"in their well-known attitudes":
only, by an odd metempsychosis, the soul of Mr. Shaw has somehow entered
into them.]

_CHAPTER XIV_

THE PERIPETY

In the Greek theatre, as every one knows, the _peripeteia_ or reversal
of fortune--the turning of the tables, as we might say--was a
clearly-defined and recognized portion of the dramatic organism. It was
often associated with the _anagnorisis_ or recognition. Mr. Gilbert
Murray has recently shown cause for believing that both these dramatic
"forms" descended from the ritual in which Greek drama took its
origin--the ritual celebrating the death and resurrection of the season
of "mellow fruitfulness." If this theory be true, the _peripeteia_ was
at first a change from sorrow to joy--joy in the rebirth of the
beneficent powers of nature. And to this day a sudden change from gloom
to exhilaration is a popular and effective incident--as when, at the end
of a melodrama, the handcuffs are transferred from the wrists of the
virtuous naval lieutenant to those of the wicked baronet, and, through
the disclosure of a strawberry-mark on his left arm, the lieutenant is
recognized as the long-lost heir to a dukedom and L50,000 a year.

But when, as soon happened in Greece, the forms appropriate to a
celebration of the death and resurrection of Dionysus came to be blent
with the tomb-ritual of a hero, the term _peripeteia_ acquired a special
association with a sudden decline from prosperity into adversity. In the
Middle Ages, this was thought to be the very essence and meaning of
tragedy, as we may see from Chaucer's lines:

"Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As olde bokes maken us memorie,
Of him that stood in gret prosperitee,
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly."

Aristotle cites a good instance of a peripety--to Anglicize the
word--"where, in the _Lynceus_, the hero is led away to execution,
followed by Danaus as executioner; but, as the effect of the
antecedents, Danaus is executed and Lynceus escapes." But here, as in so
many other contexts, we must turn for the classic example to the
_Oedipus Rex_. Jocasta, hearing from the Corinthian stranger that
Polybus, King of Corinth, the reputed father of Oedipus, is dead, sends
for her husband to tell him that the oracle which doomed him to
parricide is defeated, since Polybus has died a natural death. Oedipus
exults in the news and triumphs over the oracles; but, as the scen