Aristotle’s Elements of Tragedy
Aristotle said that tragedy has six main elements:
1. Plot; 2. Character; 3. Thought;
4. Diction; 5. Melody; 6. Spectacle.
These will be described from least important to most important.
The last four elements (Thought, Diction, Melody, and Spectacle) are the least important, but Aristotle felt they must
be done well for the play to succeed.
Thought is the power of saying whatever can be said and should be said at each moment of the plot. Do the lines
spoken by the actors make sense? Are they saying what should be said at each particular moment in the play?
Diction is the actual composition of the lines that are recited. Thought deals with what is said, and diction deals with how it is said. There are many ways to say something. A good playwright composes lines that say something
extremely well. In a good play, some lines are so well constructed that the audience can leave the play quoting the
lines exactly.
Melody and Spectacle are accessories. The Greeks sometime s used musical accomp animent. Aristotle said the music
(melody) has to blend in with the p lay appropriately. Spectac le refers to the staging of the play . Again, as with melody, the spectacle should be appropriate to the theme of the play.
Character
Character is the second most important element of tragedy. Each character has an essential quality or nature that is
revealed in the plot. The moral purpose o f each character must be clear to the audience. Th e characters should have four main qualities.
A. No matter who they are (hero or slave), the characters must be good in some way.
B. The characters should act appropriately for their gender and station in life.
C. The characters have to have believable personalities.
D. Each character must act consistently throughout the play. In other words, nothing should be done or said
that could be seen as “acting out of character.”
Plot
Aristotle felt that the action of the play (its plot) was the most important of the six elements.
He said, “All human happiness or misery takes the form of action... .Character gives us qualities, but it is in our
actions--what we do--that we are happy or miserable.”
1. There must be Unity of Plot. This has a lready bee n described in the definitio n which talks about “one complete
action.” Any events or episodes must be necessary to the main issue and must also be probable or believable.2. A good plot has Peripety or Discovery--sometimes both.
Peripety is the change from one state of things at the beginning of the play to the exact opposite
state by the end of the play. This could be something like the change from being rich to being poor, or from
being powerful to being powerless, or from being a ruler to being a beggar. The change that takes place in a
tragedy should take the main character (and possibly other characters) from a state of happiness to a state of
misery.
Discovery is a change from ignorance to knowled ge. This often happens to the tragic hero who starts out
“clueless” and slowly learns how he himself created the mess he ends up in at the end of the play.
3. Change by itself is not enough. The character involved in the change must have specific characteristics to arouse
the tragic emotions of pity and fear. Therefore, Aristotle said that there are three forms of plot that should be
avoided.
A. A totally good man must not pa ss from happiness to misery.
This will make the audience angry that bad things happened to him. They won’t pity him so much as be
angry for him.
B. A bad man mu st not pass from misery to hap piness.
This won’t appeal to the audience at all because they won’t want to see evil rewarded.
C. A bad man can not pass from happiness to misery.
The audience won’t feel sorry for him because they will believe he got what he deserved.
The true tragic hero cannot be too good or too bad, but he must end up in misery.
Aristotle concluded that the be st tragedy centers on a basically good man who changes from happiness to misery
because of some great error. For example, he might have a good quality, like pride, that gets out of hand.
4. The plot of a tragedy also involves some horrible or evil deed. Th e tragic hero either does it consciously, does it out
of ignorance, or mediates it (makes it easy for the deed to happen). For the audience to be horrified by the evil deed,
the evil has to be done to someone important to the tragic hero. If the hero kills his enemy, the deed won’t seem so
bad. On the other hand, if the hero kills someone he doesn't care about, the audience won’t care much either.
Aristotle said that tragedy has six main elements:
1. Plot; 2. Character; 3. Thought;
4. Diction; 5. Melody; 6. Spectacle.
These will be described from least important to most important.
The last four elements (Thought, Diction, Melody, and Spectacle) are the least important, but Aristotle felt they must
be done well for the play to succeed.
Thought is the power of saying whatever can be said and should be said at each moment of the plot. Do the lines
spoken by the actors make sense? Are they saying what should be said at each particular moment in the play?
Diction is the actual composition of the lines that are recited. Thought deals with what is said, and diction deals with how it is said. There are many ways to say something. A good playwright composes lines that say something
extremely well. In a good play, some lines are so well constructed that the audience can leave the play quoting the
lines exactly.
Melody and Spectacle are accessories. The Greeks sometime s used musical accomp animent. Aristotle said the music
(melody) has to blend in with the p lay appropriately. Spectac le refers to the staging of the play . Again, as with melody, the spectacle should be appropriate to the theme of the play.
Character
Character is the second most important element of tragedy. Each character has an essential quality or nature that is
revealed in the plot. The moral purpose o f each character must be clear to the audience. Th e characters should have four main qualities.
A. No matter who they are (hero or slave), the characters must be good in some way.
B. The characters should act appropriately for their gender and station in life.
C. The characters have to have believable personalities.
D. Each character must act consistently throughout the play. In other words, nothing should be done or said
that could be seen as “acting out of character.”
Plot
Aristotle felt that the action of the play (its plot) was the most important of the six elements.
He said, “All human happiness or misery takes the form of action... .Character gives us qualities, but it is in our
actions--what we do--that we are happy or miserable.”
1. There must be Unity of Plot. This has a lready bee n described in the definitio n which talks about “one complete
action.” Any events or episodes must be necessary to the main issue and must also be probable or believable.2. A good plot has Peripety or Discovery--sometimes both.
Peripety is the change from one state of things at the beginning of the play to the exact opposite
state by the end of the play. This could be something like the change from being rich to being poor, or from
being powerful to being powerless, or from being a ruler to being a beggar. The change that takes place in a
tragedy should take the main character (and possibly other characters) from a state of happiness to a state of
misery.
Discovery is a change from ignorance to knowled ge. This often happens to the tragic hero who starts out
“clueless” and slowly learns how he himself created the mess he ends up in at the end of the play.
3. Change by itself is not enough. The character involved in the change must have specific characteristics to arouse
the tragic emotions of pity and fear. Therefore, Aristotle said that there are three forms of plot that should be
avoided.
A. A totally good man must not pa ss from happiness to misery.
This will make the audience angry that bad things happened to him. They won’t pity him so much as be
angry for him.
B. A bad man mu st not pass from misery to hap piness.
This won’t appeal to the audience at all because they won’t want to see evil rewarded.
C. A bad man can not pass from happiness to misery.
The audience won’t feel sorry for him because they will believe he got what he deserved.
The true tragic hero cannot be too good or too bad, but he must end up in misery.
Aristotle concluded that the be st tragedy centers on a basically good man who changes from happiness to misery
because of some great error. For example, he might have a good quality, like pride, that gets out of hand.
4. The plot of a tragedy also involves some horrible or evil deed. Th e tragic hero either does it consciously, does it out
of ignorance, or mediates it (makes it easy for the deed to happen). For the audience to be horrified by the evil deed,
the evil has to be done to someone important to the tragic hero. If the hero kills his enemy, the deed won’t seem so
bad. On the other hand, if the hero kills someone he doesn't care about, the audience won’t care much either.
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