Aristotle's Poetics

SUMMARY OF POETICS

1. The plot must be “a whole,” with a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, called by modern critics the incentive moment, must start the cause-and-effect chain but not be dependent on anything outside the compass of the play (i.e., its causes are downplayed but its effects are stressed). The middle, or climax, must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow it (i.e., its causes and effects are stressed). The end, or resolution, must be caused by the preceding events but not lead to other incidents outside the compass of the play (i.e., its causes are stressed but its effects downplayed); the end should therefore solve or resolve the problem created during the incentive moment.  Aristotle calls the cause-and-effect chain leading from the incentive moment to the climax the “tying up” (desis), in modern terminology the complication. He therefore terms the more rapid cause-and-effect chain from the climax to the resolution the “unravelling” (lusis), in modern terminology the dénouement
2. The plot must be “complete,” having “unity of action.” By this Aristotle means that the plot must be structurally self-contained, with the incidents bound together by internal necessity, each action leading inevitably to the next with no outside intervention, no deus ex machina . According to Aristotle, the worst kinds of plots are “‘episodic,’ in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence”; the only thing that ties together the events in such a plot is the fact that they happen to the same person. Playwrights should exclude coincidences from their plots; if some coincidence is required, it should “have an air of design,” i.e., seem to have a fated connection to the events of the play). Similarly, the poet should exclude the irrational or at least keep it “outside the scope of the tragedy,” i.e., reported rather than dramatized .While the poet cannot change the myths that are the basis of his plots, he “ought to show invention of his own and skillfully handle the traditional materials” to create unity of action in his plot. 
3. The plot must be “of a certain magnitude,” both quantitatively (length, complexity) and qualitatively (“seriousness” and universal significance). Aristotle argues that plots should not be too brief; the more incidents and themes that the playwright can bring together in an organic unity, the greater the artistic value and richness of the play. Also, the more universal and significant the meaning of the play, the more the playwright can catch and hold the emotions of the audience, the better the play will be
4. The plot may be either simple or complex, although complex is better. Simple plots have only a “change of fortune” (catastrophe). Complex plots have both “reversal of intention” (peripeteia) and “recognition” (anagnorisis) connected with the catastrophe. Both peripeteia and anagnorisis turn upon surprise. Aristotle explains that a peripeteia occurs when a character produces an effect opposite to that which he intended to produce, while an anagnorisis “is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined for good or bad fortune.” He argues that the best plots combine these two as part of their cause-and-effect chain (i.e., the peripeteia leads directly to the anagnorisis); this in turns creates the catastrophe, leading to the final “scene of suffering”

5.      In a perfect tragedy, character will support plot, i.e., personal motivations will be intricately connected parts of the cause-and-effect chain of actions producing pity and fear in the audience. The protagonist should be renowned and prosperous, so his change of fortune can be from good to bad. This change “should come about as the result, not of vice, but of some great error or frailty in a character.” Such a plot is most likely to generate pity and fear in the audience, for “pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves.” The term Aristotle uses here, hamartia, often translated “tragic flaw,” has been the subject of much debate. The meaning of the Greek word is closer to “mistake” than to “flaw,” and I believe it is best interpreted in the context of what Aristotle has to say about plot and “the law or probability or necessity.” In the ideal tragedy, claims Aristotle, the protagonist will mistakenly bring about his own downfall—not because he is sinful or morally weak, but because he does not know enough. The role of the hamartia in tragedy comes not from its moral status but from the inevitability of its consequences. Hence the peripeteia is really one or more self-destructive actions taken in blindness, leading to results diametrically opposed to those that were intended (often termed tragic irony), and the anagnorisis is the gaining of the essential knowledge that was previously lacking.  Characters in tragedy should have the following qualities:

·        “good or fine.” Aristotle relates this quality to moral purpose and says it is relative to 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.”

·        “fitness of character” (true to type); e.g. valor is appropriate for a warrior but not for a woman.

·        “true to life” (realistic)

·        “consistency” (true to themselves). Once a character's personality and motivations are established, these should continue throughout the play.

·        “necessary or probable.” Characters must be logically constructed according to “the law of probability or necessity” that governs the actions of the play.

·        “true to life and yet more beautiful” (idealized, ennobled).

