1Introduction

In many ways, Aristotle's Poetics read like a set of lecture notes on the drama of his time. He is careful to define exactly what he means and supports his generalizations by referring to earlier and contemporary authors and artists. His analysis and description of poetry and tragedy in a number of ways are directed against the teachings of Plato, who dismissed poets from his Republic as encouraging faulty emotions in the audience. The discussion of tragedy in Aristotle's Poetics had a profound influence on critical attitudes to drama in the Renaissance. Classically educated writers like Sir Philip Sidney, or Shakespeare's contemporary dramatist, Ben Jonson, took Aristotle's descriptions of the drama of his time as prescriptions for tragedy as a whole. Most notably, they accepted what were thought of as the three "unities": time (the plot should deal with events occurring within a single day), place (the scene should take place in one location) and action (there should only be a single plot, with no unnecessary digressions). Shakespeare was probably aware of the concept of the unities; his early play The Comedy of Errors adheres to them, as does one of his final works, The Tempest; his other plays conform more closely to the conventions evolved on the early English stage, where plots were more flexible.

2The Poetics did introduce a number of valuable critical concepts, of more lasting value than the "unities":

• hamartia, here translated effectively as "error or frailty"; it can also be thought of as a shortcoming, or as an excess of some characteristic. Aristotle sees the tragic protagonist's fall as the result of hamartia. Earlier Victorian translations of the Poetics described hamartia rather moralistically and reductively as a "fatal flaw"—and this definition will still be found widely on the Internet. Seen as an error or excess, hamartia is a powerful way of understanding some Shakespearean tragic figures: Hamlet's desire to think carefully about his actions rather than rashly charging ahead with revenge can be seen as an error, and perhaps as excessively analytical, but it is hard to see it as a flaw. Lear's desire at an advaced age to "shake all cares and business from [his] age" (TLN 44) is a clear indication of frailty, and of a lack of self-awareness, but again the concept of a single or simple flaw is reductive.
• catharsis, here translaged as "purgation," is also sometimes translated as "purification." In response to Plato's atack on poetry, Aristotle is seeking a justification for tragedy; he claims that its emphasis on death, violence, and powerful emotions is a kind of uplifting moral medicine.
• anagnorisis ("recognition") is not limited to tragedy—many concluding scenes in comedy and romance involve the sudden recognition of who characters really are. In Othello, the revelation of Iago's true nature is a textbook example; in King Lear Edgar reveals his multiple disguises in the final scene. Anagnorisis can also be extended to a more metaphorical level as a description of the moment of self-revelation some characters experience: Lear's realization of the routine suffering of his subjects as he is himself subjected to the violence of the storm ("I have ta'en / Too little care of this [TLN 1814]), and Gloucester's moving insight, "I stumbled when I saw" (TLN 2200).
• peripeteia, "reversal of the situation," as Aristotle comments, is often the result of recognition. Some new knowledge or event radically changes the characters' understanding of reality; again, Edgar's revelation of his disguise causes a reversal of Edmund's status. More striking is the reversal of Albany's expectations as King Lear enters with the dead Cordelia in his arms.
• pathos, in Aristotle's use of the word, refers to "suffering." Pity (eleos) is invoked in the audience by watching "the scene of suffering" (see part IX).
• mimesis, translated as "imitation," comes close to what modern audiences would see as realism—the kinds of responses from characters that we would recognise as "actions in real life."

3The Poetics (Selections)

From The Poetics of Aristotle: Translated with a Critical Text by S.H. Butcher. London: Macmillan and Co., 1895. The Poetics were written in about 350 B.C.E. Original from https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/poetics/ , with permission.

4Tragedy defined (from part V)

Epic poetry agrees with tragedy in so far as it is an imitation [mimesis] in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of meter and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for tragedy endeavors, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit, whereas the Epic action has no limits of time. This, then, is a second point of difference; though at first the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry. . . .

5Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation [catharsis] of these emotions. By "language embellished," I mean language into which rhythm, harmony and song enter. By "the several kinds in separate parts," I mean that some parts are rendered through the medium of verse alone, others again with the aid of song.

6Now as tragic imitation implies persons acting, it necessarily follows in the first place that spectacular equipment will be a part of tragedy. Next, song and diction, for these are the media of imitation. By "diction" I mean the mere metrical arrangement of the words; as for "song," it is a term whose sense every one understands.

