Chapter 26

The question may be raised whether the epic or the tragic form of representation is the better.

If the better is the less vulgar and the less vulgar is always that which appeals to the better audience, then obviously the art which makes its appeal to everybody is eminently vulgar.

And indeed actors think the audience do not understand unless they put in something of their own, and so they strike all sorts of attitudes, as you see bad flute-players whirling about if they have to do the Discus, or mauling the leader of the chorus when they are playing the Scylla.

So tragedy is something like what the older school of actors thought of their successors, for Mynniscus used to call Callippides the monkey, because he overacted, and the same was said of Pindarus.

The whole tragic art, then, is to epic poetry what these later actors were compared to their predecessors, since according to this view epic appeals to a cultivated audience which has no need of actor’s poses, while tragedy appeals to a lower class. If then it is vulgar, it must obviously be inferior.

First of all, this is not a criticism of poetry but of acting: even in reciting a minstrel can overdo his gestures, as Sosistratus did, or in a singing competition, like Mnasitheus of Opus.

Besides it is not all attitudinizing that ought to be barred any more than all dancing, but only the attitudes of inferior people. That was the objection to Callippides; and modern actors are similarly criticized for representing women who are not ladies.

Moreover, tragedy fulfils its function even without acting, just as much as epic, and its quality can be gauged by reading aloud. So, if it is in other respects superior, this disadvantage is not necessarily inherent.

Secondly, tragedy has all the elements of the epic

—it can even use the hexameter—and in addition a considerable element of its own in the spectacle and the music, which make the pleasure all the more vivid;

and this vividness can be felt whether it is read or acted.

Another point is that it attains its end with greater economy of length. What is concentrated is always more effective than what is spread over a long period; suppose, for example, Sophocles’ Oedipus were to be turned into as many lines as there are in the Iliad.

Again, the art of the epic has less unity, as is shown by the fact that any one epic makes several tragedies. The result is that, if the epic poet takes a single plot, either it is set forth so briefly as to seem curtailed, or if it conforms to the limit of length it seems thin and diluted.

In saying that epic has less unity I mean an epic made up of several separate actions.

The Iliad has many such parts and so has the Odyssey, and each by itself has a certain magnitude. And yet the composition of these poems is as perfect as can be and each of them is—as far as an epic may be—a representation of a single action.

If then tragedy is superior in these respects and also in fulfilling its artistic function—for tragedies and epics should produce not any form of pleasure but the pleasure we have described —then obviously, since it attains its object better than the epic, the better of the two is tragedy.

This must suffice for our treatment of tragedy and epic, their characteristics, their species, their constituent parts, and their number and attributes; for the causes of success and failure; and for critical problems and their solutions....