INTRODUCTION
Whenever you are reading or watching a play, you are concerned with the story that it tells. The play may be about an orphan whose step-mother maltreats so much that you feel that he will die. Incidentally, it is not only that he survives but eventually fate smiles on him and he becomes very wealthy. What makes this story interesting is the way the incidents are arranged. This arrangement is what we refer to as plot. If you have been watching Nigerian home movies, you may have observed that there are many movies that deal with ritual killings either for the purposes of making money or for acquisition of power. The way the story is presented is what makes a particular movie better than all the others on the same subject. You are going to learn everything about plot and why Aristotle believes that it is the ‘soul’ of drama.
3.1 Definition of Plot
A lot of volumes have been written on drama and aspects of drama of which plot is one of them. The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines plot as a “plan or line of events of a story especially of a novel or a story”. In dramatic plot, unlike in the novel where the author describes the characters and incidents they are involved in, the playwright presents the characters in action. This means that plot in drama develops through what the characters do or say, what is done to them, and or what is said about them or to them. This is why in his opinion, Grebanier describes plot as “a matter of action of deeds that are done during the course of the story”.
In One World of Literature, Shirley Geak-Lin Lim, compiles the following definitions of plot from different scholars which I believe will give you a broader view of plot;
. The plot as the organization of action was traditionally conceived as a sequence of important moments arranged chronologically, with an introduction, series of complications intensifying the conflict, a climax clinching the fate of the central characters, a resolution and a denouement that concludes and summarizes the issues (p. 1107).
. Plot is the organization of a series of action or events usually moving through conflicts to a climax and resolution. The arrangement often implies causality and achieves certain effects (p.1135).
. Plot does not concentrate on an individual hero or his fate or her fate. Instead, its open structure permits the inclusion of other important but minor characters. (p. 1108).
In his own contribution, Oscar Brockett maintains that plot is not just a summary of the incidents of a play but that it also refers to the organization of all elements into a meaningful pattern, the overall structure of the play(6). In Play Production, Nelms sees plot as the anecdote told to illustrate the theme, and the bare bones of the action and therefore the key to the structure of the play. According to Scholes and Klaus, plot is a highly specialized form of experience. In drama, every event is part of a carefully designed pattern and process. And that is what we call plot. He explains that plot is “…a wholly interconnected system of events, deliberately selected and arranged, in order to fulfill a complex set of dramatic purposes and theatrical conditions … it comprises everything which takes place in the imaginative world of the play. And the totality of the events must create a coherent imitation of the world” (65).
You have seen that there are many opinions on plot but I cannot conclude without looking at the insistence of the foremost critic Aristotle that tragedy is an imitation not of men but of an action and of life. He further explains that since life consists of action plot is the most important aspect and the soul of tragedy. He mentioned tragedy specifically because then, the comic writers were allowed to invent their own plots. The Greek tragic plots were based on the destiny of man and the gods were involved in the action. The tragic poet (playwright) was expected to base the plot on true events, myths and legends and so his choice was limited because not many families were “doomed” and not many individuals were driven to murder or incest that aroused pity and fear. He maintains that incidents presented, must be according to the law of probability and necessity.
Plot is the structure of the actions which is ordered and presented in order to achieve particular emotional and artistic effects in a play. It helps to give the play an organic unity and a coherence that makes the play easy to understand. A good play should therefore possess a unified plot. Plot in simple terms is the arrangement of a story in such a way that there will be a sequential, logical and chronological order. The plot should be arranged in such a way that the action starts from the beginning rises to a climax and falls to a resolution. It is arranged in this form – exposition, discovery, point of attack, complication, crisis, climax, denouement or resolution.
Some people confuse plot with story. To them, plot means a story which the play tells. It is therefore necessary at this point to make the distinction between plot and story so that you will not fall into the same error. A story is a series of incidents whose development does not necessarily depend on each other which means that the incidents may or may not be related or connected. Plot on the other hand, is the way the story is arranged and it thrives on causality and logical unity. In it, one incident happens and as a result the next one happens and the situation must be related to each other. It has a beginning, middle and an end. A beginning gives rise to the middle, which in turn raises the dramatic question that is answered in the end, thus completing what was started in the beginning.
