| One meaning of the Greek word "dran" is
to accomplish, and in this meaning lies a further key to the structure of drama.
A play concerns a human agent attempting to accomplish some purpose. In tragedy
his attempt is, in personal terms at least, unsuccessful; in comedy it is
successful; in the problem play final accomplishment is often either ambiguous
or doubtful. This action, from the beginning to the end of a movement toward a purposed goal, must also have a middle; it must proceed through a number of steps, the succession of incidents which make up the plot. Because the dramatist is concerned with the meaning and logic of events rather than with their casual relationship in time, he will probably select his material and order it on a basis of the operation, in human affairs, of laws of cause and effect. It is in this causal relationship of incidents that the element of conflict, present in virtually all plays, appears. The central figure of the play--the protagonist---encounters difficulties; his purpose or purposes conflict with events or circumstances, with purposes of other characters in the play, or with cross-purposes which exist within his own thoughts and desires. These difficulties threaten the protagonist's accomplishment; in other words, they present complications, and his success or failure in dealing with these complications determines the outcome. Normally, complications build through the play in order of increasing difficulty; one complication may be added to another, or one may grow out of the solution of a preceding one. At some point in this chain of complication and solution, achieved or attempted, the protagonist performs an act or makes a decision which irrevocably commits him to a further course, points toward certain general consequences. This point is usually called the crisis; the complications and solutions which follow work out the logical steps from crisis to find resolution, or denouement. |