6. The elements of:
   • Thought is third in importance, and is found “where something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated.” Aristotle says little about thought, and most of what he has to say is associated with how speeches should reveal character.  However, we may assume that this category would also include what we call the themes of a play.
   • Diction is fourth, and is “the expression of the meaning in words” which are proper and appropriate to the plot, characters, and end of the tragedy. In this category, Aristotle discusses the stylistic elements of tragedy; he is particularly interested in metaphors: “But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor; . . . it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances”.
   • Song, or melody, is fifth, and is the musical element of the chorus. Aristotle argues that the Chorus should be fully integrated into the play like an actor; choral odes should not be “mere interludes,” but should contribute to the unity of the plot.
   • Spectacle is last, for it is least connected with literature; “the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.” Although Aristotle recognizes the emotional attraction of spectacle, he argues that superior poets rely on the inner structure of the play rather than spectacle to arouse pity and fear; those who rely heavily on spectacle “create a sense, not of the terrible, but only of the monstrous”
7. The end of the tragedy is a katharsis (purgation, cleansing) of the tragic emotions of pity and fear. Katharsis is another Aristotelian term that has generated considerable debate. The word means “purging,” and Aristotle seems to be employing a medical metaphor—tragedy arouses the emotions of pity and fear in order to purge away their excess, to reduce these passions to a healthy, balanced proportion. Aristotle also talks of the “pleasure” that is proper to tragedy, apparently meaning the aesthetic pleasure one gets from contemplating the pity and fear that are aroused through an intricately constructed work of art.

ARISTOTLE (384 BC- 322 BC)-  An Introduction to Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics is not only the most important critical work of classical antiquity.  It is also perhaps the most influential work in the entire history of criticism.  The unique value of the Poetics may be expressed in at least three ways, not to mention others.  (1) It marks the beginning of  literary criticism.  The beginning of critical analysis and the discovery of principles by which analysis can proceed are obviously larger and more essential steps than any one later elaboration or development of these principles.  (2) Throughout some periods, particularly the Renaissance and the early eighteenth century, the Poetics served as a starting point and sometimes a guide for literary criticism.  Even those critics whose works have appeared since the decline of neoclassicism, have revealed their awareness of it as a document which is very much to be reckoned with.  (3) The Poetics is the best key to the temper and aims of Greek art generally.  Aristotle, as we have said, did not try to deduce a theory of literature from an abstract theory of esthetics.  He looked at literature directly, almost as a naturalist would regard it.  He scrutinized it as a province of knowledge with a concrete body of material of its own; and this body of material was Greek literature itself.  He not only described the technical characteristics of Greek literature, drawing from it general aims and principles.  In answering Plato's suspicions about the moral effect of art, he also stressed, as we have indicated earlier, the healthful and formative effect of art on the mind; and, in doing so, he was quite in accord with the general Greek confidence in the power of art as psychagogia, the leading out of the soul, and as a molder and developer of the human character.  More than any other critical statement of antiquity, the Poetics offers, however briefly and incompletely, the approach to literature of one of the most gifted peoples in history—a people, indeed, which virtually created the premises and values of Western civilization.  It thus has more than the ordinary importance of a critical work that mirrors a particular, local background.  Many of the issues it raises have a perennial importance—and an importance that results from the range and penetration of Aristotle's own mind, and also from the remarkable success and fertile creativity of the Greek approach to art upon which the Poetics rests.

 In so far as it is an answer to Plato, Aristotle's Poetics justifies poetry on two grounds: the truth and validity, first of all, of poetry as an imitation of nature—or as a form of knowledge—and, secondly, the morally desirable effect of his awareness upon the human mind.  Both of these justifications Plato had seriously questioned.  Whereas Plato regarded ultimate reality as consisting of pure "Ideas," divorced from the concrete, material world,  Aristotle conceived of reality or nature as a process of becoming or developing: a process in which form manifests itself through concrete material, and in which the concrete takes on form and meaning, working in accordance with persisting, ordered principles.  Now art, as Aristotle said in the Physics, has this characteristic in common with nature.  For art, too, employs materials—concrete images, human actions, and sounds—and it deals with these materials as form or meaning emerges or dawns through theme.

