THE _POETIC_ OF ARISTOTLE[1]
Veneration of Aristotle has been impatiently classed with “other mediæval
superstitions,” both by those who disliked authority and by those who
revolted against the inlaying and overlaying of his text with centuries
of interpretations. Since the Renaissance the _Poetic_ has, indeed,
fared in this regard somewhat as the Bible; and in both cases those
deviations from the original intention are widest, perhaps, which have
arisen from “private interpretation,” from missionary zeal more anxious
to read _into_ the text than to read _in_ it. What may be called on
the other hand communal interpretation, the consentient application of
Aristotle’s ideas to the typical problems of a whole group or period,
constitutes an important guide in the history of criticism. Both kinds
of interpretation imply in the original an extraordinary fertility. This
vitality, it is also clear, is of principles, of ideas set forth not
only as classifying, but as constructive. The principles have been from
time to time crystallized in rules; and some of the rules, having been
found restrictive or even inhibitory, have thereupon been flung aside.
But again and again a return to Aristotle’s _Poetic_ for orientation
of practise and of criticism has vindicated it as constructive. It is
not what Professor Dewey has lately called a “closed system.”[2] It
has exceptionally little of that mathematically abstract method which
Bergson[3] found unsatisfying for survey of human activities in time.
Rather its method is inductive. It examines how imaginative conceptions
have been so composed and so expressed as to kindle, direct, and sustain
the imagination of an audience; and its formulation is typically like
what modern science calls an hypothesis, that is a generalization
interpreting facts so far as they are known, and fruitful in their
further investigation.
To reinterpret the _Poetic_ in 1924, therefore, should be not merely to
reconsider the drama and the epic of Aristotle’s time, valuable as this
is historically, but according to Aristotle’s intention to consider what
makes drama, our own as well as his, and what vitally moves it to possess
an audience. Each interpretation of so fundamental a work must have its
own preoccupations. The French interpretations of the seventeenth century
had an emphasis different from that of the Italian of the sixteenth;
and we in turn must see with our own eyes. But the correction that
therefore becomes necessary, lest we make Aristotle say what we wish,
lies in the text itself. Fortunately the _Poetic_ is short enough to be
read attentively in two hours; and its terms, though translated somewhat
variously, sometimes imperfectly, now and then perversely, really demand
not so much erudition as patience, attention to the context, and some
acquaintance with the processes of art. The _Poetic_ should be read
consecutively as a whole and then scrutinized in its parts. Interrupted
though it is here and there, in some few places even fragmentary,
it nevertheless progresses as a whole.[4] As to its terms, the best
precaution is to remember that they mean to express the processes of
actual composition and the results of the actual representation of drama
or of the actual recitation of epic. In this sense the book is practical.
It is not, as Bywater implies,[5] the less theoretical; but it deals with
the composing as well as with the thing composed.
That Aristotle’s survey of human expression included a _Poetic_ as well
as a _Rhetoric_ is our chief witness to a division[6] oftener implied in
ancient criticism than stated explicitly. Rhetoric meant to the ancient
world the art of instructing and moving men in their affairs; poetic
the art of sharpening and expanding their vision. To borrow a French
phrase,[7] the one is composition of ideas; the other, composition of
images. In the one field life is discussed; in the other it is presented.
The type of the one is a public address, moving us to assent and action;
the type of the other is a play, showing us in action moving to an end of
character. The one argues and urges; the other represents. Though both
appeal to imagination, the method of rhetoric is logical; the method of
poetic, as well as its detail, is imaginative. To put the contrast with
broad simplicity, a speech moves by paragraphs; a play moves by scenes.
A paragraph is a logical stage in a progress of ideas; a scene is an
emotional stage in a progress controlled by imagination. Both rhetoric
and poetic inculcate the art of progress; but the progress of poetic is
distinct in kind. Its larger shaping is not controlled by considerations
of _inventio_ and _dispositio_,[8] nor its detail by the cadences of
the period.[9] In great part, though not altogether, it has its own
technic. The technic of drama in Aristotle’s day was already mature and
was actively developing. The technic of narrative, in epic derived from
the great example of Homer, in “mime” and dialogue still experimental,
was less definite. To set forth the whole technic, the principles of
imaginative composition, in a single survey is the object of Aristotle’s
_Poetic_.
TABULAR VIEW OF THE _POETIC_ OF ARISTOTLE[10]
_The first section moves from definition of poetic in general to the
mode of drama_ (chapters i-v.)
Chapter
I. The art of poetry
A. is one of the arts that imitate men in action
1. belonging with instrumental music and dancing ii
a. as using rhythm and melody besides words
B. has two typical modes iii
1. narrative
2. drama
a. tragedy
b. comedy
C. developed historically iv
1. from the instincts of imitation and rhythm
2. toward
a. idealizing what men may be
(1) as in epic and tragedy
b. satirizing what men are
(1) as in lampoons and comedy
c. differentiation of form
(1) drama tending toward unity of plot v
(a) through the successive improvements of Æschylus and
Sophocles
(2) but keeping variety in verse.
_The second section discusses plot as the mainspring of tragedy_
(chapters vi-xviii)
II. In the mode of drama, tragedy
A. (definition) is an imitation of an action vi
1. serious
2. determinate
3. in language enhanced by rhythm, melody, and song
4. by action, not by narrative
5. issuing in emotional catharsis
B. is primarily plot
1. the subsidiary elements being character, diction, thought,
spectacle (including make-up), and song
2. (definition) Plot is a course of action planned to move
causally from a beginning through a middle to an end vii
3. Plot is thus animated
a. not merely by one main person viii
b. but by such consistency
(1) as arises from truth, as distinct from facts ix
(2) as is opposed to the episodic
(3) as is necessary to the catharsis
4. Plot may be complicated by reversal or recognition x
a. arising causally from the plot itself xi
b. and has as a third element emotion and suffering
5. Plot is the consistent working out, in an illustrious
personage, of some human error to its issue
a. Prologue, episode, etc., are merely formal parts xii
b. Plot is not mere reversal of fortune in a character
altogether good or bad xiii
(1) for consistency, plot should be single, not divided
by reversal to make a “happy ending”
(a) as in inferior tragedies
(b) and in comedy
c. Plot achieves catharsis by its own consistency xiv
(1) not by spectacular means
(2) for the effect of fear and pity arises from the clash
of motive with circumstance
d. Plot imposes consistency also on characterization xv
(1) generally consistency with
(a) goodness
(b) the moral habit of the class
(c) the received idea of the particular person
(d) itself; i.e., actions must be clearly motivated
(2) particularly consistency with the causal weaving of
the plot
(a) excluding the _deus ex machina_
e. Plot is the true measure of the various kinds of
recognition xvi
(1) The least artistic is recognition by bodily marks
(2) No better is mere disclosure
(3) A third, by recollection, arises from some incident
in the plot
(4) A fourth is through the inference of the personæ
(5) But the best of all is that which arises causally
from the course of the action
6. Plot, in the actual process of playwriting
a. demands a habit of visualizing xvii
(1) furthered by the dramatist’s acting out of his own
scenes
b. begins in the dramatist’s mind with a scenario
(1) for the amplifying incidents must be fewer than in
epic
c. is worked out as complication and solution xviii
(1) This is the technical point in which tragedies are
similar or dissimilar
(2) The four typical kinds of tragedy, i.e., (a) those
that depend mainly on reversal and recognition,
(b) on emotion, (c) on character, (d) on spectacle,
show the four elements of interest which the
dramatist should seek to combine
d. precludes the extensiveness of epic
e. involves making the chorus one of the actors
(1) not a mere singer of interludes
C. The subsidiary element of thought, the rhetorical element
in tragedy, includes the effects produced directly by
persuasive speech, as distinct from those produced by
action xix
D. The subsidiary element of diction, to set aside what
belongs under delivery, includes letters, syllables,
connectives, nouns and verbs (with their inflection),
and word-combinations xx
1. Words may be classified as xxi
a. single or double
b. ordinary or extraordinary (figurative, coined, etc.)
