Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/359

 Aristotle's treatise on poetry. 333 may be recognized in the same manner ; and we may discover whether such a particular thing was, or was not, done by such a person : but the discovery most appropriate to the plot and the action is that above de- fined, because such discoveries and revolutions must excite either pity or terror; and Tragedy we have defined to be an imitation oi pitiable and terrible actions; and because, also, by them the event, happy or un- happy, is produced. Now discoveries being relative tilings, are sometimes of one of the persons only, the other being already known; and sometimes they are reciprocal: thus, Iphigenia is discovered to Orestes by the letter which she charges him to deliver, and Orestes is obliged, by other means, to make himself known to her. [These then are two parts of the plot, revolution and discovery. There is yet a third, which we denominate disasters (ttci^os). The two former have been explained. Disasters com- prehend all painful or destructive actions; the exhibition of death, bodily anguish, wounds, and every thing of that kind.] [The parts of Tragedy which are necessary to constitute its quality Cap. xir. have been already enumerated. Its parts of quantity — the distinct parts Sj^pirts of into which it is divided — are these: prologue, episode, exode, and chorus; pivMonof which last is also divided into the parode and the stasimon. These are songs. °^* common to all Tragedies. The songs from the stage, and the commoi, or dirges, are found in some only (to. d-n-o a-K-qvrj'i koI Kofiixoi). The prologue is all that part of a Tragedy which precedes the parode of the chorus. The episode, all that part which is included between entire choral odes. The exode, that part which has no choral ode after it. Of the choral part, the parojie is the first speech of the whole chorus : the stasimon includes all those clwral odes that are without anapcests and trochees (avev avaTraicrrov koX Tpo)(aiov). The commos is a general lamentation of the chorus and the actors together (Ko/x/tos Se, Oprjvo^ kolvos x^P^^ '^"■^ '^'"'^ cTKrjvrj';). Such are the separate parts into which Tragedy is divided. Its parts of quality were before explained.] The order of the subject leads us to consider, in the next place, what Cap. xm. the poet should aim at, and what avoid, in the construction of his plot; JJct^to^be and by what means the purpose of Tragedy may be best efiected. Svofded'fn Now, since it is requisite to the perfection of Ti-agedy that its plot tiSa^SfaTra' should be of the complicated, not of the simple kind, and that it should ^^ ^' imitate such actions as excite terror and pity, (this being the peculiar property of the tragic imitation,) it follows evidently, in the first place,