therefore, constructed on these principles are necessarily the best.
Plots are either Simple or Complex, for the actions in real life,
of which the plots are an imitation, obviously show a similar
distinction. An action which is one and continuous in the sense above
defined, I call Simple, when the change of fortune takes place without
Reversal of the Situation and without Recognition.
A Complex action is one in which the change is accompanied by such
Reversal, or by Recognition, or by both. These last should arise from
the internal structure of the plot, so that what follows should be the
necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It makes all the
difference whether any given event is a case of propter hoc or post
hoc.
Reversal of the Situation is a
change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject
always to our rule of probability or necessity. Thus in the Oedipus,
the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms
about his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite
effect. Again in the Lynceus, Lynceus is being led away to his death,
and Danaus goes with him, meaning to slay him; but the outcome of the
preceding incidents is that Danaus is killed and Lynceus saved.
Recognition, as the name indicates, is
a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate
between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune. The
best form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of the
Situation, as in the Oedipus. There are indeed other forms. Even
inanimate things of the most trivial kind may in a sense be objects of
recognition. Again, we may recognize or discover whether a person has
done a thing or not. But the recognition which is most intimately
connected with the plot and action is, as we have said, the
recognition of persons. This recognition, combined with Reversal, will
produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these effects are
those which, by our definition, Tragedy represents. Moreover, it is
upon such situations that the issues of good or bad fortune will
depend. Recognition, then, being between persons, it may happen that
one person only is recognized by the other- when the latter is already
known- or it may be necessary that the recognition should be on both
sides. Thus Iphigenia is revealed to Orestes by the sending of the
letter; but another act of recognition is required to make Orestes
known to Iphigenia.
Two parts, then, of the Plot- Reversal of the Situation and
Recognition- turn upon surprises. A third part is the Scene of
Suffering. The Scene of Suffering is a destructive or painful action,
such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like.
The parts of Tragedy which must be treated as elements of the whole
have been already mentioned. We now come to the quantitative parts-
the separate parts into which Tragedy is divided- namely, Prologue,
Episode, Exode, Choric song; this last being divided into Parode and
Stasimon. These are common to all plays: peculiar to some are the
songs of actors from the stage and the Commoi.
The Prologue is that entire part of a tragedy which precedes the
Parode of the Chorus. The Episode is that entire part of a tragedy
which is between complete choric songs. The Exode is that entire part
of a tragedy which has no choric song after it. Of the Choric part the
Parode is the first undivided utterance of the Chorus: the Stasimon is
a Choric ode without anapaests or trochaic tetrameters: the Commos is
a joint lamentation of Chorus and actors. The parts of Tragedy which
must be treated as elements of the whole have been already mentioned.
The quantitative parts- the separate parts into which it is divided-
are here enumerated.
As the sequel to what has already been said, we must proceed to
consider what the poet should aim at, and what he should avoid, in
constructing his plots; and by what means the specific effect of
Tragedy will be produced.
A perfect tragedy should, as we have seen, be arranged not on the
simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions
which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic
imitation. It follows plainly, in the first place, that the change of
fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought
from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it
merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity
to prosperity: for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of Tragedy;
it possesses no single tragic quality; it neither satisfies the moral
sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should the downfall of
the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless,
satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear;
for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of
a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither
pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the
character between these two extremes- that of a man who is not
eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by
vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one
who is highly renowned and prosperous- a personage like Oedipus,
Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.
A well-constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue,
rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be
not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad. It should come
about as the result not of vice, but of some great error or frailty,
in a character either such as we have described, or better rather than
worse. The practice of the stage bears out our view. At first the
poets recounted any legend that came in their way. Now, the best
tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses- on the fortunes of
Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and those
others who have done or suffered something terrible. A tragedy, then,
to be perfect according to the rules of art should be of this
construction. Hence they are in error who censure Euripides just
because he follows this principle in his plays, many of which end
unhappily. It is, as we have said, the right ending. The best proof is
that on the stage and in dramatic competition, such plays, if well
worked out, are the most tragic in effect; and Euripides, faulty
though he may be in the general management of his subject, yet is felt
to be the most tragic of the poets.
