Various Works

  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.

  POETICS|7

  VII

  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.

  POETICS|8

  VIII

  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

&
nbsp; 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.

  POETICS|9

  IX

  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.

  POETICS|10

  X

  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.

  POETICS|11

  XI

  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.

  POETICS|12

  XII

  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.

  POETICS|13

  XIII

  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,