7
the character play like the Phthian WomenBy Sophocles. and the PeleusBoth Sophocles and Euripides wrote a Peleus..
8
The fourth element is spectacle, like the PhorcidesThe text is obscure, and our ignorance of the play or rhapsody adds to the darkness, but the reference may be to the ruse, common in detective stories, of misleading the audience by false clues in order to make the final revelation more effective. and Prometheus, and all scenes laid in Hades.
9
One should ideally try to include all these elements or, failing that, the most important and as many as possible, especially since it is the modern fashion to carp at poets, and, because there have been good poets in each style, to demand that a single author should surpass the peculiar merits of each.
12
One must remember, as we have often said, not to make a tragedy an epic structure:
13
by epic I mean made up of many stories—suppose, for instance, one were to dramatize the IIiad as a whole.
14
The length of the IIiad allows to the parts their proper size, but in plays the result is full of disappointment.
15
And the proof is that all who have dramatized the Sack of Troy as a whole, and not, like Euripides, piecemeal, or the Niobe story as a whole and not like Aeschylus, either fail or fare badly in competition. Indeed even Agathon failed in this point alone.
16
In reversals, however, and in simple storiesi.e., those that have no Discovery or Reversal. See chapter 10. too,they admirably achieve their end, which is a tragic effect that also satisfies your feelings.
17
This is achieved when the wise man, who is, however, unscrupulous, is deceived—like Sisyphus—and the man who is brave but wicked is worsted.
18
And this, as Agathon says, is a likely result, since it is likely that many quite unlikely things should happen.
19
The chorus too must be regarded as one of the actors. It must be part of the whole and share in the action, not as in Euripides but as in Sophocles.