Dramatic plot is also expected to produce a result or an effect on the audience. The playwright, therefore, tries to fashion his play in a particular way to produce a particular impression on his audience. This explains why a theme like corruption, could be treated by different playwrights. Each playwright by the use of plot and other devices gives his own perspective, understanding of what corruption is, its effects on the society and why it should be eradicated. He could, also, in the course of the plot, suggest means or ways through which corruption can be reduced to a barest minimum or its complete eradication. The success of a play depends mainly on the plot. It helps the audience or reader to understand the theme and the motivations of the characters in the play.
Playwrights design their plots in most cases, to achieve different purposes like to create tragic comic or ironic effects. As the plot progresses, it arouses the reader’s curiosity and expectations concerning future events in the play especially the fate of some characters. This is called suspense. A good playwright makes an effective use of suspense to sustain his audience. Plot is a highly specialized form of experience. Let us use our daily experiences to illustrate and see just how specialized it is by considering what happens to us daily: we probably converse with a number of people and perform a variety of action. But most of these events have very little to do with one another, and they usually serve no purpose other than to satisfy our pleasure, our work, or our bodily necessities. Thus the events that take place in our daily existence do not and cannot embody a significant pattern or process even in a boarding school.
There is an extent to which a person’s life can be patterned. But in drama, every event is part of a carefully designed pattern and process. And this is what we call plot. In a good plot, the interest of spectators has to be deeply engaged and continuously sustained. This means that the plot must be arranged in such a way that the interest must be aroused and engaged by events that make up a process capable of being represented on stage. This means that plot is not confined merely to what takes place on stage. Plot includes reported, as well as represented, action. In Oedipus Rex, for example, we witness what we might call a process of criminal investigation, in which the investigator discovers himself to be the criminal and inflicts the appropriate punishment for his crime. You will also notice that in the play, we do not witness all of the events that make up that process and contribute to its development.
The three types of action in drama are reported, physical and mental. In reported action, an action that is not part of the present action on stage is reported by a character or a group of characters. The action could be about an incident in the past like the death of Polybus or an incident that happened in the course of the action of the play. In the play, the wisdom of the oracle is reported by Creon, the death of Polybus is reported by the First Messenger, the suicide of Jocasta and the self blinding of Oedipus are reported by the Second Messenger. Obviously, all of these events take place in the imaginative world of the play but are not presented directly to the audience. (Can you recall other reasons why some of these events are not presented on stage?) They are part of the plot. But they are not part of what we call the scenario----- the action that takes place on stage. Thus if we wish to identify the plot of a play, we will have to distinguish it from the scenario because it is not the same thing as the plot. We can recognize this distinction in another way if we consider the order in which events may be presented to us in a play. In Oedipus Rex, for example, the death of Polybus takes place before the time of the action on stage however it is reported to us only after the stage action is well under way.
The physical action is based on the current incidents in the play, the concrete action on stage. It includes the movements, gestures, facial expressions and other forms of physical action made by the characters and seen by the audience. The mental action includes the action in which the audience is left to imagine what happened. In most cases, it comes at the end of the play as the audience is left to imagine what happened to a character or a group of characters. This is one of the main reasons why movie producers produce the part two of some of their films. In the plot,of course, these events are linked to one another by an unalterable chronology. But in the scenario, these same events have been presented to us in an entirely different order. Thus in studying the plot of a play, we must examine not only the events of which it consists, but also the complex ways in which those events are presented by the scenario.
3.2 Structure of the Plot
As stated earlier, a good plot should have a beginning, middle, and an end. Oscar Broccket explains further that the beginning contains the exposition or the setting forth of information about earlier events, the identity of characters and the present situation. Another aspect of the beginning is the point of attack which is the moment at which the main story starts as a potential conflict is identified. This is more obvious in classical plays usually, is focused early on the potential conflict or a question and its resolution leads to the end of the play. Such plays start with the inciting incident. This incident is usually an occurrence that sets the main action in motion. A good example is in found in Oedipus Rex. In the play, there is a plague in Thebes, the people are suffering and lamenting. Oedipus seeks solution from the oracle of Delphi and this leads to the major dramatic question (in this case, the identity of Oedipus) around which the play revolves.
The middle is made up of series of complications. A complication is a new element which changes the direction of the action. It leads to the discovery of new information. The series of complications culminate in crises and climax. In the play, the complication starts with the arrival of Creon with the information that the killer they seek is in their midst. Consequently, the blind seer is invited and there are more complications as he accuses Oedipus of being the murderer. There is a crisis with the shepherd’s revelation of the true parentage of Oedipus and this leads to the climax. The end is the last part of the play. Here issues are unraveled, untied and resolved. In the play, the killer of Laius is discovered towards the denouement. Oedipus realizes that he has fulfilled the Delphic oracle’s prophecy; he actually killed his father and married his mother.