In the second rank comes the kind of tragedy which some place
first. Like the Odyssey, it has a double thread of plot, and also an
opposite catastrophe for the good and for the bad. It is accounted the
best because of the weakness of the spectators; for the poet is guided
in what he writes by the wishes of his audience. The pleasure,
however, thence derived is not the true tragic pleasure. It is proper
rather to Comedy, where those who, in the piece, are the deadliest
enemies- like Orestes and Aegisthus- quit the stage as friends at the
close, and no one slays or is slain.
Fear and pity may be aroused by
spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure
of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. For
the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the
eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to
pity at what takes Place. This is the impression we should receive
from hearing the story of the Oedipus. But to produce this effect by
the mere spectacle is a less artistic method, and dependent on
extraneous aids. Those who employ spectacular means to create a sense
not of the terrible but only of the monstrous, are strangers to the
purpose of Tragedy; for we must not demand of Tragedy any and every
kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper to it. And since the
pleasure which the poet should afford is that which comes from pity
and fear through imitation, it is evident that this quality must be
impressed upon the incidents.
Let us then determine what are the circumstances which strike us as
terrible or pitiful.
Actions capable of this effect must happen between persons who are
either friends or enemies or indifferent to one another. If an enemy
kills an enemy, there is nothing to excite pity either in the act or
the intention- except so far as the suffering in itself is pitiful. So
again with indifferent persons. But when the tragic incident occurs
between those who are near or dear to one another- if, for example, a
brother kills, or intends to kill, a brother, a son his father, a
mother her son, a son his mother, or any other deed of the kind is
done- these are the situations to be looked for by the poet. He may
not indeed destroy the framework of the received legends- the fact,
for instance, that Clytemnestra was slain by Orestes and Eriphyle by
Alcmaeon- but he ought to show of his own, and skilfully handle the
traditional. material. Let us explain more clearly what is meant by
skilful handling.
The action may be done consciously and with knowledge of the
persons, in the manner of the older poets. It is thus too that
Euripides makes Medea slay her children. Or, again, the deed of horror
may be done, but done in ignorance, and the tie of kinship or
friendship be discovered afterwards. The Oedipus of Sophocles is an
example. Here, indeed, the incident is outside the drama proper; but
cases occur where it falls within the action of the play: one may cite
the Alcmaeon of Astydamas, or Telegonus in the Wounded Odysseus.
Again, there is a third case- [to be about to act with knowledge of
the persons and then not to act. The fourth case] is when some one is
about to do an irreparable deed through ignorance, and makes the
discovery before it is done. These are the only possible ways. For the
deed must either be done or not done- and that wittingly or
unwittingly. But of all these ways, to be about to act knowing the
persons, and then not to act, is the worst. It is shocking without
being tragic, for no disaster follows It is, therefore, never, or very
rarely, found in poetry. One instance, however, is in the Antigone,
where Haemon threatens to kill Creon. The next and better way is that
the deed should be perpetrated. Still better, that it should be
perpetrated in ignorance, and the discovery made afterwards. There is
then nothing to shock us, while the discovery produces a startling
effect. The last case is the best, as when in the Cresphontes Merope
is about to slay her son, but, recognizing who he is, spares his life.
So in the Iphigenia, the sister recognizes the brother just in time.
Again in the Helle, the son recognizes the mother when on the point of
giving her up. This, then, is why a few families only, as has been
already observed, furnish the subjects of tragedy. It was not art, but
happy chance, that led the poets in search of subjects to impress the
tragic quality upon their plots. They are compelled, therefore, to
have recourse to those houses whose history contains moving incidents
like these.
Enough has now been said concerning the structure of the incidents,
and the right kind of plot.