 Poetry, then, although it imitates concrete nature, as Plato charged, does not imitate just the concrete.  In fact, its focal point of interest—the process of which it is trying to offer a duplicate or counterpart—is form shaping, guiding, and developing the concrete into a unified meaning and completeness.  The word "form" here should be interpreted broadly, and not as a synonym for mere "technique" in art.  It applies to the direction which something would take if it were permitted to carry itself out to its final culmination.  It thus applies to what is distinctive, significant, or true about that person, object, or event, if accidental elements are not allowed to intervene or obstruct its fulfillment.  Thus, classical sculpture concerns itself not with individual features, expressions, or isolated acts, but with the total capacity of the figure carried out to the fulfillment which it would attain if it were permitted to do so.  Or again, in a drama, the plot does not include every incident that might happen to us in ordinary life.  For any number of casual incidents occur that are irrelevant to certain other events that interlock with each other and lead to a conclusion; and it is this chain of events interlocked through cause and effect upon which the dramatist concentrates, the form and meaning of which he is attempting to disclose.  Hence, Aristotle's remark that poetry can be a "more philosophical and higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular."  That is, history concentrates on specific details as they happened, regardless of the ultimate form (the "universal") that things would take if they were allowed to carry themselves out to their logical conclusions.  The dramatist, however, is selective:  he omits the irrelevant, and draws out the potential form or patterns of an event as a complete unit.  The word "form," then, may here be applied to the direction in which something is capable of reaching its complete fulfillment, and in such a way as to reveal its distinctive nature.

The term "form" also applies to the value of that object or event—to its full meaning and character, and hence to its worth and importance.  Accordingly, the object or event must have, said Aristotle, "a certain magnitude," if the development of it is to have a significance worth the disclosing.  This ordered carrying out of an object to an unobstructed and completed fulfillment is also what is meant by the classical conception of the "ideal" or what "ought to be": not something subjectively "idealized," not something as it "ought to be" in the way that one might, for any private feeling, wish it to be, but rather the way things would be, to use Aristotle's own phrase, "according to the law of probability or necessity," if they were to fulfill their total end and complete their potential form.  Aristotle applied this principle not only to what poetry should seek to disclose or "imitate," but also to the way (the harmonia) in which this imitation is made and presented as a unified thing in itself.  For this reason his emphasis was on plot rather than particular characters; indeed, for Aristotle, the plot was the "soul," or proper form of the drama.  The drama imitates actions; otherwise it is not a drama, but something else.  In imitating actions, therefore, the drama should appropriately be an activity itself; and this activity is the plot; hence Aristotle's emphasis on unity of interconnection and on a rounded completeness in this activity that comprises the plot.  The plot must contain within itself the conditions that lead to its culmination rather than rely on mere chance or some external dues ex machine who suddenly resolves all the difficulties artificially.  And if tragedy occupied most of Aristotle's attention, it is because, more than any other genre or type, it can best fulfill the general aim of poetry: to present a heightened and harmonious imitation of nature and, in particular, those aspects of nature that touch most closely upon human life.  Because it is itself an activity, and because of its necessary brevity, tragedy can offer a more packed, vivid, and closely unified imitation of events than narrative verse offers.

There must, in short, be probability.  For probability, as Aristotle used the term, does not mean a narrow, realistic verisimilitude, nor does it mean "ordinary"; great events and remarkable persons, such as tragedy deals with, may both be rare.  "Probability" applies to the inner coherence and structure, the ordered interconnection and working out of a plot.  As opposed to mere chance—however "possible" that chance may be—"probability" implies that the culmination of what happens arises naturally and inevitably, by causal interrelation, out of what precedes it.  The plot, in other words, must possess what Aristotle called a "unity of action."  It must have a "beginning, middle, and end."  Nothing in our experience, of course, is really a beginning or an end: related events or causes always exist before any one point, and further results always follow.  What is meant is simply a beginning that does not need preceding action on the stage in order to explain it; a development (or "middle"); and an end that generally concludes this development so that more action is not needed to complete the total sequence.  Except for a descriptive remark about the amount of time covered in most Greek tragedies, Aristotle did not insist on the other two unities—those of "time" and "place"—which Renaissance critics were to formulate into rules.

