TH 2423 Introduction to Theater
David Lipscomb University
Climactic and Episodic
Plots
Although dramatic plots vary widely in specific
details, most follow one of two major forms: climactic and episodic.
Climactic plot describes the pattern of Greek tragedy, whereas the plays of
Shakespeare are examples of episodic plot.
Characteristics of the climactic plot. When an author chooses
the climactic form, he begins his story near its conclusion, after much
significant action has already occurred in the fictional world. This is called
a late point of attack. In Antigone
all the events concerning the civil war and the death of her brothers have
taken place before the first scene of the play. There are three important consequences
of this approach. First, the playwright must include pertinent information
about the past in the form of exposition.
Characters discuss what they have done and what brought them to the current
situation, filling in gaps about previous events; in the first scene, Antigone
tells her sister about Creon's decree and her resolve to disobey it. Second, a
play with a late point of attack usually covers a brief span of time, in many
cases a few hours. With all the preliminary incidents in the past, the plot
moves directly to the highest point of tension called the climax, each action leading to the next in a chain of cause and
effect. Third, because the play focuses on the final moments of the action
before the climax, there is little time to introduce many characters or change
settings. Often the climactic play is set in one location with a limited cast
and is divided into two or three long acts.
Characteristics of the episodic plot. This type of plot
covers an extensive period of time, sometimes many years, and may take place in
several locations. A large number of characters may enter into the action;
there may even be a parallel or secondary action, called the subplot, involving a different set of
characters (as in the stories of King Lear and Gloucester). The sequence of
episodes will not necessarily develop according to the rules of cause and
effect; that is, one scene does not always lead to the next, but may skip to
another part of the action in the subplot. Rather than the cause-and-effect
pattern of climactic plots, the playwright may use two techniques to organize
the action: with parallelism he
creates similarities between the fate of different sets of characters
(Gloucester's mistreatment by his son Edmund reinforces the theme of unjust
suffering by Lear at the hands of his daughters); with contrast, the focus may move from one group of characters to
another in a different location, short scenes may alternate with longer ones,
public scenes with private ones, comic scenes with serious scenes (in Macbeth the drunken porter's speech
follows immediately after the murder of Duncan, offering a grim contrast).
The overall effect of climactic structure is
compression. The plot is tightly constructed and focused on a single action
involving a few people in a tense and potentially explosive situation. In
contrast, the overall effect of episodic structure is cumulative. Isolated
actions do not determine the outcome of the plot so much as the avalanche of
events which sweeps everything toward the conclusion.
Basic Elements of Plot
As was mentioned above, exposition refers to information which the playwright provides
about characters, setting, and events which happened in the fictional world
prior to the beginning of the play. Unless the play has a narrator or makes use
of soliloquies, this information must be worked into the dialogue in a manner
which sounds natural and convincing. Exposition may be preliminary and
concentrated, appearing mainly in the first few scenes. In most Greek tragedies
and in Shakespeare, the setting and the current crisis are established in the
first act. Other types of plays use delayed and concentrated exposition, for
instance, the detective story in which everyone gathers in the final scene to
hear the master sleuth's explanation of the crime. More often in rulern plays
exposition is delayed and distributed throughout the drama, offering a few
pieces of the puzzle at a time, a strategy which keeps the spectator busy with
filling in all the gaps.
If drama imitates action, there must be an agent to
perform the action, whom we call the protagonist.
As the focal point of the drama, the protagonist has an objective, some task to
accomplish or some goal to attain. Most protagonists have active, dynamic
personalities; they are people who take charge of the situation and seek to
change things to their advantage. Once Oedipus learns the cause of the plague,
he does not hesitate in seeking out the murderer in their midst. Other
protagonists appear in a story primarily as victims, for instance, the
suffering women and children in Euripides' Trojan
Women who play passive roles due to circumstances beyond their control.
They remain the central characters because of their strong will to survive
their catastrophe with some remnant of dignity. This latter example illustrates
that the protagonist may be a group rather than an individual. Furthermore, we
usually think of the protagonist as the hero of the play, but Shakespeare
portrays the villainous Macbeth as a protagonist, and it remains a tribute to
the playwright's skill that we care for this bloody monster until the end of
the tragedy.
If the protagonist were to reach his goal
immediately, the play would be over in a matter of minutes. To extend the
action, the author introduces complications
into the plot in the form of obstacles.
There are three basic kinds of obstacles: physical/situational, personal, and
psychological. (1) Physical obstacles arise from the situation: the hero must
reach a distant location, overcome serious illness, or defuse a bomb in a few
seconds. (2) A personal obstacle is another person who opposes the hero's
goals, called the antagonist (Creon
acts as antagonist when he attempts to prevent Antigone from burying her
brother). (3) At times the thing which stands in the way of reaching the goal
lies within the protagonist himself (Hamlet has doubts about the guilt of
Claudius and the honesty of the Ghost). These are psychological obstacles which
split the hero's personality in two, in effect making him both protagonist and
antagonist.
