Poetics by Aristotle

In The Relative Importance of the Six Elements, Aristotle essentially talked about whether certain elements of the tragedy were important or not. Aristotle says that the greatest element of the tragedy is the structure of the events and the plot. I agree with this statement. Without the plot of a tragedy, you cannot have a coherent play. Sure you can have characters and lines for them to speak, but without an order of events, the audience will be asking why are they saying or doing this? What is the importance of what the characters are saying in relation to the entire play itself? Plot helps us to follow along in the story of a tragedy and understand what is happening throughout.

Another element of tragedy that Aristotle ranked of lower importance is that of characters. Aristotle says that "tragedies of most of our modern poets are devoid of character". In considering this statement, I think back to lecture when Professor Hunt talked about the characters in Greek tragedies. She said that there were only a few actors, usually 3, who would wear masks most of the time and dress up to become many different characters. I can see that characters in tragedies are definitely not as important as the plot. Because the actors are wearing masks, we never get to see their faces and as such don't get to connect with the personalities of the characters in the play as much. The actors also play many roles which serves to show that the characters are only there to enhance the plot and not to have us get to know all the personalities of the various actors on the stage.