Chapter xvi applies the principle of consistency to “recognitions,” or

Chapter xvi applies the principle of consistency to “recognitions,” or “discoveries.”[44]

Best discovery of all, however, is that which arises from the actions themselves, when the surprise comes as a natural result, as in the _Œdipus_ of Sophocles and in the _Iphigenia_.[45]

Chapters xvii and xviii turn to the actual processes of dramaturgy, to the work of the playwright. This is concerned mainly with plot; but first Aristotle urges the fundamental necessity of visualizing.

One must compose plots and work them out in the “lines” by putting [the scenes] before his eyes ... and as far as possible by acting out, even with the gestures.[46]...

His stories, whether already made or of his own making, he must first set out in general (i.e., make a scenario), then put in the incidents and carry out.[47]...

Every tragedy has both complication and solution, the events that precede [the opening scene] and often some of those within the play constituting the complication, and the rest the solution. By complication I mean all from the beginning to that scene which is just before the change in the hero’s fortunes; by solution, all from the beginning of the change to the end [of the play].[48]...

It is necessary to remember what I have said often and not make a tragedy an epic system—by epic I mean aggregative—as if one should dramatize the whole story of the Iliad.[49]...

The chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors, be a part of the whole and share in the action, be not as in Euripides, but as in Sophocles.[50]

Visualizing actively at every stage, the playwright is to compose his plot before he works out his lines. He is to determine his play by the method of solution, to avoid the extensiveness of epic, and to make even the chorus contributory to the plot.

The bearing of the meager observations on the logical element and on diction (xix-xxii) will be clear from the tabular view.[51] They are not distinctive except in the saying “the greatest is the being metaphorical”;[52] and they have surprisingly little on dramatic rhythms.

The third section of the _Poetic_ (xxiii-xxvi) defines epic and compares it with tragedy.

As to metrical narrative, its plots [severally] should have the movement of drama in focusing on an action whole and complete with beginning, middle, and end, that [each] may give its proper pleasure as an organic unity, and not be composed as history, which has to exhibit not a single action, but a single time, whatever chanced to happen in this period to one person or to more.[53]

The general likeness of epic to drama, then, is in interpretative focus, as distinct from the chronicle method of history. Story, as well as drama, selects in order to unify. Moreover (xxiv) story, too, as well as drama, has its crises, its recognitions, its emotional outbursts. The epic poet, if he have something of Homer’s skill, can make his characters express themselves without intruding his explanations. These are general likenesses throughout the whole poetic field. For characteristic differences, epic has the advantages of scope and variety. It gains from the marvelous, which can generally be suggested better than it can be represented.[54] These points are as significant to-day as in the time of Aristotle. Not so the defense (xxv) of epic against certain typical objections which smack more of the schoolmaster than of the critic. To argue whether a given epic story were possible or probable or promotive of good morals was in fact one of the regular elementary exercises of the later schools. The closing exaltation of drama over epic[55] is summary, indeed; but that is natural, since the points, having been made before, are here simply reviewed comparatively. The idea of intensity through unity is a logical conclusion of the _Poetic_ as a whole.