universal that the artist- the dramatic artist as well as the rest is concerned; and it is the poetic, and not the dramaturgic, element that is permanent and universal. "The power of tragedy, we may be sure," says Aristotle, "is felt even apart from representation and actors;" and again: "The plot [of a tragedy] ought to be so constructed that even without the aid of the eye any one who is told the incidents will thrill with horror and pity at the turn of events." 2

1

But what, according to Castelvetro, are the conditions of stage representation? The theatre is a public place, in which a play is presented before a motley crowd, – - la moltitudine rozza, - upon a circumscribed platform or stage, within a limited space of time. To this idea the whole of Castelvetro's dramatic system is conformed. In the first place, since the audience may be great in number, the theatre must be large, and yet the audience must be able to hear the play; accordingly, verse is added, not merely as a delightful accompaniment, but also in order that the actors may raise their voices without inconvenience and without loss of dignity. In the second place, the audience is not a select gathering of choice spirits, but a motley crowd of people, drawn to the theatre for the purpose of pleasure or recreation; accordingly, abstruse themes, and in fact all technical discussions, must be eschewed by the playwright, who is thus limited, as we should say to-day, to the elemental

1 Poet. vi. 19.

2 Poet. xiv. 1.

8 Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 30.

passions and interests of man.1 In the third place, the actors are required to move about on a raised and narrow platform; and this is the reason why deaths or deeds of violence, and many other things which cannot be acted on such a platform with convenience and dignity, should not be represented in the drama. Furthermore, as will be seen later, it is on this conception of the circumscribed platform and the physical necessities of the audience and the actors, that Castelvetro bases his theory of the unities of time and place.

In distinguishing the different genres, Castelvetro openly differs with Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aristotle distinguishes men according as they are better than we are, or worse, or the same as we are; and from this difference the various species of poetry, tragic, comic, and epic, are derived. Castelvetro thinks this mode of distinction not only untrue, but even inconsistent with what Aristotle says later of tragedy. Goodness and badness are to be taken account of, according to Castelvetro, not to distinguish one form of poetry from another, but merely in the special case of tragedy, in so far as a moderate virtue, as Aristotle says, is best able to produce terror and pity. Poetry, as indeed Aristotle himself acknowledges, is not an imitation of character, or of goodness and badness, but of men acting; and the different kinds of poetry are distinguished, not by the goodness and badness, or the character, of the persons selected for imitation, but by their rank or condition alone. The great and all-pervading 2 Ibid. p. 57.

1 Castelvetro, Poetica, pp. 22, 23.

difference between royal and private persons is what distinguishes tragedy and epic poetry on the one hand from comedy and similar forms of poetry on the other. It is rank, then, and not intellect, character, action,- for these vary in men according to their condition, that differentiates one poetic form from another; and the distinguishing mark of rank on the stage, and in literature generally, is the bearing of the characters, royal persons acting with propriety, and meaner persons with impropriety.1 Castelvetro has here escaped one pitfall, only to fall into another; for while goodness and badness cannot, from any æsthetic standpoint, be made to distinguish the characters of tragedy from those of comedy, leaving out of consideration here the question whether this was or was not the actual opinion of Aristotle, it is no less improper to make mere outward rank or condition the distinguishing feature. Whether it be regarded as an interpretation of Aristotle or as a poetic theory by itself, Castelvetro's contention is, in either case, equally untenable.

II. The Function of Tragedy

No passage in Aristotle's Poetics has been subjected to more discussion, and certainly no passage has been more misunderstood, than that in which, at the close of his definition of tragedy, he states its peculiar function to be that of effecting through pity and fear the proper purgation

1 Castelvetro, Poetica, pp. 35, 36.

(kálapois) of these emotions. The more probable of the explanations of this passage are, as Twining says,1 reducible to two. The first of these gives to Aristotle's katharsis an ethical meaning, attributing the effect of the tragedy to its moral lesson and example. This interpretation was a literary tradition of centuries, and may be found in such diverse writers as Corneille and Lessing, Racine and Dryden, Dacier and Rapin. According to the second interpretation, the purgation of the emotions produced by tragedy is an emotional relief gained by the excitement of these emotions. Plato had insisted that the drama excites passions, such as pity and fear, which debase men's spirits; Aristotle in this passage answers that by the very exaltation of these emotions they are given a pleasurable outlet, and beyond this there is effected a purification of the emotions so relieved. That is, the emotions are clarified and purified by being passed through the medium of art, and by being, as Professor Butcher points out, ennobled by objects worthy of an ideal emotion. This explanation gives no direct moral purpose or influence to the katharsis, for tragedy acts on the feelings and not on the will. While the ethical conception, of course, predominates in Italian criticism, as it does throughout Europe up to the very end of the eighteenth century, a number of Renaissance critics, among them Minturno and Speroni, even if they failed to elaborate the further æsthetic meaning of Aristotle's definition, at least perceived that Aristotle ascribed 1 Twining, ii. 3. 2 Butcher, ch. vi.

2

to tragedy an emotional and not an ethical purpose. It is unnecessary to give a detailed statement of the opinions of the various Italian critics on this point; but it is essential that the interpretations of the more important writers should be alluded to, since otherwise the Renaissance conception of the function of the drama could not be understood.

Giraldi Cintio points out that the aim of comedy and of tragedy is identical, viz. to conduce to virtue; but they reach this result in different ways; for comedy attains its end by means of pleasure and comic jests, while tragedy, whether it ends happily or unhappily, purges the mind of vice through the medium of misery and terror, and thus attains its moral end.1 Elsewhere, he affirms that the tragic poet condemns vicious actions, and by combining them with the terrible and the miserable makes us fear and hate them. In other words, men who are bad are placed in such pitiable and terrible positions that we fear to imitate their vices; and it is not a purgation of pity and fear, as Aristotle says, but an eradication of all vice and vicious desire that is effected by the tragic katharsis. Trissino, in the fifth section of his Poetica (1563), cites Aristotle's definition of tragedy; but makes no attempt to elucidate the doctrine of katharsis. His conception of the function of the drama is much the same as Giraldi's. It is the office of the tragic poet, through the medium of imitation, to praise and admire the good, while that of the comic poet is to mock and vituperate the bad; for tragedy, 1 Giraldi Cintio, ii. 12. 2 Ibid. i. 66 sq.