c. masculine or feminine
2. Virtue in the choice of words consists in being clear
without being colorless xxii
a. Though extreme or habitual deviation from ordinary use
is a fault, occasional deviation is necessary to
distinction
b. Though it is a great thing to use variations of diction
with propriety, the greatest thing is to be master
of metaphor.
_The third section defines epic and compares it with tragedy_
(chapters xxiii-xxvi).
III. In the mode of narrative, epic
A. has some general likeness to tragedy xxiii
1. in that its [component] stories should be single,
complete, having beginning, middle, and end
a. giving the pleasure of a living whole
b. not following the method of history
(1) as inferior poets do, but not Homer
2. in that it may be simple or complex, emphasize either
character or emotion, and has some of the same
elements as tragedy xxiv
B. differs in length and in meter
1. Its characteristic advantages are scope and variety
2. The respective meters are the result of experience in
appropriateness
C. shows in Homer the superiority of making the characters
reveal themselves without explanation
D. can make freer use of the marvelous
1. by vividness of description
2. from the fact that the causal sense is weaker in reading
or merely listening than in witnessing stage
representation
E. may be defended against the typical charges that it is
impossible, improbable, corrupting, contradictory, or
artistically incorrect xxv
F. is inferior to tragedy xxvi
1. The charge that tragedy is more vulgar and exaggerated
applies not to tragedy, but to acting
2. It has fewer elements of appeal
a. lacking music and spectacle
3. It is less vivid than tragedy read [much less than
tragedy acted]
4. It is less concentrated [and so less intense]
a. lacking dramatic unity.
I
The principle of poetic art is imitation. Its two kinds are drama in
several forms and that other kind which ranges from epic to dialogue and
which has no single generic name. All its forms in both kinds—tragedy,
comedy, dithyramb in the one; epic, mime, dialogue in the other—are
grouped with the arts of the flute, the lyre, and the dance, and apart
from those of painting and singing. Thus begins Aristotle’s _Poetic_
with that chapter of definition which, as in the _Rhetoric_, opens and
illuminates the whole subject.
As to poetic art[11] I propose to discuss what it is in itself
and in the capacity of each of its species, how plots must be
organized if the poem is to succeed, furthermore the number
and nature of the parts, and similarly whatever else falls
within the same inquiry, beginning systematically with first
principles.[12]
Epic and tragedy, comedy also and the [dramatic[13]] art of
the dithyramb, and most of the art of the flute and of the
lyre are all, taken together, imitations. They differ one from
another in three respects: in the means of imitation, in the
object, or in the mode [i.e., all are essentially imitation;
in imitation they are generally alike, and in imitation they
are specifically different].
For as there are those who by colors and outlines imitate
various objects in their portrayals, whether by art or by
practise, and others who imitate through the voice, so also
in the arts mentioned above. All [these] make their imitation
by rhythm, by language, and by music, whether singly or in
combination. Thus only rhythm and music are used in the art
of the flute, of the lyre, and in such other arts, similar in
capacity, as that of the pipes. Rhythm itself, without music,
[suffices for] the art of the dancers; for by ordered rhythms
they imitate both character and emotion and action [i.e.,
dancing compasses the whole scope of representation]. Words
alone, whether prose or verse of whatever kind, are used by an
art which is to this day without a name. We have no common name
for the mime of Sophron or Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogue.
Nor should we have one if the imitation were in trimeters or
elegiacs or some other kind of verse.... [For it is not verse,
Aristotle goes on to say, that makes poetry, but imitation.]
So much for differentiation. There are some arts that use all
the means mentioned above, i.e., rhythm, music, and verse,
e.g., dithyrambic and nomic poetry and also both tragedy and
comedy; but they differ in that the first two use all the means
in combination, whereas the latter use now one, now another.
Therefore I differentiate these arts by their respective means
of imitation.
To proceed surely from this opening chapter, it is evidently necessary to
grasp what Aristotle means first by imitation, secondly by that nameless
art which uses only words, thirdly by classifying the art of poetry with
that of music and that of the dance.
By imitation Aristotle means just what the word means most simply and
usually, but also and more largely the following of the ways of human
nature, the representation or the suggestion of men’s characters,
emotions, and actions.[14] At its lowest, imitation is mimicry; at
its highest, creation. The latter is often implied in the Greek word
_poetic_.[15] Poetic is one of the fine arts. By whatever means, in
whatever forms, it is a direct showing of life, as distinct from any
account of life through experiment or reasoning. The artist enhances
our impressions of life by the suggestions of music or of story, the
representations of dance or of drama. All these ways are called by
Aristotle imitation because they follow the movements of human life. It
is noteworthy that he presents imitation primarily as a constructive or
progressive principle. The more obvious imitation achieved by a single
phrase, a single melody, or a single dance-movement is reserved for later
discussion of detail.[16] The poet is a maker, as indeed he was called
by our Elizabethans as well as by the Greeks, in the sense that he is
creative. Poet, poetry, poetic, all are used by Aristotle with this broad
implication of creative composition,[17] of “imitating men in action.”
