DRAMATIC STRUCTURES – FROM ARISTOTLE TO THE POTBOILER
In 335 BC Aristotle, in his influential treatise ‘De poetica’, suggested a formula for the innumerable variety of dramatic structures for the play. The process of presenting, construction, discord, crisis, and resolution. His tripartite concept advocates a play consisting of a single action, in one place, and in one day. Later redefined in 1570 by Lodovico Castelvetro (1505-1571) who introduced poetry as an aesthetic element as well as setting a critical standard for dramatic art in the Renaissance and the French Neo-classical period. The 17th-century Neo-classical commentators in France, et alibi, further suggested two or three scenes with a single plot accompanied with a comical subplot. These conventions are, of course, unsupported in Sophoclean and other Greek text. However, this supposition continued, but not without censure. For example, commentators have objected to Shakespeare’s use of comic characters. That is to say, the Porter in ‘Macbeth’ (2.3. lin. 1-40), and the clowns in ‘Hamlet’ (5. 1. lin. 1-178)..
Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885.
In England, the ‘unities’ were accepted in principal but ignored in practice. In France they continued, in both theory and practice, until 1830 when the staging of Victor Hugo’s romantic drama Hernani – in which two lovers poison each other. Which caused a hostile reaction between the conservative classicists and the adherents of the neo-romantic movement, which eventually became a dominating force in French theatre.
The Aristotelian dicta advocate the combination of plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and song. This dicta is adhered to in most of the today’s filmic medium, but without regard to theoretical construction. Alternatively, rather, the Aristotelian formula is used as a potboiler, i.e., a utility writers and artists use merely to make a living; without regard to furthering Aristotle’s seminal formula.