20
Stories should not be made up of inexplicable details; so far as possible there should be nothing inexplicable, or, if there is, it should lie outside the story—as, for instance, Oedipus not knowing how Laius died—and not in the play; for example, in the Electra the news of the Pythian games,In Sophocles’Electrathe plot hinges on a false story of Orestes’ death by an accident at the Pythian games. Presumably the anachronism shocked Aristotle. or in the Mysians the man who came from Tegea to Mysia without speaking.Telephus. To say that the plot would otherwise have been ruined is ridiculous.
21
One should not in the first instance construct such a plot, and if a poet does write thus, and there seems to be a more reasonable way of treating the incident, then it is positively absurd.
22
Even in the Odyssey the inexplicable elements in the story of his landingHom. Od. 13.116ff. It seemed to the critics inexplicable that Odysseus should not awake when his ship ran aground at the harbour of Phorcys in Ithaca and the Phaeacian sailors carried him ashore. would obviously have been intolerable, had they been written by an inferior poet. As it is, Homer conceals the absurdity by the charm of all his other merits.
23
The diction should be elaborated only in the idle parts which do not reveal character or thought.The Messengers’ speeches, a regular feature of Greek tragedy, may serve to illustrate what is here called the idle part of a play, i.e., passages which, but for brilliant writing, might be dull, since no character is there elucidated and no important sentiments expressed. Too brilliant diction frustrates its own object by diverting attention from the portrayal of character and thought.