Most plots depict some type of reversal in the character's fortunes, either from misery to
happiness or from success to disaster. In a complex plot there may be several
reversals or "plot twists" before the final one which determines the
character's ultimate fate. Reversal, also called dramatic irony, occurs whenever events turn out
contrary to expectations. There are two types of dramatic irony, named after
the Greek tragedians who commonly used them. Sophoclean irony refers
to reversals in which the character's expectations are thwarted. In Oedipus the King, the audience foresees
the truth about Oedipus long before he himself does. This type of irony
produces suspense in that the audience fears not the unknown but the
inevitable. Euripidean irony occurs when a sudden plot twist
takes the audience by surprise, along with the character (at times, the
characters know more than the audience). In Euripides' play Heracles the great hero returns home to
rescue his family from a villainous tyrant when, without warning, he is struck
by the gods with madness, causing him to kill his own wife and children. Both
types of irony are found in comedy as well.
Recognition or discovery refers to a specific type of reversal in which a
character moves from a state of ignorance to knowledge. In its simplest form,
discovery may occur when a character recognizes another person, often a
long-lost relative or friend, by certain identifying marks such as a scar or a
piece of jewelry. A more sophisticated use of discovery occurs in a play such
as Oedipus where the protagonist
learns a particular truth which drastically alters his view of the situation,
in this case, a truth about himself. In the Poetics
Aristotle argued that this type of discovery was the most effective because it
combines recognition with reversal, leading directly to the hero's downfall.
The playwright must carefully lay the groundwork
for both reversal and recognition so that the new development seems credible.
To prepare the audience for future surprises, the author foreshadows events by planting clues along the way. The plant appears as a minor detail at
first but later turns out to be significant. A speech may reveal an attitude or
character trait which leads to overt behavior later in the play. A person who
always talks about money might eventually rob a bank. Minor stage business,
such as taking medicine, may lend credibility to a heart attack in the final
act. Exposition often gives justification to present action: Oedipus's wisdom
in defeating the Sphinx before the play begins provides crucial information
about his character. Seemingly innocent actions often set up the possibility of
major events. The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once said that if someone
hammers a nail into the wall in the first scene, he will be hanging from it in
the last. "When a surprising event takes place, it may be startling, but
it must be credible. Plants establish the basis for such credibility" (Smiley
66).
As the protagonist moves forward toward his goal,
surmounting obstacles along the way, he arrives at several points of crisis. A crisis can be identified by two
factors: it forces the character to make a decision and it changes the course
of subsequent action. When Hamlet discovers Claudius at prayer, he must decide
whether or not to take this opportunity to kill him. If he had chosen to act at
this time, Claudius would never have arranged Hamlet's death by means of the
duel and the poisoned rapier. In this way most plots observe the law of
diminishing possibilities: the character's choice of one alternative limits all
future options, a process which continues until the end appears inevitable.
A series of crises build to a climax, the highest point of tension within the plot. Some plays
have a minor climax before the major, an effect which heightens the intensity
of the latter. From the Corinthian's speech, Jocasta recognizes the truth about
her husband/son before Oedipus does, providing a minor climax in preparation
for his discovery. In Hamlet, the
"Mousetrap" scene in which Claudius' guilt is confirmed also serves
as a minor climax before the dueling scene in the final act. Note that both
climactic and episodic forms of plays ordinarily build toward a major climax,
even though they proceed in different ways.
After the climax comes the resolution of the plot, sometimes identified by the French term denouement. At this point several things
normally occur. (1) The central action concludes with the victory or defeat of
the protagonist, whose fate often determines those of the other characters as
well. (2) All crucial information needed to fill in gaps about both past and
present actions is provided. (3) The situation in the fictional world returns to
a relative state of balance, though different from the conditions which existed
before the action began.
A play does not reflect an image of this world so
much as it creates its own possible world. The Thebes of Oedipus and the Elsinore of Hamlet
do not represent places whose coordinates lie in real time and space. They are
islands in the stream of imagination whose existence depends upon our creative
participation. Even when contemporary plays or films are set in familiar
locations, the spectator does not confuse the London or New York of the story
world with the actual cities, expecting to meet James Bond or Spiderman there.
Some fictional worlds create an alternative reality
with different laws of possibility, consistent within the fictional realm but
impossible in the actual world. To see a play with the "willing suspension
of disbelief," as Coleridge suggested, is to accept the rules of the
fictional world as given in a particular play. We “believe” that Hamlet actually
sees a ghost because Shakespeare has created a credible fictional world in
which ghosts indeed exist.
While in some fictional worlds it may appear that
anything can happen, playwrights have to create their fictional worlds
according to four major rules of possible action, and remain consistent to
these rules throughout the play.