 Aristotle's emphasis on probability of dramatic structure, and on the ordered self-sufficiency of the plot, also led him to suggest another desirable principle:  that the main character of tragedy should have a "tragic flaw."  To allow the character to be simply the victim of unpredictable and undeserved calamities would violate complete, self-contained unity of action.  But there are also psychological justifications for selecting, as the central character, a man of some stature "brought from prosperity to adversity" as a result "of some great error or frailty."  For if the character is super-humanly good, it is difficult to identify oneself with him sympathetically; he appears almost an abstraction.  Moreover, if the calamity that befalls a virtuous man is completely undeserved, our sense of shock may be so violent that it prevents or obstructs other emotional reactions: the emotional and imaginative elevation, for example, that comes in witnessing the working out of a pattern of events to their culmination, and seeing the total significance emerge into universal applicability.  On the other hand, the character should have standing and capacity; he must certainly be above average, whether in rank, mind, or capacity to feel.  For, unless the character is too far removed above us, admiration stimulates sympathetic identification; we all like to regard ourselves as at least somewhat better than we are, and are more likely to surrender our identification to someone we consider worthy of it.  Moreover, the tragic fall is much greater to the degree that the character has more "multiplicity of consciousness," in Samuel Johnson's phrase, and to the degree that he himself is aware, therefore, of what is happening.  Again, the tragic character must have a place from which to fall.  And the loftier his position is, the more disastrous the fall.  Needless to say, the "downfall of the utter villain," as Aristotle stated, is not tragic; it "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."  The "tragic flaw," it should be added, is not stated to be necessary for a tragedy.  It is regarded as desirable in an ideal or "perfect tragedy… arranged not on the simple but complex plan": a tragedy in which the calamity does not simply descend from above, but emerges as closely interconnected series of incidents, which arise from various sources including qualities in the character himself.

  Aristotle's belief in the formative and morally desirable effect of art is implicit in many of his writings.  This attitude is quite in accord with Greek thought generally; and it was Plato who took a novel and atypical position by voicing the misgivings he did.  One must not, therefore, expect to find a real defense of art in Aristotle.  He would doubtless have regarded a detailed defense as unnecessary.  He did state, however, more or less in answer to Plato, that tragedy produces a healthful effect on the human character through what he called a katharsis, "through pity and fear effecting a proper purgation of these emotions."  A successful tragedy, then, exploits and appeals at the start to two basic emotions.  One is "fear"—the painful sense, as Aristotle elsewhere describes it, of "impending evil which is destructive…."  Tragedy, in other words, deals with the elements of evil, with what we least want and most fear to face, with what is destructive to human life and values; it is this concern that makes the theme of the play tragic.  In addition, tragedy exploits our sense of "pity": it draws out our ability to sympathize with others, so that, in our identification with the tragic character, we ourselves feel something of the impact and extent of the evil befalling him.  But tragedy does more than simply arouse sympathetic identification and a vivid sense of tragic evil or destructiveness.  It offers a katharsis, a "proper purgation" of "pity and terror."

It is plain that the subject of katharsis has an important place in Aristotle's conception of poetry.  For he used the term in discussing music in the Politics, and mentioned that a fuller account was to be found in the Poetics.  The reference may well have been to an entire chapter now missing.  The term has consequently caused as much discussion as any in the history of criticism.  However one may interpret it, at least a few general implications may be borne in mind.  To begin with, the katharsis that tragedy offers is not merely an outlet or escape for emotion.  It is not simply that men go about full of pent-up emotions, and that the sight of a dramatic tragedy every once in a while serves as a safety valve, so to speak, by which they let off steam.  More than this, tragedy first of all deliberately excites in the spectator the emotions of pity and fear which are then to undergo the "proper purgation."  The tragic katharsis operates by a process which first excites and then tranquilizes emotion; and it does the first in order to accomplish the second.  It is, in short, a controlling and directing of emotion.  Whereas Plato, in the Republic, had adversely criticized poetry because it "feeds and waters the passions instead of starving them," Aristotle—both psychologically more sophisticated and also more typically Greek—took for granted that it is undesirable to "starve" the emotions; and assumed feeling—though he believed it should be directed and controlled by intelligence—to be a necessary aspect of human life.

 Katharsis, as Aristotle employed the term, may be described as the use, control, and purification of emotion.  In the medical language of the school of Hippocrates, as S.H. Butcher points out, the Greek word "strictly denotes the removal of a painful or disturbing element… and hence the purifying of what remains."  Something desirable, in other words, happens to emotion when it is aroused and managed by poetic tragedy:  the personally disturbing and morbid is purged or shed off, and the emotion, after undergoing this "purgation," has been purified and lifted, as it were, to a harmonious serenity.

