ARISTOTLE’S POETICS – or How Drama Works
(Don’t be scared)
At the University of Iowa home, (among other things), of the famed Writers Workshop, my playwriting teacher, the mercurial Howard Stein, asked us to read Aristotle’s Poetics, with the introduction by Francis L. Ferguson.
The first thing to understand is that what Aristotle wrote about drama were not rules, but rather his observations. The Poetics were essentially lecture notes. This is a fairly important point because they are frequently misconstrued as ironclad rules to be followed or obeyed (the French went to town on this idea), whereas in show business, there are only two RULES, viz:
Rule 1: if it works, leave it in.
Rule 2: variety is the spice of life.
Neither of which are to be found in Aristotle.
So what did the guy actually have to say?
Simply put, Aristotle observed that drama works when the author asks a question and people stay in their seats to learn the answer to the question: Will Hamlet kill the King? Will Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after? Can Gloucester murder his way to the crown – (and become Richard III)? You can take it from here…
Once the question is answered, the play is over, and the audience can go home.
(We are here eliding questions of emotional response to Aristotle’s notion that the dramatic process purges us (he calls the experience catharsis) through a combination of “pity and terror”. This in turn leads us to Coleridge’s more recent concept of “the willing suspension of disbelief,” that is, the unspoken agreement made by the audience to pretend that the unreality they are seeing on the stage is, for the duration, totally real.)
Back to Aristotle:
The process of posing the dramatic question that nails us to our seats for the length of the play is called EXPOSITION. What do you need to know in order to understand the question that we’ll stay to find answered? (I have discussed Exposition elsewhere in greater detail).
Will Hamlet kill the king? (This isn’t rocket science).
Next: it is the job of the dramatist, having posed the QUESTION (Exposition), to work up as much suspense as to the ANSWER of the question as he – or she – possibly can.
Let’s stick with Hamlet for the moment. Having been instructed by the ghost of his father to avenge his death by killing his father’s murderous usurper brother, will or won’t Hamlet follow through?
Hamlet starts out intent on doing the job - but Claudius is praying… Hamlet worries that killing him during prayer will send Claudius to heaven, so… No.
But then Claudius acts guilty when he watches his crime reenacted when the players come to town – so Yes!
But after the play, Hamlet cross-examines his own impotence to kill and hesitates… so No!
But then, in a moment of high-pitched emotion in his mother’s bedroom, Hamlet hears a noise behind the curtain, whips out his sword and runs his uncle through!! So YES!!! But…
NO! Because it turns out Hamlet hasn’t killed the usurper king; he’s just killed the eavesdropping old busybody Polonius. So, no again.
After which, Claudius banishes Hamlet to England – so NO.
But then Hamlet escapes his killers and returns to Denmark, so MAYBE…!
Ultimately. YES!!!
And the play ends.
You get the idea. Mission Impossible is the template. Watch The Guns of Navarone. M. gives Bond his assignment. We stick around to see him try to carry it out…
Of course there’s elements that ride piggyback aboard and around the central dramatic QUESTION. It’s not only will Hamlet kill the king… there’s the subplot about Ophelia, Hamlet’s girlfriend; and there’s the meddling visit of Hamlet’s college roommates Rosencrantz and What’sHisName – all juggled like so many balls in the air, amid that central question.
The foregoing is essentially what The Poetics is on about. There’s other, still debated, questions such as “the unities”, i.e. how much time is allowed to elapse and how many locations are you allowed?
The French took all these “unity rules” very seriously. The play had to stay in one place and the time limit was one day - or day and night, depending on which French unities were then enforced. (They changed their minds about this stuff. First they said just a day because nothing important ever happens at night. Then they changed that rule to a day and a night, because some important things happen at night)!
The reductio ad absurdum can be found in Corneille’s 17th-century play, Le Cid. Adhering to all those pesky “unities”, El Cid is born, falls in love, fights a battle and dies, more or less in one day. (I’m exaggerating, but not by much).
Speaking of rules, let’s remember what Stravinsky said when he lectured (I think) at the University of Texas:
“First you must learn all the rules. So you can break them.”
In any case, Shakespeare flung down all those “rules” and danced on them. He was essentially writing word movies, hopping over places and times as he pleased.
And what of the end result – the purging through pity and terror? The catharsis.
Henry James said the least demand you can make of a work of art is that it be interesting; the most you can demand is that it be moving. * In a word, does the play make you laugh or cry?
Now you’ve almost as good as read The Poetics.
Maybe…
Comedy, by the way, is its own thing; I don’t believe Aristotle covered that. If I remember rightly, Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose, deals with Aristotle’s missing treatise on Comedy.
Anyone run across that lately?
*ERRATUM: I have been assured recently that James never said the most you can demand of a work of art is that it be moving - but I’m leaving it in.