The artifice must be reserved
for matters outside the play--for past events beyond human knowledge,
or events yet to come, which require to be foretold or announced;
since it is the privilege of the Gods to know everything. There should
be nothing improbable among the actual incidents. If it be
unavoidable, however, it should be outside the tragedy, like the
improbability in the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles. But to return to the
Characters. As Tragedy is an imitation of personages better than the
ordinary man, we in our way should follow the example of good
portrait-painters, who reproduce the distinctive features of a man,
and at the same time, without losing the likeness, make him handsomer
than he is. The poet in like manner, in portraying men quick or slow
to anger, or with similar infirmities of character, must know how to
represent them as such, and at the same time as good men, as Agathon
and Homer have represented Achilles.
All these rules one must keep in mind throughout, and further, those
also for such points of stage-effect as directly depend on the art of
the poet, since in these too one may often make mistakes.
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