 Now from what we know of the direction of Aristotle's thought as a whole, and from what we know of his conception of the mind in particular, we can generalize even further.  The morbid element purged from the emotion is the subjective, the purely personal and egoistic element.  The emotion is caught up, as it were, by sympathetic identification with the tragic character and the tragic situation.  It is extended outward, that is, away from self-centered absorption.  This enlarging of the soul through sympathy, this lifting of one above the egocentric, is itself desirable and operates to the advantage of one's psychological and moral health: it joins emotion to awareness, directing it outward to what is being conceived.  But in addition to this, there is further effect on the emotion of the observer.  Tragic drama not only arouses our sympathetic identification through presenting an "imitation" of human actions; but, by appealing to our instinct for harmonia as well as for mimesis (imitation), it also presents an ordered and proportioned regularity of structure, interrelated through "the law of probability and necessity."  And to the degree that the tragedy has been successful in offering, in its own completed and harmonious form, a truthful duplication of the forms of events significant in human life, it rises into universality.  The meaning of what has occurred—its inevitability, the various respects in which it is applicable to human life and destiny—is caught with a full and vivid awareness.  Moreover, it is reduced to a clarity of outline, and transmitted—purified and heightened—into a harmonious form created through the medium of poetic language.  Accordingly, the emotion of the spectator, after being drawn out and identified with the "imitation" before him, is then carried along and made a part of the harmonious development and working out of the particular drama.  And the intellectual realization of what has happened, emerging through the ordered structure and body of the drama.  And the intellectual realization of what has happened, emerging through the ordered structure and body of the drama, is therefore also emerging through the spectator's own feelings; in so emerging, the intellectual realization lifts our feelings to a state of harmonized serenity and tranquility.  It has "purged" them of the subjective and self-centered.  It has enlarged and extended them through sympathy.  Above all, it has joined feeling to insight, conditioning our habitual emotion to that awareness of the essential import of human actions which poetry, through "imitation," is capable of offering.  For beneath the theory of katharsis lies the general Greek premise that art, in presenting a heightened and harmonious "imitation" of reality, is formative; that, in enlarging, exercising, and refining one's feelings, and in leading them outward, art possesses a unique power to form the "total man," in whom emotion has been reconciled to intelligence and harmoniously integrated with it.

POETICS

By Aristotle

ARISTOTLE ON THE ART OF POETRY

1

Our subject being Poetry, I propose to speak not only of the art in

general but also of its species and their respective capacities; of

the structure of plot required for a good poem; of the number and

nature of the constituent parts of a poem; and likewise of any other

matters in the same line of inquiry. Let us follow the natural order

and begin with the primary facts.

Epic poetry and Tragedy, as also Comedy, Dithyrambic poetry, and most

flute-playing and lyre-playing, are all, viewed as a whole, modes of

imitation. But at the same time they differ from one another in three

ways, either by a difference of kind in their means, or by differences

in the objects, or in the manner of their imitations.

I. Just as form and colour are used as means by some, who (whether by

art or constant practice) imitate and portray many things by their

aid, and the voice is used by others; so also in the above-mentioned

group of arts, the means with them as a whole are rhythm, language,

and harmony--used, however, either singly or in certain combinations.

A combination of rhythm and harmony alone is the means in

flute-playing and lyre-playing, and any other arts there may be of the

same description, e.g. imitative piping. Rhythm alone, without

harmony, is the means in the dancer's imitations; for even he, by the

rhythms of his attitudes, may represent men's characters, as well as

what they do and suffer. There is further an art which imitates by

language alone, without harmony, in prose or in verse, and if in

verse, either in some one or in a plurality of metres. This form of

imitation is to this day without a name. We have no common name for a

mime of Sophron or Xenarchus and a Socratic Conversation; and we

should still be without one even if the imitation in the two instances

were in trimeters or elegiacs or some other kind of verse--though it

is the way with people to tack on 'poet' to the name of a metre, and

talk of elegiac-poets and epic-poets, thinking that they call them

poets not by reason of the imitative nature of their work, but

indiscriminately by reason of the metre they write in. Even if a

theory of medicine or physical philosophy be put forth in a metrical

form, it is usual to describe the writer in this way; Homer and

Empedocles, however, have really nothing in common apart from their

metre; so that, if the one is to be called a poet, the other should be

termed a physicist rather than a poet. We should be in the same

position also, if the imitation in these instances were in all the

metres, like the _Centaur_ (a rhapsody in a medley of all metres) of

Chaeremon; and Chaeremon one has to recognize as a poet. So much,

then, as to these arts. There are, lastly, certain other arts, which

combine all the means enumerated, rhythm, melody, and verse, e.g.

Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry, Tragedy and Comedy; with this

difference, however, that the three kinds of means are in some of them

all employed together, and in others brought in separately, one after

the other. These elements of difference in the above arts I term the

means of their imitation.

