Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/365

 Aristotle's treatise on poetry. 339 for example, lies in a small compass : " A certain man is supposed to be absent from his own country for many years — he is persecuted by Neptune, deprived of all his companions, and left alone. At home his affairs are in disorder — the suitors of his wife dissipating his wealth, and plotting the destruction of his son. Tossed by many tempests, he at length arrives, and, making himself known to some of his family, attacks his enemies, destroys them, and remains himself in safety." This is the essential; the rest is episode. [Every Tragedy consists of two parts — the complication (Sccrts), and Cap. xvin. the development (Xucrts). The complication is often formed by incidents catfoifand ' supposed prior to the action, and by a part, also, of those that are ment (SeVi? within the action ; the rest form the development. I call complication, ^^'^ * all that is between the beginning of the piece and the last part, where the change of fortune commences : development, all between the begin- ning of that change and the conclusion. Thus, in the Lynceus of Theo- dectes, the events antecedent to the action, and the seizure of the child, constitute the complication: the development is from the accusation of murder to the end.] [There are four kinds of Tragedy, deducible from so many parts, which have been mentioned. One kind is the complicated (TreTrX^y/xei/ry), where all depends on revolution and discovery ; another is the disastrous (TraOrjTLKT]), such as those on the subject of Ajax or Ixion: another, the moral (t^Olki]), as. the Phthiotides and the Peleus: and, fourthly, the simple {airXij), such as the Phorcides, the Prometheus, and all those Tra- gedies, the scene of which is laid in the infernal regions.] [It should be the poet's aim to make himself master of all these manners ; of as many of them, at least, as possible, and those the bestj especially, considering the captious criticism to which, in these days, he is exposed. For the public, having now seen different poets excel in each of these different kinds, expect every single poet to unite in himself, and to surpass, the peculiar excellences of them all.'] [One Tragedy may justly be considered as the same with another or different, not according as the subjects, but rather according as the com- plication and development are the same or different. Many poets, when they have complicated well, develope badly. They should endeavour to deserve equal applause in both.] We must also be attentive to what has been often mentioned, and not construct a Tragedy upon an epic plan. By an epic plan, I mean a story composed of many stories; as if any one, for instance, should take the entire fable of the Iliad for the subject of a Tragedy. In the epic poem the length of the whole admits of a proper magnitude in the 22—2