7Again, tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these—thought and character—are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the plot is the imitation of the action—for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. By character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated. Every tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the objects of imitation. And these complete the first. These elements have been employed, we may say, by the poets to a man; in fact, every play contains spectacular elements as well as character, plot, diction, song, and thought.

8The importance of the plot

But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character; character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character. The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character, and of poets in general this is often true. . . . Again, if you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents. Besides which, the most powerful elements of emotional interest in tragedy—peripeteia or reversal of the situation, and recognition [anagnorisis] scenes—are parts of the plot. A further proof is, that novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot. It is the same with almost all the early poets.

9The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colors, laid on confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to the action. Third in order is thought—that is, the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances. In the case of oratory, this is the function of the political art and of the art of rhetoric, and so indeed the older poets make their characters speak the language of civic life; the poets of our time, the language of the rhetoricians. Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids. Speeches, therefore, which do not make this manifest, or in which the speaker does not choose or avoid anything whatever, are not expressive of character. Thought, on the other hand, is found where something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated. Fourth among the elements enumerated comes diction, by which I mean, as has been already said, the expression of the meaning in words; and its essence is the same both in verse and prose. Of the remaining elements, song holds the chief place among the embellishments. The spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.

10The ideal plot (from parts VII-X)

These principles being established, let us now discuss the proper structure of the plot, since this is the first and most important thing in tragedy. Now, according to our definition, tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude; for there may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end haphazardly, but conform to these principles.

11Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view, so in the plot a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. . . . And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.

12Unity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents in one man's life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence the error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the story of Heracles must also be a unity. But Homer, as in all else he is of surpassing merit, here too—whether from art or natural genius—seems to have happily discerned the truth. In composing the Odyssey he did not include all the adventures of Odysseus . . . but he made the Odyssey, and likewise the Iliad, to center round an action that in our sense of the word is one. As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole.

13It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen—what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history, for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of a certain type will on occasion speak or act according to the law of probability or necessity, and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. . . .

14But again, tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect; the tragic wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident, for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design. . . . Plots, therefore, constructed on these principles are necessarily the best.

15Plots are either simple or complex, for the actions in real life, of which the plots are an imitation, obviously show a similar distinction. An action which is one and continuous in the sense above defined, I call simple, when the change of fortune takes place without reversal of the situation and without recognition A complex action is one in which the change is accompanied by such reversal, or by recognition, or by both. These last should arise from the internal structure of the plot, so that what follows should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It makes all the difference whether any given event is a case of propter hoc or post hoc.

16Reversal and recognition (from part XI)

Reversal of the situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity. Thus in the Oedipus, the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect. . . . Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune. The best form of recognition is coincident with a reversal of the situation, as in the Oedipus. There are indeed other forms. Even inanimate things of the most trivial kind may in a sense be objects of recognition. Again, we may recognize or discover whether a person has done a thing or not. But the recognition which is most intimately connected with the plot and action is, as we have said, the recognition of persons. This recognition, combined with reversal, will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these effects are those which, by our definition, tragedy represents. Moreover, it is upon such situations that the issues of good or bad fortune will depend. Recognition, then, being between persons, it may happen that one person only is recognized by the other—when the latter is already known—or it may be necessary that the recognition should be on both sides. Thus Iphigenia is revealed to Orestes by the sending of the letter; but another act of recognition is required to make Orestes known to Iphigenia.

17Two parts, then, of the plot—reversal of the situation and recognition—turn upon surprises. A third part is the scene of suffering [pathos]. The scene of suffering is a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like.

18The ideal protagonist and hamartia (from part XIII)

A perfect tragedy should, as we have seen, be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. It follows plainly, in the first place, that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity, for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of tragedy—it possesses no single tragic quality; it neither satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should the downfall of an utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind 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. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes—that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty [hamartia]. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families. A well-constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad. It should come about as the result not of vice, but of some great error or frailty, in a character either such as we have described, or better rather than worse. The practice of the stage bears out our view.

19Spectacle and character (from part XIV-XV)

20Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place.

21In respect of character there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good. Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character; the character will be good if the purpose is good. This rule is relative to each 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. The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valor; but valor in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate. Thirdly, character must be true to life, for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety as here described. The fourth point is consistency, for though the subject of the imitation who suggested the type be inconsistent, still he must be consistently inconsistent.