2

II. The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who

are necessarily either good men or bad--the diversities of human

character being nearly always derivative from this primary

distinction, since the line between virtue and vice is one dividing

the whole of mankind. It follows, therefore, that the agents

represented must be either above our own level of goodness, or beneath

it, or just such as we are in the same way as, with the painters, the

personages of Polygnotus are better than we are, those of Pauson

worse, and those of Dionysius just like ourselves. It is clear that

each of the above-mentioned arts will admit of these differences, and

that it will become a separate art by representing objects with this

point of difference. Even in dancing, flute-playing, and lyre-playing

such diversities are possible; and they are also possible in the

nameless art that uses language, prose or verse without harmony, as

its means; Homer's personages, for instance, are better than we are;

Cleophon's are on our own level; and those of Hegemon of Thasos, the

first writer of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the _Diliad_,

are beneath it. The same is true of the Dithyramb and the Nome: the

personages may be presented in them with the difference exemplified in

the ... of ... and Argas, and in the Cyclopses of Timotheus and

Philoxenus. This difference it is that distinguishes Tragedy and

Comedy also; the one would make its personages worse, and the other

better, than the men of the present day.

3

III. A third difference in these arts is in the manner in which each

kind of object is represented. Given both the same means and the same

kind of object for imitation, one may either (1) speak at one moment

in narrative and at another in an assumed character, as Homer does; or

(2) one may remain the same throughout, without any such change; or

(3) the imitators may represent the whole story dramatically, as

though they were actually doing the things described.

As we said at the beginning, therefore, the differences in the

imitation of these arts come under three heads, their means, their

objects, and their manner.

So that as an imitator Sophocles will be on one side akin to Homer,

both portraying good men; and on another to Aristophanes, since both

present their personages as acting and doing. This in fact, according

to some, is the reason for plays being termed dramas, because in a

play the personages act the story. Hence too both Tragedy and Comedy

are claimed by the Dorians as their discoveries; Comedy by the

Megarians--by those in Greece as having arisen when Megara became a

democracy, and by the Sicilian Megarians on the ground that the poet

Epicharmus was of their country, and a good deal earlier than

Chionides and Magnes; even Tragedy also is claimed by certain of the

Peloponnesian Dorians. In support of this claim they point to the

words 'comedy' and 'drama'. Their word for the outlying hamlets, they

say, is comae, whereas Athenians call them demes--thus assuming that

comedians got the name not from their _comoe_ or revels, but from

their strolling from hamlet to hamlet, lack of appreciation keeping

them out of the city. Their word also for 'to act', they say, is

_dran_, whereas Athenians use _prattein_.

So much, then, as to the number and nature of the points of difference

in the imitation of these arts.

4

It is clear that the general origin of poetry was due to two causes,

each of them part of human nature. Imitation is natural to man from

childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this,

that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at

first by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works

of imitation. The truth of this second point is shown by experience:

though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to

view the most realistic representations of them in art, the forms for

example of the lowest animals and of dead bodies. The explanation is

to be found in a further fact: to be learning something is the

greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the

rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it; the reason of

the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time

learning--gathering the meaning of things, e.g. that the man there is

so-and-so; for if one has not seen the thing before, one's pleasure

will not be in the picture as an imitation of it, but will be due to

the execution or colouring or some similar cause. Imitation, then,

being natural to us--as also the sense of harmony and rhythm, the

metres being obviously species of rhythms--it was through their

original aptitude, and by a series of improvements for the most part

gradual on their first efforts, that they created poetry out of their

improvisations.

Poetry, however, soon broke up into two kinds according to the

differences of character in the individual poets; for the graver among

them would represent noble actions, and those of noble personages; and

the meaner sort the actions of the ignoble. The latter class produced

invectives at first, just as others did hymns and panegyrics. We know

of no such poem by any of the pre-Homeric poets, though there were

probably many such writers among them; instances, however, may be

found from Homer downwards, e.g. his _Margites_, and the similar

poems of others. In this poetry of invective its natural fitness

brought an iambic metre into use; hence our present term 'iambic',

because it was the metre of their 'iambs' or invectives against one

another. The result was that the old poets became some of them writers

of heroic and others of iambic verse. Homer's position, however, is

peculiar: just as he was in the serious style the poet of poets,

standing alone not only through the literary excellence, but also

through the dramatic character of his imitations, so too he was the

first to outline for us the general forms of Comedy by producing not a

dramatic invective, but a dramatic picture of the Ridiculous; his

_Margites_ in fact stands in the same relation to our comedies as the

_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ to our tragedies. As soon, however, as Tragedy

and Comedy appeared in the field, those naturally drawn to the one

line of poetry became writers of comedies instead of iambs, and those

naturally drawn to the other, writers of tragedies instead of epics,

because these new modes of art were grander and of more esteem than

the old.

