The Poetics, Aristotle [ebook reader for surface pro TXT] 📗

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

hero passing by a series of probable or necessary stages from

misfortune to happiness, or from happiness to misfortune’, may suffice

as a limit for the magnitude of the story.

8

The Unity of a Plot does not consist, as some suppose, in its having

one man as its subject. An infinity of things befall that one man,

some of which it is impossible to reduce to unity; and in like manner

there are many actions of one man which cannot be made to form one

action. One sees, therefore, the mistake of all the poets who have

written a Heracleid, a Theseid, or similar poems; they suppose

that, because Heracles was one man, the story also of Heracles must be

one story. Homer, however, evidently understood this point quite well,

whether by art or instinct, just in the same way as he excels the rest

i.e.ery other respect. In writing an Odyssey, he did not make the

poem cover all that ever befell his hero—it befell him, for instance,

to get wounded on Parnassus and also to feign madness at the time of

the call to arms, but the two incidents had no probable or necessary

connexion with one another—instead of doing that, he took an action

with a Unity of the kind we are describing as the subject of