power, with appropriate gestures; for those who feel emotion are
most convincing through natural sympathy with the characters they
represent; and one who is agitated storms, one who is angry rages,
with the most lifelike reality. Hence poetry implies either a happy
gift of nature or a strain of madness. In the one case a man can
take the mould of any character; in the other, he is lifted out of his
proper self.

  As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs
it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then
fill in the episodes and amplify in detail. The general plan may be
illustrated by the Iphigenia. A young girl is sacrificed; she
disappears mysteriously from the eyes of those who sacrificed her; she
is transported to another country, where the custom is to offer up
an strangers to the goddess. To this ministry she is appointed. Some
time later her own brother chances to arrive. The fact that the oracle
for some reason ordered him to go there, is outside the general plan
of the play. The purpose, again, of his coming is outside the action
proper. However, he comes, he is seized, and, when on the point of
being sacrificed, reveals who he is. The mode of recognition may be
either that of Euripides or of Polyidus, in whose play he exclaims
very naturally: 'So it was not my sister only, but I too, who was
doomed to be sacrificed'; and by that remark he is saved.

  After this, the names being once given, it remains to fill in the
episodes. We must see that they are relevant to the action. In the
case of Orestes, for example, there is the madness which led to his
capture, and his deliverance by means of the purificatory rite. In the
drama, the episodes are short, but it is these that give extension
to Epic poetry. Thus the story of the Odyssey can be stated briefly. A
certain man is absent from home for many years; he is jealously
watched by Poseidon, and left desolate. Meanwhile his home is in a
wretched plight- suitors are wasting his substance and plotting
against his son. At length, tempest-tost, he himself arrives; he makes
certain persons acquainted with him; he attacks the suitors with his
own hand, and is himself preserved while he destroys them. This is the
essence of the plot; the rest is episode.
POETICS|18

  XVIII

  Every tragedy falls into two parts- Complication  and Unraveling
or Denouement. Incidents extraneous to the action are frequently
combined with a portion of the action proper, to form the
Complication; the rest is the Unraveling. By the Complication I mean
all that extends from the beginning of the action to the part which
marks the turning-point to good or bad fortune. The Unraveling is that
which extends from the beginning of the change to the end. Thus, in
the Lynceus of Theodectes, the Complication consists of the
incidents presupposed in the drama, the seizure of the child, and then
again ... [the Unraveling] extends from the accusation of murder to
the end.

  There are four kinds of Tragedy: the Complex, depending entirely
on Reversal of the Situation and Recognition; the Pathetic (where
the motive is passion)- such as the tragedies on Ajax and Ixion; the
Ethical (where the motives are ethical)- such as the Phthiotides and
the Peleus. The fourth kind is the Simple. [We here exclude the purely
spectacular element], exemplified by the Phorcides, the Prometheus,
and scenes laid in Hades. The poet should endeavor, if possible, to
combine all poetic elements; or failing that, the greatest number
and those the most important; the more so, in face of the caviling
criticism of the day. For whereas there have hitherto been good poets,
each in his own branch, the critics now expect one man to surpass
all others in their several lines of excellence.

  In speaking of a tragedy as the same or different, the best test
to take is the plot. Identity exists where the Complication and
Unraveling are the same. Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel
it Both arts, however, should always be mastered.

  Again, the poet should remember what has been often said, and not
make an Epic structure into a tragedy- by an Epic structure I mean one
with a multiplicity of plots- as if, for instance, you were to make
a tragedy out of the entire story of the Iliad. In the Epic poem,
owing to its length, each part assumes its proper magnitude. In the
drama the result is far from answering to the poet's expectation.
The proof is that the poets who have dramatized the whole story of the
Fall of Troy, instead of selecting portions, like Euripides; or who
have taken the whole tale of Niobe, and not a part of her story,
like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or meet with poor success on the
stage. Even Agathon has been known to fail from this one defect. In
his Reversals of the Situation, however, he shows a marvelous skill in
the effort to hit the popular taste- to produce a tragic effect that
satisfies the moral sense. This effect is produced when the clever
rogue, like Sisyphus, is outwitted, or the brave villain defeated.
Such an event is probable in Agathon's sense of the word: 'is
probable,' he says, 'that many things should happen contrary to
probability.'

  The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be
an integral part of the whole, and share in the action, in the
manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles. As for the later poets,
their choral songs pertain as little to the subject of the piece as to
that of any other tragedy. They are, therefore, sung as mere
interludes- a practice first begun by Agathon. Yet what difference
is there between introducing such choral interludes, and
transferring a speech, or even a whole act, from one play to another.
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