Pity and fear from incidents

Fear and pity may be produced by theatrical spectacle — but this is the inferior method and indicates an inferior poet. The better way is to produce these emotions from the inner structure of the plot itself, so that the incidents are so constructed that even on hearing them recounted (not seeing them performed) one shudders with pity and fear. The structure, not the staging, is the measure of the poet's art.

The incidents that most effectively produce pity and fear are those involving persons connected by love or kinship — friends, family members, persons bound by deep affiliation. If an enemy harms an enemy, neither the act nor the intention produces pity — the harm seems warranted or at least understandable. But when the suffering occurs within bonds of love — when it is Medea and her children, or Oedipus and his family — the violation of the expected relationship intensifies the tragic effect. The destruction of what ought to be most protected is the source of the deepest pity.

Aristotle ranks four cases. Best is when the terrible deed is done in ignorance, and the discovery comes after — as in Oedipus, where the recognition follows the act. Next is when the deed is about to be done in ignorance, and recognition stops it in time: the close call is harrowing but ends without the full catastrophe. Third is when the deed is done knowingly — as Euripides has Medea slay her children, fully conscious of what she is doing. Least good is when the deed is about to be done knowingly and is averted: this produces the minimum of pity and fear, since neither the act nor the suffering occurs.

The chapter connects to the earlier argument about plot construction: the incidents producing pity and fear should arise from the structure of the action, not be imported by spectacle or accident. A playwright who relies on theatrical machinery to produce the emotional effect is working at the level of the carpenter, not the poet.

These principles, Aristotle notes, are enough to guide the poet in the selection and arrangement of incidents. Not all possible plots are open to the poet — the received stories, the great houses (Alcmeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus), are fixed in outline; the poet's art is in how to use them, not in inventing new ones from nothing.