Secondly, Aristotle specifies as kinds of the poetic art tragedy and
comedy, which belong together as drama, and on the other hand epic, mime,
dialogue, which also belong together, but have no common name. We lack,
he says, a generic name for those forms of poetic art which, however
various, are alike in having for their sole means of imitation words. The
generic name that Aristotle desired to cover all prose and all metrical
compositions in which the imitation is through words alone is still to
seek. Yet that the genus is distinct through many varieties of form is
even clearer to-day than in his time. The imitation of dancing and of
all forms of drama is through representation; the imitation of music
without words is through suggestion. Now so is the imitation of words
without music. True, the words in the latter case carry something besides
imitation; they convey ideas; but in so far as they achieve imitation,
they do so by suggestion, and it is this suggestive imitation that makes
them poetic. What is needed, then, is a term to cover all composition in
words that proceeds by suggestion. Perhaps the nearest term in modern
English is _narrative_. Using narrative widely enough to include, as in
common modern use it often does include, dialogue and description, we
have the term that Aristotle desired. _Story_ would serve if it were
not often used of the plot of a play or of an account in a newspaper.
_Narrative_ usually connotes a distinct method. A distinguishing generic
term is more important to-day than in the time of Aristotle. Modern
authors have developed narrative in directions little explored by the
ancients. We have thus a variety of narrative forms which was quite
unknown to Aristotle. Still, through all this variety, runs what he
discerned as a common controlling method, the method of suggestion. In
this fundamental _Gulliver’s Travels_ and the _Sentimental Journey_ and
_The Lady of the Lake_, to take examples as different as possible, belong
together; and together they belong apart from _Othello_.
Thirdly, what is the significance of grouping all these forms of poetic
art with music and dancing? Painting, which even in Aristotle’s day was
a fine art, is mentioned only as an analogy from another group. Singing,
or chanting, also is only mentioned for analogy, perhaps because it is
not creative. Architecture may have been omitted as being primarily at
that time a useful art; but sculpture was both a fine art and, perhaps
most obviously of all arts, imitative. Though we need not assume that
Aristotle intended here a comprehensive classification of the arts, it
is clear that he intended to group poetic art with the arts of music and
dancing. Nor is his principle of division far to seek. Clearly he regards
poetic as one of the arts of movement in time, and as distinct from the
static arts of line and color, balance, mass, and pose. True, music and
dance entered largely into early Greek drama and were still present
in the drama of Aristotle’s time; but that fact does not explain the
grouping together of “epic, tragedy, comedy, dithyramb, flute-playing,
and lyre-playing,” with the later inclusion of dancing. Aristotle does
not say that these occur together; and the mention of epic precludes any
such interpretation. He says that they are alike. He saw all poetic art,
especially drama, as primarily an art of movement. What is implied here
in the opening chapter is carried out consistently, in doctrine and in
terms, through the whole book. No one should deny a certain fundamental
likeness among all the arts; but the likeness is not in technic except
among those arts which have like “means” of expression, such as “rhythm,
language, and music.” Modern application of terms from architecture and
painting to drama and story has spread no little confusion. Aristotle
will have us think along right lines; and, as in his _Rhetoric_, the
first chapter is the most important of all. We are to think of poetic
composition not as structure, but as movement.
[Chapter ii differentiates the epic and the tragic art, which
idealize “men in action” by seeking higher types of manhood
and exhibiting men’s aspirations, from the comic art, which
exaggerates human failings. Chapter iii differentiates the
two typical modes of poetic imitation as the narrative and
the dramatic. Chapters iv and v, starting from the common
impulses toward imitation, toward music, and toward rhythm,
summarize the history of tragedy and of comedy. The conclusion
is that tragedy differs from epic not only in proceeding by
representation instead of narrative, but by being focused on a
short period of time, normally twenty-four hours; in a word, by
being intensive. Thus we arrive at the famous analysis of the
essentials and the elements of tragedy.]
A tragedy,[18] then, is an imitation of an action that is (1)
serious and, (2) as to size, complete, (3) in language enhanced
as may be appropriate to each part, (4) in the form of action,
not of narrative, (5) through pity and fear effecting its
catharsis of such emotions.... Every tragedy,[19] therefore,
must have six constituents, according to which we estimate its
quality: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and
music.
The greatest of these is the plan of the actions (the plot);
for tragedy is an imitation not of men, but of action and
life ... and the end [for which we live] is a certain form of
action, not a quality. By their characters men are what they
are; but by their actions they are happy or the reverse. [In a
play] therefore they do not act in order to imitate character;
they include character for the sake of the actions. Hence the
actions and their plot are the end of tragedy; and the end is
greatest of all. Furthermore, without action there may not
be tragedy; without character there may be.... By stringing
together speeches expressive of character and well made as to
diction and thought you will not achieve the tragic function.
Much rather is it achieved by a tragedy which, however
deficient in these, has plot and plan of actions. Besides,
those things by which tragedy moves us most, scenes of reversal
and of discovery, are parts of the plot. A further proof is
that novices in dramaturgy can put a fine point on diction and
characterization before they compose deeds; and it is the same
with nearly all the early dramatists. The principle and, as it
were, the soul of tragedy is plot.
Second is character.... Third[20] is thought, i.e., the
ability to say what is necessary and appropriate, which in
public address is the function of politics and rhetoric....
Characterization is what shows habit of mind.... Thought
appears in formal reasoning.
Fourth is diction, i.e., the expression of meaning in words,
which is essentially the same in verse as in prose.
Of the remaining elements, melody is the greatest of
enhancements; and spectacle, though moving, is [in general] the
least artistic and [in particular] has the least to do with the
art of the drama.
The history of criticism involved in the successive interpretations of
this much discussed section and the following may be postponed. The
immediate concern is the meaning of the definition and the division for
dramaturgy, i.e., for the actual composition of a tragedy and for the
analysis of tragedy in terms of composition. Aristotle begins with the
subject-matter. The theme itself must be tragic, and is so if it is
first serious and secondly complete within its own extent. A playwright
considering the possibilities of such-and-such material is to ask first
whether it is serious. The Greek word[21] means not solemn in the sense
of sad, but such as to interest the composer and the audience by its
importance. It might be rendered _humanly significant_. The question, Is
there drama here? becomes, then, first of all, Is there action here that
will engage emotional participation? That is the first question; for it
is fundamental.
Secondly, is this action dramatically manageable as to extent? Will
it finish within the time of a drama, come to its issue, focus; or is
its interest such as to demand more extensive development in time; in
a word, is it a drama plot or an epic plot? The epic of “much-enduring
Odysseus” demands extent of time; the tragedy of Œdipus, compression of
time. _Complete_[22] here means concluded, i.e., susceptible, within
dramatic limits, of a conclusion emotionally satisfying. To be dramatic,
the action must be self-consistent and self-determining. Tragedy is
characteristically intensive.[23]
So far our tragedy has no words; it may even do without them.
