most beautiful
colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a
simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. We maintain that Tragedy is
primarily an imitation of action, and that it is mainly for the sake of
the action that it imitates the personal agents. Third comes the element
of Thought, i.e. the power of saying whatever can be said, or what is
appropriate to the occasion. This is what, in the speeches in Tragedy,
falls under the arts of Politics and Rhetoric; for the older poets
make their personages discourse like statesmen, and the moderns like
rhetoricians. One must not confuse it with Character. Character in a
play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the agents, i.e. the
sort of thing they seek or avoid, where that is not obvious--hence there
is no room for Character in a speech on a purely indifferent subject.
Thought, on the other hand, is shown in all they say when proving
or disproving some particular point, or enunciating some universal
proposition. Fourth among the literary elements is the Diction of the
personages, i.e. as before explained, the expression of their thoughts
in words, which is practically the same thing with verse as with prose.
As for the two remaining parts, the Melody is the greatest of the
pleasurable accessories of Tragedy. The Spectacle, though an attraction,
is the least artistic of all the parts, and has least to do with the
art of poetry. The tragic effect is quite possible without a public
performance and actors; and besides, the getting-up of the Spectacle is
more a matter for the costumier than the poet.

7

Having thus distinguished the parts, let us now consider the proper
construction of the Fable or Plot, as that is at once the first and the
most important thing in Tragedy. We have laid it down that a tragedy is
an imitation of an action that is complete in itself, as a whole of some
magnitude; for a whole may be of no magnitude to speak of. Now a whole
is that which has beginning, middle, and end. A beginning is that which
is not itself necessarily after anything else, and which has naturally
something else after it; an end is that which is naturally after
something itself, either as its necessary or usual consequent, and with
nothing else after it; and a middle, that which is by nature after one
thing and has also another after it. A well-constructed Plot, therefore,
cannot either begin or end at any point one likes; beginning and e