The fourth is to make them consistent and the same throughout; even if
inconsistency be part of the man before one for imitation as
presenting that form of character, he should still be consistently
inconsistent. We have an instance of baseness of character, not
required for the story, in the Menelaus in _Orestes_; of the
incongruous and unbefitting in the lamentation of Ulysses in _Scylla_,
and in the (clever) speech of Melanippe; and of inconsistency in
_Iphigenia at Aulis_, where Iphigenia the suppliant is utterly unlike
the later Iphigenia. The right thing, however, is in the Characters
just as in the incidents of the play to endeavour always after the
necessary or the probable; so that whenever such-and-such a personage
says or does such-and-such a thing, it shall be the probable or
necessary outcome of his character; and whenever this incident follows
on that, it shall be either the necessary or the probable consequence
of it. From this one sees (to digress for a moment) that the
Denouement also should arise out of the plot itself, arid not depend
on a stage-artifice, as in _Medea_, or in the story of the (arrested)
departure of the Greeks in the _Iliad_.
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