Nevertheless in its higher ranges it expresses itself also through
suggestive language. In the third place, then, tragedy uses the whole
range of “enhanced utterance,” i.e., rhythm, and occasionally music
and song. In conception a tragedy must be significant and complete; in
expression it may be variously suggestive.
The fourth distinction of tragedy is its characteristic movement, which
is acting, not narrative. The process of drama is representation; the
process of story is suggestion. Drama shows men and women doing; story
tells what they did. That is essentially dramatic, then, which is best
brought home by actual representation. In this regard imaginative
conceptions of human life differ essentially. Some are best conveyed by
the indirect but abundant suggestions of narrative; others have their
poignancy only through the few direct strokes of visible action.
Finally, tragedy is defined by its effect, the tragic catharsis. Tragedy
“through pity and fear achieves its purgation of such emotions.”[24] It
is complete, then, not only in action, but in emotion. Emotion is not
merely aroused; it is satisfied; it is carried through to a release.
Tragedy is thus thoroughly emotional, more emotional than any other form
of art. It is emotional not incidentally, but essentially; for it offers
not merely emotional excitement, but emotional satisfaction. As all
art enhances by imitation our impressions of life, so tragedy reveals
our motives and moves us onward through vicarious experience. We yearn
toward our fellows moved as we are, only more deeply; we fear in some
great crisis what obscurely threatens us all day by day; and we know the
inevitable end not with our minds, but with our awakened hearts.
From definition of tragedy by its essential characteristics Aristotle
proceeds to enumeration of its constituents. Of these the _sine qua non_
is plot. The insistence on this is so ample and so convincing as hardly
to need interpretation. Characterization comes second. Third is the
expression of thought, as distinct from the expression of emotion or of
character. The persons of the play not only reveal their individualities;
they have also occasion to expound or persuade, and here poetic leans
on rhetoric. For drama, though its movement is imaginative, though it
primarily expresses emotion and character, cannot dispense with logic.
Fourth is diction. Here again it is noteworthy that Aristotle puts this
fourth, though tyros, he says, can master it before they can manage plot.
Whether the diction be verse or prose he regards as negligible at this
point. With the same brevity he enumerates finally musical and scenic
accompaniments. What he enlarges upon is plot and characterization, and
upon plot as the essential and determining factor.
These distinctions made, let us thereupon discuss of what sort
the plan of the actions (the plot) must be, since this is both
the first and the greatest [constituent] of tragedy. We have
shown tragedy to be imitation of an action complete and whole
which has a certain magnitude. Though there is such a thing as
a whole without any appreciable magnitude, we mean by a whole
that which has beginning, middle, and end. A beginning is that
which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but
after which something else naturally is or comes to be. An
end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows
some other thing, either by causal necessity or as a rule,
but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows
something as some other thing follows it. Plots that are
well planned, therefore, are such as do not begin or end at
haphazard, but conform to the types just described.[25]
Plot, then, is what makes a play “complete and whole”; it is a planned
sequence of actions. Aristotle’s terms connote, not space and structure,
but time and causal movement. The beginning is the point at which the
cause is set in motion; the end is the result; the middle is the course
from the one to the other. Plot is thus a significant course of action
determined by permanent impulses; it imitates, not the mere surface
movements of life, but its undercurrents. It is not a “slice of life,”
such as the experience of this day or that, but a course of life, moving
from a “serious” crisis of determining emotions, through actions that
carry these emotions out, to the final action in which they are seen
to issue. Plot gives us what we often miss in actual experience, and
consequently seek in the vicarious experience of drama, a sense of
progress to completion. Experience is interrupted and complicated; drama
moves steadily on a single course. Plot is the means by which dramatic
art simplifies life, in order from the facts of life to extract the truth.
Furthermore, plot means technically management of a significant course of
action within a practicable time. The tragedy must be long enough to show
the action as progressive, yet short enough to be grasped as a single
whole. “Beginning, end, middle” are thus very practical considerations.
Every playwright considers every plot in this aspect. Where is he to
take hold in order to make the situation clear? What final action is, for
his conception, the inevitable end? What are the stages between, leading
one to another, in which the action will best be seen as a progressive
course? Without limiting his consideration to the time-rules of the
actual dramatic competitions of his day, Aristotle seeks
the limit determined by the very nature of the act; the
greater, within the limits of clearness, the finer by its
scope. To define roughly, that scope is sufficient within which
the sequence of events according to probability or necessity
may change from ill fortune to good, or from good to ill.[26]
What Aristotle finds necessary is time enough to make the action
convincing, to carry out the dramatic consequences to their conclusion.
Compressed within too short a time-lapse, the plot may remain
fragmentary; stretched out too long, it may sag or trail. “Beginning,
end, middle,” then, constitute a formula for plot.
A plot does not gain unity by being, as some think, all
about one person.... For as in the other imitative arts, the
imitation is unified by being of one thing, so also the plot,
since it is an imitation of an action, must be the imitation
of an action which is one and entire and whose parts are so
composed of acts that the transposition or omission of any part
would disjoin and dislocate the whole [That, indeed is what we
mean by a part]; for a thing whose presence or absence makes no
visible difference is no part of the whole.
From what has now been said it is plain that the function of a
poet is this, to tell not the things that have happened, but
such things as may happen, things possible as being probable
or necessary. The historian and the poet differ not by writing
in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into
verse, and none the less it would be history, with verse or
without. No, the difference is in this, that the one tells
the things that have happened; the other, such things as may
happen.[27]
Consistency of plot, consistency of characterization also, as Aristotle
goes on to show, imply that the poet interprets. He is not merely a
recorder. The acts (πράγματα) of his _personæ_ are not statistics;
they are parts of the consistent presentation of a single whole. Every
one of them, quite differently from the acts of real life, is seen to
be significant. In thus including the significant and excluding the
insignificant, the poet interprets according to his conception of the
springs of action. He simplifies life according to his view of causes and
motives, “according to probability or necessity.”
In this the poet differs from the historian more generally. Tragedy is
true to life not by rehearsing what men have done, but by revealing in
significant action what men do, what they must do, being the men that the
dramatist shows them to be. History records a man’s deeds, and reasons
from this evidence; drama directly represents the doer doing what he
should do “according to probability or necessity.” Plot, then, implies
actions shaped to a unifying consistency. It imitates life: but it
imitates by creative interpretation.
Therefore poetry is something more philosophical and more
serious than history; for poetry speaks rather in universals,
history in singulars. By universal I mean what such or such a
man will say or do according to probability or necessity....
