Journal 24
Unity of Action: Well, this will obviously restrict the play in some manner. This keeps the play very focus on one plot. I think this could be a good thing. Like in the Merchant of Venice, the main plot can be deluded if you have enough extra plots. There are so many secondary plots that the main plot can either be underdeveloped or become lost amongst the other plots. If one plot is pursued, more development can take place over the course of the story. Obviously, it makes sense that five acts devoted to one plot will be more developed than the same length of play with multiple plots.
Unity of Space: This is also restrictive, but yet again I believe it is a good thing. If you have the cast of a play running around the entire world, the audience can get lost in the scenery. With a concise location, the audience will have a better feel for the set, and will recognize where events are taking place better. Also, having a small amount of sets will make it easier to perform in a play.
Unity of Time: This one I really don't think has as many benefits. All I can see this doing is keeping the action in a small time frame. This would result in events following each other sooner in the time line of the play. With a short time span, the audience will have a better concept of time in the play.
word
i agree with what u had to say about the time and how it could be simplified for the audience if done over a short time period, though the point could be argued as it really depends upon the specific play i suppose.
well stated!
you know maybe its just me but i wonder if Aristotle thought out what he said before he said it sometimes. Espically with the timeing thing!!! I mean damn!!!
katie
yep
I don't think Aristotle was just saying this just for the heck of it. I think he had legitimate ideas surrounding these guidelines. I guess it is easy to think that he just thought up some fancy form for plays just to make them harder to write, or to influence people's thoughts on plays that didn't fit the guidelines. But I guess at first it had never occurred to me that he would have made these rules for a reason. I totally agree that with your though, because it makes sense that one of the greatest minds of that time would try to give playwrights a guide for writing their plays, so that they could improve on their writing.
aristotelian notions
For the most part, Aristotle came up with ideas such as the unities by watching plays and determining what made the better plays work. He took the same approach to tragedy, and probably to comedy as far as we know. This is known as a "descriptive" approach. Often we take what he gave us, his description, and make it a prescription, a way things should be. That's known, as you might guess, as taking a more "prescriptive" look at things. Bradley
Bradley