The Being
rule describes what is possible and
impossible within a fictional world, the physical laws of nature. In our reality
people do not hold conversations with animals, but in myths and fairy tales,
this is not uncommon. When threatened, we do not expect flying chariots drawn
by dragons to come to our rescue, but in the tragedy of Medea, such things are
possible. The Being rule determines a character's ability (superhuman strength)
and potential resources (gods, magic, divine guidance) to overcome challenges
and obstacles thrown in his way. In fictional worlds similar to our own,
characters do not have recourse to special powers, but as consolation they need
not contend with witches and ghosts either.
The Imperative
rule concerns matters of permission,
prohibition, and obligation. People are often driven by a sense of ought based
on moral or legal responsibility. They avoid certain actions prohibited by law
or a code of ethics, and perform others because they feel it is their duty.
When they break the law or fail to fulfill their obligations, punishment is the
inevitable result. In a play about Moses, we might expect him to follow the Ten
Commandments. Oedipus, however, follows a different set of laws. No one in the
play indicts Oedipus for mere murder, but for the fact that he killed his
father. The chivalric code of honor of 17th century France compels the hero of
Corneille's Le Cid to kill his
beloved’s father in a duel in order to avenge an insult to his own father's
dignity, an act which may seem strange to us but which was perfectly natural to
the expectations of that culture.
In many circumstances a person's choice of behavior
depends on his knowledge of the situation or what he believes to be true. The Knowledge rule defines the limits of what is or can be known at a particular
time in a given world. Oedipus would certainly have avoided marrying Jocasta if
he had known that she was his mother. Later, he realizes that more information
is needed, and the story becomes a desperate search for the truth about
himself. In another tragedy of ignorance, Macbeth returns to the witches for
reassurance that his bloody course is safe, but he leaves with mistaken
confidence in an ambiguous prophecy. Knowledge, or the lack thereof, determines
his choices and seals his doom.
Often a play limits the information available to us
to the knowledge of a particular character. In a murder mystery, the audience
may have access only to the clues which the detective discovers and thus will
solve the mystery no sooner than he does. The playwright may even withhold
evidence of which the detective is aware (for instance, that he himself is the
murderer, as in Agatha Christie's The
Mousetrap) in order to increase the element of surprise. If, however, we
observe a scene or overhear a crucial conversation when the detective is not
present, our understanding of the case surpasses his. In this situation the
thrill of the mystery derives not from surprise but suspense (will the sleuth
discover the truth in time?) as it allows us in on the secret.
Finally, questions of value – what is good,
beautiful, desirable – are the domain of the Value rule. A person
will forfeit all other options to pursue his quest for what he perceives as the
highest good. Of course, values are relative, and those the hero defends are
frequently not those held by the community. Antigone claims to follow the
dictates of divine law which stands against the law of the state established by
Creon. Usually, whatever constitutes the supreme goal of the central character
defines the highest good within the fictional world. In romantic comedy, if the
hero seeks the affections of a lady, we do not question the worthiness of his
choice; if he must trick her guardian to obtain her, we do not condemn but
applaud his act of deception. In tragedy where matters of personal integrity
are at stake, we accept extreme behavior (such as Oedipus gouging out his eyes)
as appropriate action for that character, even though it might not be for
others. Unless the playwright offers a different perspective which calls into
question the beliefs of the main character, the protagonist's value-system
establishes the categories by which action within the fictional world is evaluated.
The playwright often manipulates the pacing or rate
of flow of fictional time. The plot of a play usually indicates more time
passing than the actual length of the performance (2-3 hours). The action in
Shakespeare's plays can extend days, months, or even years. Spectators
recognize that more time passes in the fictional world than it takes to portray
these events onstage. Bernard Shaw's Back
to Methuselah, which covers over 30,000 years of human evolution,
demonstrates that there is no limit to the expanse of time a play may depict
within a few hours.
On the other hand, a playwright may desire to slow
down or even stop the action of the story to emphasize a point or describe a
character's state of mind. At such times, fictional time pauses while the
performance continues, as when one character talks to the audience while
everyone else on stage freezes in place.
The playwright can also manipulate
the order in which scenes are
revealed, shuffling
the sequence of events in the story. In Amadeus, we hear a bitter old
man Salieri tell how he tried to murder Mozart. The play skips back and forth
across time, revealing the story through multiple flashbacks. The order in
which we see the events of Salieri’s life does not correspond to the actual
order of events in the fictional world.
Review Terms
exposition
protagonist
antagonist
foreshadowing
plant
complication
obstacle (3 types)
reversal
dramatic irony (2 types)
recognition/discovery
crisis
climax
resolution
Review Questions
What are the differences
between climactic and episodic plots?
How does an author use
the four rules (being, imperative, knowledge, value) to create a fictional
world?