In respect of Character there are four things to be aimed at. First, and
most important, it must be good. Now any speech or action that manifests
moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character
will be good if the purpose is good. This rule is relative to each
class. Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman
may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The
second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valour;
but valour in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness, is inappropriate.
Thirdly, character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing
from goodness and propriety, as here described. The fourth point is
consistency: for though the subject of the imitation, who suggested the
type, be inconsistent, still he must be consistently inconsistent. As an
example of motiveless degradation of character, we have Menelaus in
the Orestes: of character indecorous and inappropriate, the lament of
Odysseus in the Scylla, and the speech of Melanippe: of inconsistency,
the Iphigenia at Aulis,--for Iphigenia the suppliant in no way resembles
her later self.
As in the structure of the plot, so too in the portraiture of character,
the poet should always aim either at the necessary or the probable. Thus
a person of a given character should speak or act in a given way, by the
rule either of necessity or of probability; just as this event should
follow that by necessary or probable sequence. It is therefore evident
that the unravelling of the plot, no less than the complication, must
arise out of the plot itself, it must not be brought about by the 'Deus
ex Machina'--as in the Medea, or in the Return of the Greeks in the
Iliad. The 'Deus ex Machina' should be employed only for events external
to the drama,--for antecedent or subsequent events, which lie beyond the
range of human knowledge, and which require to be reported or foretold;
for to the gods we ascribe the power of seeing all things. Within the
action there must be nothing irrational. If the irrational cannot be
excluded, it should be outside the scope of the tragedy. Such is the
irrational element in the Oedipus of Sophocles.
Again, since Tragedy is an imitation of persons who are above the common
level, the example of good portrait-painters should be followed. They,
while reproducing the distinctive form of the original, make a likeness
which is true to life and yet more beautiful. So too the poet, in
representing men who are irascible or indolent, or have other defects
of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it. In this way
Achilles is portrayed by Agathon and Homer.
These then are rules the poet should observe. Nor should he neglect
those appeals to the senses, which, though not among the essentials, are
the concomitants of poetry; for here too there is much room for error.
But of this enough has been said in our published treatises.