It is evident from these considerations that the _poet_ must
be rather a _poet_ of plots than of verses. He is a _poet_ by
virtue of imitation; and what he imitates are actions. Even
if he chance to _make_[28] history, none the less for that is
he a _poet_; for nothing hinders some historical events from
being just what they should be according to probability or
possibility, and it is [only] in that aspect of them that he is
their _poet_.[29]
That dramatic composition is thus primarily the devising of a convincing
sequence is seen conversely when the sequence is defective.
Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. By an
episodic plot I mean one in which the sequence of the episodes
is not determined by probability or necessity. Actions of this
sort are composed by bad poets through their own fault, and
by good ones on account of the players; for as they compose
for competitive presentation, and stretch a plot beyond its
capacity, they are often compelled to twist the sequence.[30]
The essential dramatic force, then, is sequence, steady onward movement
to a convincing issue. Scenes merely episodic, however vivid or clever
each may be in itself, weaken this essential force. The episodic fault,
whether it arise from weakness in the composer or from an actor’s
insistence on having a “part” to suit himself rather than to suit the
play, makes the worst plays because it is a fault at the source.
Finally on cogency of plot depend the tragic pity and fear. The catharsis
depends on our feeling the issue to be inevitable. Unexpected to the
actors it may be, and most strikingly; but it cannot be fortuitous. While
it is surprising to them, it must be satisfying to us as the outcome of
their action.
Considering the imitation as not only of a complete action,
but also of events arousing fear and pity, we find these too
at their height when they are [at once] unexpected [by the
_dramatis personæ_] and consequential. For so we shall be more
struck than by what happens of itself or by chance.[31]
[“Reversal[32]” or “recognition,”[33] Aristotle goes on in
chapters x and xi, if the plot is so far complicated, must
arise from the plot itself, not be merely added.]
Two parts of the plot, then, reversal and discovery, are such
as has been shown; a third is [actual] suffering ... action
destructive or painful, such as deaths on the stage, tortures,
wounds, and the like.[34]
This latter passage is tantalizingly brief. So far as the context shows,
_suffering_ is used here to denote single scenes of unusually violent
action. Why should such a scene be called a “part of the plot”? The
word πάθος is used generally—and in the plural it is used repeatedly
throughout the earlier chapters of this work—to mean emotion. Emotion is
not a part of the plot in the sense that reversal or recognition may be
a part. Rather it is a pervasive principle and an object. _Suffering_,
to translate the singular noun so, may be regarded as a part of the plot
in the sense that it may be an element of tragedy. So taking it, we may
suppose Aristotle to countenance here such scenes of violence as were
more familiar on the Elizabethan stage than on the Greek.[35] At any
rate, Aristotle here inserts a chapter[36] on the formal parts (prologue,
episode, exodus, etc.), before proceeding with the methods by which the
plot may be worked out.
Chapter xiii insists that the vital principle of plot is causal
consistency. This rules out mere reversal. A turning-point (περιπέτεια)
is, indeed, characteristic of drama. There is usually and typically a
crisis, in which the hero’s fortunes turn from good to bad; but this
reversal will not suffice by itself. The mere turn of fortune does not
achieve the catharsis of pity and fear.
There remains, then, the [hero] between [the typically virtuous
man and the typically depraved], a man neither exceptional in
virtue and righteousness nor falling into adversity by vice
and depravity, but by some error, a man among those who live
in renown and prosperity, such as Œdipus or Thyestes or other
illustrious men of such families.
The perfect [tragic] plot, therefore, must be single, not,
as some say, double;[37] the change of fortune not from
adversity to prosperity, but on the contrary from prosperity to
adversity; not through depravity, but through great error on
the part of a man either such as we have described or rather
better than worse.[38]
Why this insistence on character in the midst of the discussion of
plot? Why the iteration of “not through depravity, but through error”?
Because, as Aristotle shows below,[39] plot implies consistency of
characterization, but more fundamentally because consistency of plot has
for its very beginning and mainspring the realization of a central figure
like ourselves progressively winning our sympathy. The essence of plot is
motivation. What moves us is never mere luck, never mere surprise, but
the causation that springs from human will. Consistency of plot means
clear causation; and causation in drama is the working of will. So the
first consideration is the title rôle, the main “part.” He or she should
be illustrious because the action is thereby conspicuous and partly known
in advance; but his course of action must be moved by springs that we
feel in ourselves. Macbeth is a warrior of an elder day and a king; but
we, though neither warriors nor kings, feel the perversion of his manhood
as like enough to our own to purify us through pity and fear.
Fear and pity may, indeed, be aroused by mere spectacle, but
they may also be aroused from the very plan of the actions,[40]
and the latter is superior and shows a better dramatist.
This is the second consideration of consistency. First, the best tragedy
springs from a great personal will gone wrong; secondly, it springs from
a compelling progress of actions, from the plot itself. It depends not on
the shock of this violent deed or that, but on the causal movement of the
whole.
Character is discussed in chapter xv as a distinct topic, but still
with reference to plot. For throughout this section, especially from
chapter xiii on, the topic is consistency.[41] Consistency, though it
refers primarily to plot, must also include characterization. In general,
characterization must be consistent with the morality of the individual
purpose, with the moral habit of the social group, with the received idea
of the person, and finally with itself.[42] In particular,
it is necessary in the characters, as in the plan of the
actions, to seek always the inevitable or the probable, so that
the saying or doing of such-and-such things by such-and-such a
person, just as the happening of this event after that, shall
be inevitable or probable. Evidently, therefore, the solutions
also [as well as the complications] of plots must come about
from the plot itself, and not, as in the Medea ... by the _deus
ex machina_.[43]
In a word, consistency of characterization is part of the causal weaving
of the plot.
Chapter xvi applies the principle of consistency to “recognitions,” or
“discoveries.”[44]
Best discovery of all, however, is that which arises from
the actions themselves, when the surprise comes as a
natural result, as in the _Œdipus_ of Sophocles and in the
_Iphigenia_.[45]
Chapters xvii and xviii turn to the actual processes of dramaturgy, to
the work of the playwright. This is concerned mainly with plot; but first
Aristotle urges the fundamental necessity of visualizing.
One must compose plots and work them out in the “lines” by
putting [the scenes] before his eyes ... and as far as possible
by acting out, even with the gestures.[46]...
His stories, whether already made or of his own making, he must
first set out in general (i.e., make a scenario), then put in
the incidents and carry out.[47]...
Every tragedy has both complication and solution, the events
that precede [the opening scene] and often some of those
within the play constituting the complication, and the rest
the solution. By complication I mean all from the beginning
to that scene which is just before the change in the hero’s
fortunes; by solution, all from the beginning of the change to
the end [of the play].[48]...
It is necessary to remember what I have said often and not make
a tragedy an epic system—by epic I mean aggregative—as if one
should dramatize the whole story of the Iliad.[49]...
The chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors, be
a part of the whole and share in the action, be not as in
Euripides, but as in Sophocles.[50]
Visualizing actively at every stage, the playwright is to compose his
plot before he works out his lines. He is to determine his play by the
method of solution, to avoid the extensiveness of epic, and to make even
the chorus contributory to the plot.
The bearing of the meager observations on the logical element and
on diction (xix-xxii) will be clear from the tabular view.[51] They
are not distinctive except in the saying “the greatest is the being
metaphorical”;[52] and they have surprisingly little on dramatic rhythms.
The third section of the _Poetic_ (xxiii-xxvi) defines epic and compares
it with tragedy.
As to metrical narrative, its plots [severally] should have the
movement of drama in focusing on an action whole and complete
with beginning, middle, and end, that [each] may give its
proper pleasure as an organic unity, and not be composed as
history, which has to exhibit not a single action, but a single
time, whatever chanced to happen in this period to one person
or to more.[53]
The general likeness of epic to drama, then, is in interpretative focus,
as distinct from the chronicle method of history. Story, as well as
drama, selects in order to unify. Moreover (xxiv) story, too, as well
as drama, has its crises, its recognitions, its emotional outbursts. The
epic poet, if he have something of Homer’s skill, can make his characters
express themselves without intruding his explanations. These are general
likenesses throughout the whole poetic field. For characteristic
differences, epic has the advantages of scope and variety. It gains from
the marvelous, which can generally be suggested better than it can be
represented.[54] These points are as significant to-day as in the time
of Aristotle. Not so the defense (xxv) of epic against certain typical
objections which smack more of the schoolmaster than of the critic. To
argue whether a given epic story were possible or probable or promotive
of good morals was in fact one of the regular elementary exercises of the
later schools. The closing exaltation of drama over epic[55] is summary,
indeed; but that is natural, since the points, having been made before,
are here simply reviewed comparatively. The idea of intensity through
unity is a logical conclusion of the _Poetic_ as a whole.
II
From Aristotle’s introductory grouping of drama with music and dance,
throughout his long discussion of plot, runs the idea of movement. The
dramatic mode of imitation is to set human life in motion before us and
to heighten our sense of living by carrying it through to a significant
issue. Has this idea animated other drama than the Greek? Is its vitality
shown by its permanence? Is it essential? As all art heightens our
impressions of life and our sense of living, so the art of the dramatist
in particular heightens and extends our sense of human life by vicarious
experience. Its object is to make us feel human experience more widely
and more intensely. All the technic of the stage, whether ancient or
modern, whether simple or elaborate, has for its main object this sort
of creative imitation. The dramatist tries to induce and to hold the
illusion of actual experience. In so far as he succeeds, we forget that
we are in the theater; we imagine that we are seeing a reality more real
than we can piece out of our fragmentary glimpses at men and women; and
in his greatest successes we almost pass from spectators to actors.
Toward this result how important is Aristotle’s idea of movement, his
doctrine that plot is a progressive synthesis of actions, unified but
never static?
Those who have superficially thought of Greek drama as static, who may
even have pictured it as statuesque, can hardly have studied the great
play of Sophocles that Aristotle offers as an example, _Œdipus the King_.
Laius, King of Thebes, and his wife Jocasta cast out their
infant son Œdipus to die. But the shepherd commissioned to do
away the child gave it instead to a stranger, who carried it
to Corinth. There the little Œdipus, fostered by a Corinthian
couple, was brought up as their son. In the strength of his
manhood setting forth to make his own way, he met in a narrow
pass another traveler who haughtily bade him yield passage.
The dispute warmed to blows. Œdipus killed him. It was his
own father Laius. Proceeding to Thebes, Œdipus found the
throne vacant and the city in terror of the monster Sphinx.
He silenced the Sphinx, and, hailed by the people as their
deliverer, he became their king and married the widowed queen
Jocasta, his own mother. But Apollo having in time sent a
pestilence upon Thebes, Œdipus was besought by the people to
be once more their savior. His emissary to the oracle, Creon
his brother-in-law, brought back word that Thebes must put
away the unclean person who had slain Laius. By searching
investigation Œdipus discovered that he himself was the
pollution, that he had slain his own father and married his own
mother, that not only he but his children were accursed, that
the outlawry which he had invoked upon the guilty fell upon his
own head. Thereupon he put out his eyes in an agony of horror,
after Jocasta had killed herself, and groped his way from
Thebes led by his wretched daughters.
This is the legend. Its events extend over many years. Which of them
shall be chosen for the stage as having most dramatic value? Which to
an audience can be made most significant; and how shall these vital
scenes be arranged in such continuous and progressive movement as will
convey, and at the same time enhance, our sense of the movement of life?
Sophocles with his own dramatic skill, but in the form typical of all
the best Greek tragedy, arranged his whole action within the compass of
its last poignant hours. Omitting nothing that is emotionally essential,
nothing that is essential to clear understanding, he yet relegated some
events to the background in order to represent fully the great crisis. He
gathers together the whole visible action into an hour and a half on the
stage and a half-dozen persons; and in this brief compass he unfolds that
action with increasing intensity by making every scene move from the last
and to the next, on to the awful close.
The Theban people, represented by the chorus supplicating their savior
king, rehearses his great achievements for their deliverance. Œdipus in
the strong confidence of his power and his mission stands before his
palace like a god. At the end of the play he is led slowly from that
palace a broken man. But the composition of the play is not mere reversal
for contrast. Between the first scene and the last, action moves without
haste, but without delay or interruption. The vigorous and self-reliant
king chafes at the cryptic response brought from the oracle by Creon; he
is indignant, then furious, at the tragic silence of the seer Tiresias.
His quick intelligence scents a plot between the two. Breaking through
the interposition of Jocasta, he wins from her false hopes while he gives
her no less unwittingly the premonition of doom. Once suspecting, however
darkly, he must know, he will know, he knows a dreadful part, he knows
more, he knows all. So this great play, though it is focused on a single
day, though it excludes all the past history and the development of
character, is never static. It is never for a moment tableau. Because of
its compression it moves not less, but more.
For that is why Aristotle insists that the dramatic action should be
self-consistent, limited in scope. The object of dramatic unity is not
bareness, but fulness and continuity. It is to give time for full and
intense realization of what actual life merely hints interruptedly.
It is to give us human life undisturbed and uninterrupted, so that we
may see it clearly and whole. We are to have the illusion of actual
experience, yes, but of larger and deeper experience than we can get
from the mere reproduction of facts or from the cross-currents of life
itself. Like every other art, drama is a simplification of life because
it is an interpretation. The dramatic simplification is seen by Aristotle
to consist essentially in moving from revealing crisis to revealing
crisis up to a final revelation. It excludes all the accidental and
the irrelevant that embarrass our actual movements; it tells what has
happened through what is happening; it cuts to the quick. It takes those
moments only in which a man is himself, suppressing those in which he is
indistinguishable from other men. But it does not leap or halt between;
it brings out our real sequences. It reveals life to us by showing the
emotional connection of its great moments.