If it be asked whether Tragedy is now all that it need be in its

formative elements, to consider that, and decide it theoretically and

in relation to the theatres, is a matter for another inquiry.

It certainly began in improvisations--as did also Comedy; the one

originating with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of

the phallic songs, which still survive as institutions in many of our

cities. And its advance after that was little by little, through their

improving on whatever they had before them at each stage. It was in

fact only after a long series of changes that the movement of Tragedy

stopped on its attaining to its natural form. (1) The number of actors

was first increased to two by Aeschylus, who curtailed the business of

the Chorus, and made the dialogue, or spoken portion, take the leading

part in the play. (2) A third actor and scenery were due to Sophocles.

(3) Tragedy acquired also its magnitude. Discarding short stories and

a ludicrous diction, through its passing out of its satyric stage, it

assumed, though only at a late point in its progress, a tone of

dignity; and its metre changed then from trochaic to iambic. The

reason for their original use of the trochaic tetrameter was that

their poetry was satyric and more connected with dancing than it now

is. As soon, however, as a spoken part came in, nature herself found

the appropriate metre. The iambic, we know, is the most speakable of

metres, as is shown by the fact that we very often fall into it in

conversation, whereas we rarely talk hexameters, and only when we

depart from the speaking tone of voice. (4) Another change was a

plurality of episodes or acts. As for the remaining matters, the

superadded embellishments and the account of their introduction, these

must be taken as said, as it would probably be a long piece of work to

go through the details.

5

As for Comedy, it is (as has been observed) an imitation of men worse

than the average; worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of

fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which

is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake

or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others; the mask, for

instance, that excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted

without causing pain.

Though the successive changes in Tragedy and their authors are not

unknown, we cannot say the same of Comedy; its early stages passed

unnoticed, because it was not as yet taken up in a serious way. It was

only at a late point in its progress that a chorus of comedians was

officially granted by the archon; they used to be mere volunteers. It

had also already certain definite forms at the time when the record of

those termed comic poets begins. Who it was who supplied it with

masks, or prologues, or a plurality of actors and the like, has

remained unknown. The invented Fable, or Plot, however, originated in

Sicily, with Epicharmus and Phormis; of Athenian poets Crates was the

first to drop the Comedy of invective and frame stories of a general

and non-personal nature, in other words, Fables or Plots.

Epic poetry, then, has been seen to agree with Tragedy to thi.e.tent,

that of being an imitation of serious subjects in a grand kind of

verse. It differs from it, however, (1) in that it is in one kind of

verse and in narrative form; and (2) in its length--which is due to

its action having no fixed limit of time, whereas Tragedy endeavours

to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun, or

something near that. This, I say, is another point of difference

between them, though at first the practice in this respect was just

the same in tragedies as i.e.ic poems. They differ also (3) in their

constituents, some being common to both and others peculiar to

Tragedy--hence a judge of good and bad in Tragedy is a judge of that

i.e.ic poetry also. All the parts of an epic are included in Tragedy;

but those of Tragedy are not all of them to be found in the Epic.

6

Reserving hexameter poetry and Comedy for consideration hereafter, let

us proceed now to the discussion of Tragedy; before doing so, however,

we must gather up the definition resulting from what has been said. A

tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also,

as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable

accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work;

in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity

and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. Here

by 'language with pleasurable accessories' I mean that with rhythm and

harmony or song superadded; and by 'the kinds separately' I mean that

some portions are worked out with verse only, and others in turn with

song.

I. As they act the stories, it follows that in the first place the

Spectacle (or stage-appearance of the actors) must be some part of the

whole; and in the second Melody and Diction, these two being the means

of their imitation. Here by 'Diction' I mean merely this, the

composition of the verses; and by 'Melody', what is too completely

understood to require explanation. But further: the subject

represented also is an action; and the action involves agents, who

must necessarily have their distinctive qualities both of character

and thought, since it is from these that we ascribe certain qualities

to their actions. There are in the natural order of things, therefore,

two causes, Character and Thought, of their actions, and consequently

of their success or failure in their lives. Now the action (that which

was done) is represented in the play by the Fable or Plot. The Fable,

in our present sense of the term, is simply this, the combination of

the incidents, or things done in the story; whereas Character is what

makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the agents; and Thought is

shown in all they say when proving a particular point or, it may be,

enunciating a general truth. There are six parts consequently of every

tragedy, as a whole, that is, of such or such quality, viz. a Fable or

Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought, Spectacle and Melody; two of them

arising from the means, one from the manner, and three from the

objects of the dramatic imitation; and there is nothing else besides

these six. Of these, its formative elements, then, not a few of the

dramatists have made due use, as every play, one may say, admits of

Spectacle, Character, Fable, Diction, Melody, and Thought.