It is important to note here that you may not find all these elements in one play. Each playwright adopts his own style. Remember that Aristotle based his theory and postulations on already –written Greek plays. Apparently, he read and studied the plays critically to arrive at his conclusions.
3.3 Types of Plot
We have tried so far to explain to you that plot is just the summary of the play’s incidents. Although it includes the story-line, it refers basically to the organization of all the incidents into a meaningful pattern that has a beginning, middle and end. There are different types of plots and each is designed for a particular purpose. Some plots, for instance, are designed to achieve tragic effect and others the effects of comedy, satire, or romance. However all plays do not have what we might call good plots, that is, with the beginning, middle and end. So, we have different types of plots.
In a play, as said earlier, we have the main plot and subject (sub) plot. The main plot deals with the major events and the subplot deals with other incidents which can be complete and interesting stories on their own. However, a skillful playwright uses the sub plot to advance our appreciation and understanding of the main plot. According to Abrams, “the subplot serves to broaden our perspective on the main plot and to enhance rather than diffuse the overall effects”( 129) of the play.
Aristotle divides plot into two – complex and simple plots. A simple plot is that in which the action is simple and continuous and in which a change of fortune takes place without reversal of the situation and without recognition. In a complex plot, on the other hand, the change is accompanied by a reversal of the situation or by recognition or by both. He also identified two types of plots (a) the unified plot and (b) the episodic plot. He refers to the unified plot as the well-made plot. In the unified plot, the incidents are presented in a logical order and there is a causal arrangement. What do we mean by causal arrangement? The play starts from the beginning followed by the middle and the incidents in the middle are consequences of what happened in the beginning and these are resolved in the end. It is a kind of cause and effect presentation. The incidents will be so related that when anything is removed, it will create illogicality.
In episodic plot, there is no causal relationship between the incidents. The only unifying factor is that the incidents are related or happening to one man. In unified plot, the removal of any incident affects the organic structure of the play, but in episodic plot, you can remove an aspect of the plot without changing or destroying the plot. It means, therefore, that the part that was removed is not necessary. Death of a Salesman (one of the plays set for this course) has an episodic plot. It is made manifest more by the presentations of the incidents in Willy Loman’s head, especially the appearances of his brother Ben.
He recommends that a play should contain a single and not a double plot and condemned the episodic plot which is a plot in which the episodes have no probable or inevitable connection. He suggests that although plot is an imitation of an action, this must not be any action but an action in which the various incidents are constructed in such a way that if any part is displaced or deleted, the whole plot is disturbed and dislocated. This is the unity of plot. A good plot must therefore not end haphazardly but must have a beginning, middle and an end, and should be well co-coordinated to give a coherent whole. The action which makes up the plot should be distinguished from a series of unrelated incidents because a plot must contain a logical unity within the play. It begins at a point and the middle raises the question which is answered in the end and that completes the action started in the beginning. All the incidents in the play are expected to contribute to the plot.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
i. What is plot?
4.0 CONCLUSION
Plot is the arrangement of incidents in the play. Like all other elements of fiction,it has interdependence with character. Any competent writer organizes the incidents in such a way that each will have the maximum impact on the reader’s response and advance the story’s total objective. If the incidents are arranged sequentially from the beginning to the end and one event leads to the other, you will say that the play has a chronological, causal plot. If however they are presented in a disjointed manner, you say that it has an episodic plot. Simple plot is when the story is straightforward and easy to understand but when it is difficult, you say that it has a complicated or complex plot.
5.0 SUMMARY
Plot is the incidents in a play. It helps to give the play an organic unity and a coherence that makes the play easy to understand. A good play should therefore possess a unified plot with a beginning, middle and the end. Plot in simple terms is the arrangement of the events/actions in a story in such a way that there will be a sequential, logical and chronological order.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
1. Explain what you understand by unified plot and episodic plot.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
Abrams, M. H. (1971). A Glossary of Literary Terms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Brocket, Oscar G. (1980). The Essential Theatre. New York: Holt Reinhart and Winston.
Brocket, Oscar G. (1974). Theatre: An Introduction. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.
Scholes R.and C. H. Klaus (1971). Elements of Drama. New York. Oxford University Press.
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