That such dramatic unity became sometimes a bondage in
seventeenth-century French classical drama was due not to any defect
of the Aristotelian principle, but partly to making the practise too
rigidly a code, and still more to stiffening the movement into tableau.
The classical French application of the principle of dramatic unity
is not, as has often been pointed out, altogether Aristotelian. Least
of all is it Aristotelian when it hinders dramatic movement. French
classical tragedy when it is cold—and to think of it as generally cold
is a prejudice—is static; it is feeble in movement. The free movement,
not to say the loose movement, of Elizabethan plays, which was hailed
by Hugo and other Romanticists as a deliverance from the classical
code, is indeed better than tableau; but it is compatible with bad
playwriting. He would be rash who should assert that Elizabethan plays
are in general more effective dramatically than French classical plays.
Rather, since the two traditions bring out different dramatic values,
each has something to learn from the other. But it is plain that the
progress of the Elizabethans in dramaturgy was in the direction of unity,
of more highly organized movement. To see this we need go no farther than
Shakspere. The difference between his earlier plays and _Othello_ is
largely a difference in unification. _Othello_ by itself is sufficient
proof of the value of dramatic unity for dramatic intensity. And with
or without unity, with the Greek and the French focus of time or the
Elizabethan lapse of years, drama demands movement from scene to scene.
The value of unity is only to heighten this sense of movement.
Drama, of course, has its differences of age and of race. We are not
to think that at its best it must always be Greek. One of the large
differences between ancient drama and modern is, indeed, a difference
of emphasis. Ancient drama relies more on plot, modern drama on
characterization. The ancient playwright had above all, for his theater,
to realize the emotional values of a situation by seeing that his play
was well put together; the modern playwright has sometimes, in a theatre
giving opportunity for facial expression, relied far more on realizing
his persons, on writing what the actor calls a good part. Nevertheless,
though playwriting does not always need the compactness of Greek form,
many modern plays have chosen this compactness, this closely organized
movement, for intensity.[56]
Undoubtedly such dramatic composition demands of the playwright
definiteness of interpretation. His selection, his limiting of time and
place, his leading from scene to scene, are only the technical means
of realizing his emotional intention. He is trying to show us human
life, not in random and interrupted glimpses, not in the jumble and
discord of its surface, not in aimless and frustrated movements, but
in the animating emotions of its crises. In order to represent crises,
he is compelled to show us wherein they are critical; in order to give
to emotion full expression, he must make it significant. Rather it is
this significance which first caught his attention, which gave him the
conception of his play and guided his realization. If his dramatic
movement halts or lapses, the reason may lie deeper than technic in
uncertainty of intention; and if on the other hand he is able to sustain
it and carry it through, the fundamental reason is that his conception of
its issue is strong and clear.[57]
This presumption has more than once been challenged. Why must the
dramatist have an intention, a theme? Why may he not simply represent
life? Represent life he not only may, but must, to the extent that
he must reflect life, not reflect _on_ it; but what is represented?
Life in its multitudinous complexity, its unfulfilled intentions, life
as it whirls past and escapes us? That is a task beyond drama. No
playwright has ever represented life except as he saw it, or made his
representation intelligible without interpretation. And as the dramatist
has to interpret in order to compose, so the audience wishes to be led
up to some issue. We desire not mere emotional excitement, but emotional
release. Else the pity and fear, to use Aristotle’s words, will not bring
us purgation. A play shows us life in critical moments, and these are
moral moments, moments of the clash of wills. Drama assumes free will,
and its movement is by motives. Motivation, on which Aristotle so much
insist, is to make the issue convincing. The dramatic representation of
life is creative imitation largely in proportion as it thus moves to an
end; and the typically dramatic end is not blind fate, but poetic justice.
Poetic justice sums up what Aristotle means by saying that “poetry is
something more philosophical and more serious than history.” It means
the truth revealed beneath facts, the real cause and effect moving
beneath the surface. An audience, desiring deeper emotional experience
than it achieves through daily observation, desires especially to see how
its sharper conflicts issue. It asks of the dramatist not only sight, but
insight. It is not satisfied with “mere reversal.” “The mere spectacle
of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity moves neither
pity nor fear; it merely shocks us.” The same criticism is implied in
Stevenson’s objection to Meredith’s _Richard Feverel_, that it “began to
end well” and then cheated us.
The convincing close, expressing the playwright’s intention and resulting
from the whole course of action, is thus a fair measure of what used to
be called problem plays. It measures how far they are in Aristotle’s
sense serious, how far they are penetrative and significant, in a word
how far they are tragic. Each disclosure, each critical scene of the
dramatic progress, having its full emotional value separately and for
itself, leads on to the next. Such planning for momentum is not only
Aristotelian; it is permanently dramatic.
Creative imitation of human life, thus moving us along that course of
actions which is both the means and the measure of creative power,
makes drama of all the arts most poignant. Whether it is, as it has
always seemed to its devotees, the highest form of poetic, at least its
appeal is at once the largest and the most direct. In the very persons
of men and women it speaks to us by face and gesture, by the message,
the imagery, and the rhythm of words, most of all by the order of its
actions. Plato, indeed, would have us draw from this the moral that our
own lives should be ordered poetically, that is creatively, that we
should control and direct our lives to harmonious movement.
For we are ourselves according to our power poets of a tragedy
at once fairest and best. Every social order[58] becomes for us
an artistic creation[59] of the fairest and best life, which we
say to be essentially the truest tragedy.[60]
FOOT-NOTES:
[1] The best recent editions of the _Poetic_ for English readers are:
(1) S. H. Butcher, _Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, text,
translation, notes, essays, London, 1895, 4th edition, 1911 (text with
translation issued separately); (2) Ingram Bywater, _Aristotle on the
Art of Poetry_, text, translation, introduction, commentary, Oxford,
1909. For other translations and for a select bibliography see Butcher.
Lane Cooper has added to his “amplified version with supplementary
illustrations for students of English,” Boston, 1913, an essay (1923) on
_Meaning and Influence_.
[2] _Reconstruction in Philosophy_, New York, 1920, chapter iii.
[3] _L’évolution créatrice_, chapter i.
[4] I say this without forgetting that the _Poetic_ as we have it is
probably but a part. If a part, it is still self-consistent, as I have
tried to show in the tabular view below.
[5] viii, 206, 232.
[6] See Chapter i.