II. The most important of the six is the combination of the incidents

of the story.

Tragedy i.e.sentially an imitation not of persons but of action and

life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the

form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of

activity, not a quality. Characte.g.ves us qualities, but it is in

our actions--what we do--that we are happy or the reverse. In a play

accordingly they do not act in order to portray the Characters; they

include the Characters for the sake of the action. So that it is the

action in it, i.e. its Fable or Plot, that is the end and purpose of

the tragedy; and the end i.e.erywhere the chief thing. Besides this,

a tragedy is impossible without action, but there may be one without

Character. The tragedies of most of the moderns are characterless--a

defect common among poets of all kinds, and with its counterpart in

painting in Zeuxis as compared with Polygnotus; for whereas the latter

is strong in character, the work of Zeuxis is devoid of it. And again:

one may string together a series of characteristic speeches of the

utmost finish as regards Diction and Thought, and yet fail to produce

the true tragi.e.fect; but one will have much better success with a

tragedy which, however inferior in these respects, has a Plot, a

combination of incidents, in it. And again: the most powerful elements

of attraction in Tragedy, the Peripeties and Discoveries, are parts of

the Plot. A further proof is in the fact that beginners succeed

earlier with the Diction and Characters than with the construction of

a story; and the same may be said of nearly all the early dramatists.

We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul,

so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come

second--compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful

colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a

simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. We maintain that Tragedy

is primarily an imitation of action, and that it is mainly for the

sake of the action that it imitates the personal agents. Third comes

the element of Thought, i.e. the power of saying whatever can be said,

or what is appropriate to the occasion. This is what, in the speeches

in Tragedy, falls under the arts of Politics and Rhetoric; for the

older poets make their personages discourse like statesmen, and the

moderns like rhetoricians. One must not confuse it with Character.

Character in a play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the

agents, i.e. the sort of thing they seek or avoid, where that is not

obvious--hence there is no room for Character in a speech on a purely

indifferent subject. Thought, on the other hand, is shown in all they

say when proving or disproving some particular point, or enunciating

some universal proposition. Fourth among the literary elements is the

Diction of the personages, i.e. as before explained, the expression of

their thoughts in words, which is practically the same thing with

verse as with prose. As for the two remaining parts, the Melody is the

greatest of the pleasurable accessories of Tragedy. The Spectacle,

though an attraction, is the least artistic of all the parts, and has

least to do with the art of poetry. The tragi.e.fect is quite

possible without a public performance and actors; and besides, the

getting-up of the Spectacle is more a matter for the costumier than

the poet.

7

Having thus distinguished the parts, let us now consider the proper

construction of the Fable or Plot, as that is at once the first and

the most important thing in Tragedy. We have laid it down that a

tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete in itself, as a

whole of some magnitude; for a whole may be of no magnitude to speak

of. Now a whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end. A

beginning is that which is not itself necessarily after anything else,

and which has naturally something else after it; an end is that which

is naturally after something itself, either as its necessary or usual

consequent, and with nothing else after it; and a middle, that which

is by nature after one thing and has also another after it. A

well-constructed Plot, therefore, cannot either begin or end at any

point one likes; beginning and end in it must be of the forms just

described. Again: to be beautiful, a living creature, and every whole

made up of parts, must not only present a certain order in its

arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain definite magnitude.

Beauty is a matter of size and order, and therefore impossible either

(1) in a very minute creature, since our perception becomes indistinct

as it approaches instantaneity; or (2) in a creature of vast

size--one, say, 1,000 miles long--as in that case, instead of the

object being seen all at once, the unity and wholeness of it is lost

to the beholder.

Just in the same way, then, as a beautiful whole made up of parts, or

a beautiful living creature, must be of some size, a size to be taken

in by the eye, so a story or Plot must be of some length, but of a

length to be taken in by the memory. As for the limit of its length,

so far as that is relative to public performances and spectators, it

does not fall within the theory of poetry. If they had to perform a

hundred tragedies, they would be timed by water-clocks, as they are

said to have been at one period. The limit, however, set by the actual

nature of the thing is this: the longer the story, consistently with

its being comprehensible as a whole, the finer it is by reason of its

magnitude. As a rough general formula, 'a length which allows of the