Chapter 16

What a Discovery is has been already stated. As for kinds of Discovery, first comes the least artistic kind, which is largely used owing to incompetence—discovery by tokens.

These may be congenital, like the spear the Earth-born bear or stars, like those which Carcinus uses in his Thyestes;

or they may be acquired and these may be on the body, for instance, wounds, or external things like necklaces, and in the Tyro the discovery by means of the boat.

There is a better and a worse way of using these tokens; for instance Odysseus, by means of his wound, was discovered in one way by the nurse and in another way by the swine-herds.

Discovery scenes constructed to prove the point are inartistic and so are all such scenes, but those are better which arise out of a reversal scene, as, for instance, in The Washing.

In the second place come those which are manufactured by the poet and are therefore inartistic. For instance, in the Iphigeneia Orestes revealed himself. She was revealed to him through the letter, but Orestes says himself what the poet wants and not what the plot requires. So this comes near to the fault already mentioned, for he might just as well have actually brought some tokens. And there is the voice of the shuttle In Sophocles’ Tereus.

The third kind is due to memory, to showing distress on seeing something. An example of this is the scene in the Cyprians by Dicaeogenes; on seeing the picture he burst into tears: and again in the Tale of Alcinous, hearing the minstrel he remembered and burst into tears; and thus they were recognized.

The fourth kind results from an inference; for instance, in the Choephoroe Someone like me has come; but nobody is like me except Orestes; therefore he has come. And there is Polyidus’s idea about Iphigeneia, for it is likely enough that Orestes should make an inference that, whereas his sister was sacrificed, here is the same thing happening to him. And in Theodectes’ Tydeus that having come to find a son, he is perishing himself. And the scene in the Phineidae, where on seeing the spot the women inferred their fate, that they were meant to die there for it was there that they had been exposed.

There is also a kind of fictitious discovery which depends on a false inference on the part of the audience, for instance in Odysseus the False Messenger, he said he would recognize the bow, which as a matter of fact he had not seen, but to assume that he really would reveal himself by this means is a false inference.

Best of all is the discovery which is brought about directly by the incidents, the surprise being produced by means of what is likely—take the scene in Sophocles’ Oedipus or in the Iphigeneia —for it is likely enough that she should want to send a letter. These are the only discovery scenes which dispense with artificial tokens, like necklaces.

In the second place come those that are the result of inference.