Aristotle’s The Poetics tells of the elements of a Tragedy. The Poetics claims that every play is made up of six specific elements, plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle. The elements can be described throughout the musical Next To Normal. The elements themselves are as followed; The most essential element to playwriting is plot. Aristotle defines plot as the arrangement of incidents that happen throughout the play. He believes that every play requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is also seen through the basic plot structure. With that being said, plot does not need to be an order, or have an order at all. A play could happen middle, beginning, then end, or the other way around. Many times this is called foreshadowing in other forms of literature. The next element is character. The characters create the motivation for the plot. It is often seen for plays to play with character as the most important element. Character are the part of the play to ride out the conflict, or obstacle, of the play. In tragedies, a tragic hero is usually present. This character has a tragic downfall that ultimately lead to his or her death. Without characters a play could not go on, plot and character are the two most essential elements for this reason. The third element is thought. Thought can be defined as the reason the play was written. Thought is also known as a purpose, philosophy, author's purpose, lesson, or moral. Thought is the take away an audience
A short play is usually filled with a theatrical energy of diverse anthologies. The time allotted may be only ten or fifteen minutes, so it must be able to capture and engage the audience with some dramatic tension, exciting action, or witty humor. Just as in a short story, a great deal of the explanation and background is left for the reader or viewer to discover on their own. Because all the details are not explicitly stated, each viewer interprets the action in their own way and each experience is unique from someone else viewing the same play. Conflict is the main aspect that drives any work of literature, and plays usually consist of some form of conflict. In “Playwriting 101:
Most readers are aware of the many famous deaths or acts of death within the Shakespearean plays. And when the main characters die in Shakespeare’s plays, indeed, the readers would categorize the play as a tragedy. The problem with any tragedy definition is that most tragic plays do not define the tragedy conditions explained or outlined by Aristotle. According to Telford (1961), a tragedy is a literary
Plot is very important to a story, novel, or even movies. It helps to make object of the story plain to the reader, and make it as enjoyable to the reader as the author wanted it to be. Plot starts out with an introduction of sorts then runs into the rising action, followed by the main point of the story, then the exposition. When that is over the falling action occurs and finally, the resolution of the story. Willa Cather expresses this very intently in his story “The Sentimentality of William Tavener.” He draws the reader in with a man that is strict with his son and wife who are worthy to participate in the circus in town. Willa tells of the wife trying to convince her husband to allow them to go. Then he surprises the
Throughout the play there are many themes leading up to and causing the chief event.
The exposition of a traditional five structure play is the first is meant to set the scene, mood, main characters and to introduce conflicts that will occur later in the play. The first
Other Significant Structural Elements As expositions are meant to come directly at the beginning, it is a little different in A Raisin in the Sun. In the play, the storyline does not really start until the introduction of multiple characters.
Aristotle wrote the book called Poetics. In this book Aristotle talks about the six elements that make up a play. They are plot, character, idea, language, music, and spectacle. In any response of a play one should keep these six elements in mind. The Wolves was written by Sarah DeLappe and is a dramatic comedy.
The overall dramatic meaning of this play has been successfully shown by the elements of drama. The
Aristotle’s “The Poetics” describes the process of a tragedy. It is not the guide per se of writing a tragedy but is the idea’s Aristotle collected while studying tragedies. A tragedy, according to Aristotle, consists of six major points. The first and most important is the plot, which is what all the other points are based on. Such points are: character, language, thought, melody, and spectacle (Aristotle). A prime example of the usage of these parts in a tragic drama is evident in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”.
The first element, thought/theme/ideas, encompasses what the play means. Although they don’t directly state any themes there are two clear meanings to this play. The first theme or meaning is you have to stand up for what you believe in or what you believe is not right. For example, Juror 8 believes the kid on trial did not murder his father while all other eleven jurors did believe so. As he talked, using hard evidence, he slowly persuaded everyone until they believed the kid was innocent although one of them was racially biased and others strongly believed what they said. Another theme is you can’t make immense decisions based on opinions or prior judgements but rather on what is genuinely true whether it affects your life.
The elements of a play are setting, irony, plot, characters, and theme, which will be discussed in the essay.
Aristotle the famous philosopher outlined several requirements in which a play or piece of drama is to follow.
Throughout time, the tragedy has been seen as the most emotionally pleasing form of drama, because of its ability to bring the viewer into the drama and feel for the characters, especially the tragic hero. This analysis of tragedy was formed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, and also noted in his Poetics (guidelines to drama). As a playwright, Shakespeare used Aristotle’s guidelines to tragedy when writing Othello. The play that was created revolved around the tragic hero, Othello, whose tragic flaw transformed him from a nobleman, into a destructive creature, which would inevitably bring him to his downfall. This transformation follows an organic movement of the complex plot from the beginning, middle, to the end of the drama while
According to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, the plot of a tragedy is above all the most important element, and for one to write a successful tragedy, one must have an excellent plot. In his Poetics, Aristotle lists four
Aristotle defines a tragedy as a ‘representation of an action which is important, complete and limited in length. It is enacted not recited and by arousing pity and fear, it gives an outlet to emotions of this type.’