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should first
be sketched in outline and then expanded by putting in episodes. I mean that one might look at the general outline, say
of the Iphigeneia, like this: A certain maiden has been sacrificed,
and has disappeared beyond the ken of those who sacrificed her and has been
established in another country, where it is a custom to sacrifice strangers to the
goddess; and this priesthood she holds. Some time afterwards it happens that the
brother of the priestess arrives there—the fact that the god told him to
go there, and why, and the object of his journey, lie outside the outline-plot. He
arrives, is seized, and is on the point of being sacrificed, when he reveals his
identity either by Euripides' method or according to Polyidos, by making the very
natural remark that after all it is not only his sister who was born to be
sacrificed but himself too; and thus he is saved. Not until this has been done should you put in names and
insert the episodes; and you must mind
that the episodes are appropriate, as, for instance, in the case of Orestes the
madness that led to his capture and his escape by means of the purification.1 Now in drama the episodes are short, but it is by them that
the epic gains its length. The story
of the Odyssey is quite short. A man is for many years away from home and his
footsteps are dogged by Poseidon and he is all alone. Moreover,
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affairs at home are in such a state that his estate is
being wasted by suitors and a plot laid against his son, but after being
storm-tossed he arrives himself, reveals who he is, and attacks them, with the
result that he is saved and destroys his enemies. That is the essence, the rest is episodes. In every tragedy
there is a complication and a denouement.2 The
incidents outside the plot and some of those in it usually form the complication,
the rest is the denouement. I mean
this, that the complication is the part from the beginning up to the point which
immediately precedes the occurrence of a change from bad to good fortune or from
good fortune to bad; the denouement is from the beginning of the change down to the
end. For instance, in the
Lynceus of Theodectes the complication is the preceding events,
and the seizure of the boy, and then their own seizure; and the denouement is from
the capital charge to the end.3 Tragedies should properly be classed as the same or
different mainly in virtue of the plot, that is to say those that have the same
entanglement and denouement. Many who entangle well are bad at the denouement. Both
should always be mastered.There are four varieties of
tragedy—the same as the number given for the "elements"4— first the
complex kind, which all turns on reversal and discovery; the "calamity play" like the stories of Ajax and Ixion;
the "character play" like the
Phthian Women5 and the Peleus6.
1 In the Iphigeneia in Tauris Orestes is captured because he is suffering from a fit of mania; and at the end Iphigeneia pretends that the image of Artemis has been infected by the blood-guiltiness of the Greek strangers, and that, before they can be sacrificed, she must cleanse both image and strangers secretly in the sea. Thus they all escape together by boat.
2 The Greek says simply "tying" and "loosing." Complication and denouement seem clumsy equivalents, yet they are the words we use in dramatic criticism.
3 The boy must be Abas, and "they" are presumably Danaus and perhaps his other daughters. Aristotle seems to regard the arrest of Danaus not as part of the λύσις, but as the end of the δέσις.
4 Apparently the reference here is to the four elements into which in the course of chapters 10-15. Plot has been analysed, "Reversal," "Discovery," "Calamity," and "Character." But the symmetry is spoilt by the fact that his first species, "the complex play," corresponds to the first two of these four elements, viz. to "Reversal" and "Discovery." Thus his fourth species is left in the air and he hurriedly introduces "Spectacle" as the fourth corresponding element. Other explanations seem even sillier than this.
5 By Sophocles.
6 Both Sophocles and Euripides wrote a Peleus.
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23, translated by W.H. Fyfe. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1932.
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