[7] See page 4.
[8] See page 42.
[9] See page 27.
[10] This analysis is intended to supplement, and in some cases to emend,
the outlines of Butcher and of Bywater by bringing out the significance
of the parts in relation.
[11] ποιητικῆς. The adjective means generally active, productive,
creative, _efficiens_, as commonly in Aristotle’s philosophy, in
Dionysius and Demetrius, and in Plotinus. Specially it means poetic, as
of diction. The noun ἡ ποιητικὴ (with τέχνη understood) includes all
imaginative composition in words.
[12] Bywater (page vii), protesting against too generalizing
interpretations, goes to the other extreme of undue restriction. That
the treatment is philosophical and intends to suggest large inferences
appears from both its plan and its language. Certainly the _Poetic_ is
technical; but no less certainly it is theoretical.
[13] The interpretation of Bywater.
[14] ἤθη καὶ πάθη καὶ πράξεις, 1447 a, where Aristotle is speaking of
dancing.
[15] See foot-note 11 above.
[16] In Chapter ix, 1451 b, Aristotle says: “It is evident from the above
that the poet should be rather the poet of his plots than of his verses,
inasmuch as he is a poet by virtue of his imitation, and it is actions
that he imitates.”
[17] Butcher (pages 110-124) in pointing out that the Greek phrase for
the fine arts is _imitative arts_ (μιμητικαὶ τέχναι or μιμήσεις), says
that Aristotle applies it specifically only to poetry and music. In this
opening chapter of the _Poetic_ he evidently means to include dancing.
That Aristotle had no thought of “bare imitation,” of that reproductive
copying which Ruskin confused with artistic truth, has been remarked
also by other critics. Butcher adds suggestively, though not with strict
reference to the text, that to imitate nature was for Aristotle not to
evoke the mere background which romanticism has taught us to spell with
a capital N, but to work in nature’s ways. Nature (φύσις) in Aristotle
is not the sensible world, but “the creative force, the productive
principle.” So the immediate objects of poetic imitation are human
characters, emotions, and actions, not as objective phenomena, but as
expressions of human will. “The common original,” Butcher concludes, “is
human life ... essential activity of the soul.” Though this is true to
the underlying idea of the _Poetic_, Aristotle does not use any single
phrase corresponding to “imitation of nature.”
[18] 1449 b.
[19] 1450 a.
[20] 1450 b.
[21] Σπουδαῖος, which of persons means _earnest_; of things, what we
mean by _serious_ in such phrases as a _serious proposal_ and _serious
consideration_.
[22] Bywater makes one item, “as having magnitude, complete in itself.”
Butcher makes two items, “complete, _and_ of a certain magnitude.” The
former seems closer to the Greek text and, on the whole, more consistent
with the context; but both renderings give much the same meaning
ultimately.
[23] The distinction has lately been pointed by Mr. Hardy’s _Dynasts_.
This, whatever else may be thought of it, is not “complete as to size,”
but indeterminate. Doubtless that is why it is styled an “epic-drama.”
Certainly, for all its “enhanced utterance” and occasionally striking
dialogue, it is not, by any definition, a drama.
[24] Bywater, pages 152-161, has discussed this phrase amply, and in an
appendix, 361-365, has compiled with their dates the successive critical
translations.
[25] vii. 1450 b.
[26] 1451 a.
[27] viii-ix, 1451 a-1451 b.
[28] The verb here translated _make_ corresponds to the noun _poet_.
The insistence brought about by the repetition will be made clear by
rendering the words italicized _creator_ and _create_, or, to revive an
older use, _maker_ and _make_.
[29] ix. 1451 b.
[30] ix. 1451 b.
[31] ix. 1452 a.
[32] περιπέτεια.
[33] ἀναγνώρισις.
[34] xi. 1452 b.
[35] Both Butcher and Bywater so interpret; but Butcher’s rendering
“tragic incident” seems hardly to meet the context. Bywater’s rendering
“suffering” seems preferable if we may venture to interpret it as
meaning, more generally than Bywater suggests, the working out of the
plot to its full emotional expression. So taken, it corresponds to the
climax of pity and fear, as “reversal” and “recognition” correspond to
the preceding complication.
[36] xii. 1452 b. This has been challenged as an interpolation. It is at
least meager and, as it were, impatient, as is the corresponding section
in the _Rhetoric_ (III. xiii. 1414 b) on the formal parts of an oration.
[37] διπλοῦν. The context seems to show that this means _divided_ in
interest and issue, insufficiently focused. Aristotle does not mean that
the plot should not be complicated; for at the opening of this chapter he
says that the plot of the perfect tragedy is not simple, but complicated
(μὴ ἁπλῆν ἀλλὰ πεπλεγμένην). What he adds here is that the complication
should not be such as to divide our sympathy. The plot should not,
indeed, be simple; but it should be single.
[38] xiii. 1453 a.
[39] xv.
[40] xiv. 1453 b. ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς συστάσεως τῶν πραγμάτων.
[41] See the tabular view, page 136.
[42] I follow Bywater’s note, pages 227-228.
[43] 1454 b.
[44] ἀναγνώρισις. 1454 b. “This and the next two chapters form a sort
of Appendix; they discuss a series of special points and rules of
construction which had been omitted in the sketch of the general theory
of the μῦθος.” Bywater, page 233. I am not convinced of an interruption
here. What seems to me the bearing of this chapter and the following on
the discussion of consistency from Chapter xiii on is indicated in the
tabular view on page 136.
[45] 1455 a.
[46] xvii. 1455 a.
[47] xvii. 1455 b.
[48] xviii. 1455 b.
[49] xviii. 1456 a.
[50] xviii. 1456 a.
[51] Page 138. As to whether xx is an interpolation, see Bywater.
[52] xxii. 1459 a.
[53] xxiii. 1459 a.
[54] A most striking exemplification of this is _Paradise Lost_.
[55] Sainte-Beuve, _Étude sur Virgile_, vii. page 151, disputes the
superiority of drama to epic.
[56] The most familiar instances are certain plays of Ibsen. Of plays
recently on the stage, Bernstein’s _Voleur_, Mirbeau’s _Les affaires
sont les affaires_, Besier’s _Don_, Kenyon’s _Kindling_, show that this
type of dramatic movement is not confined to any particular school.
Of plays that on the contrary dispense with this and rely mainly on
characterization the most familiar to Americans is the dramatization of
_Rip Van Winkle_ used by Joseph Jefferson.
[57] The paragraph is adapted from the author’s _College Composition_,
page 248.
[58] πολιτεία.
[59] μίμησις.
[60] _Laws_ 817 b; quoted by Bywater on Aristotle’s _Poetic_, 1450 a.