STORY
AND PLOT
As
with study of narrative texts, one can distinguish between story and plot in
dram. Story addresses an assumed chronological sequence of events, while plot
refers to the way events are casually and logically connected (see Story and
Plot in Pose ch 22). Furthermore, plot can have various plot-lines, i.e,
different elaborations of parts of the story which are combined to form the
entire plot.
Shakespare’s
Romeo and Juliet, foe example, is about the feud between two families, the love
between the two families’ children and their tragic death. This is roughly the
story of the play, which is related in the prologue. The plot, by contrast, encompasses
the casually linked sequence of scenes presented on stage to tell the story.
Thus we are presented with a fighting scene between members of the two families
whereby the underlying conflict is shown. This is followed by Romeo’s
expression of his love-sikness and Benvolio’s idea to diatract his friend by
taking him to the party in the house of the Capulets. Subsequently, the
audience is introduced to the Capules, more specifically to Juliet and her
mother, who want to marry her daughter off to some nobleman, etc. All these
scenes, although they seem to be unrelated at first glance, can be identified
in retrospect as the foundation of the emerging conflict. The story is
developed in a minutely choreograped plot, where the individual scenes combine
and are logical arrangement of events and actions used to explain ‘why’
something happens, while ‘story’ simply designates the gist of ‘what’ happend
in a chronological order.
One
might consider the distinction between story and plot futile at times because for
most pople’s intuition a chronologically ordered presentation of events also
implies a casual link among the presented event (see the discussion in 22)
Chronology would thus coincide with (logical) linearity. Whichever way wants to
look at it, plots can be always be either lenier or non-lenier. Non-lenier
plots are most likely to confuse the audience and they appear more frequently
in modern and contemporary drama, which often question ideas of logic and
casuality. Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, for example, the story of Alan’s
psychiatric therapy. It starts at the end of the story and then present even in
reverse order (analytic form, see also the category of order ch 3 5 3 2).
Although the audience is in a way invited to make connections among events in order
to explain Alan’s behavior, the very process of establishing casualty is
questioned by the rather loosely plotted structure of scenes.
THREE
UNITIES
Older
plays traditionally aimed at conveying a sense of cohesiveness and unity, and
one of the classical poetic ‘laws’ to achieve this goal was the idea of the
three unites: unity of plot, unity of place, and unity of time. Although only
the unity of plot is explicitly addressed in Aristotle’s Poetics (1449b and
1451a), the other two unities are also often attributed to him while, in
reality, these concepts were postulated a lot later by the Italian scholar
Castelvetro in his commentary on Aristotle (1576) ‘The unities mean that a play
sould have only one single plot line, which ought to take place in a single
locate and within one day (one revolution of the sun) The idea behind this is
to make a plot more plausible, more true to life, and thus to follow
Aristotle’s concept of mimesis, i.e, attempt to imitate or reflect life as
authentically as possible. If a audience watches a play whose plot hardly has a
longer time span than the actually viewing of the play, and if the focus is no
one problem only that is presented within one place, then it is resumably
easier for the viewers to succumb to the illusion of the play as ‘reality’ or
at least something that could occur ‘like this’ in life.
Many
authors, however, disrespected the unities or adhered to only some of them.
Shakespare’s The Tempest, for example, ostensibly follows the rule of the unity
of time (although it is entirely incredible that all the actions presented
there could posibly take place within three hours as is stated in the text),
and it adheres to some extent to the unity of place since everything takes
place on Prospero’s island (yet even there the characters are dispered all over
the island to different places so that no real unity is achieved). As far as
the unity of plot is concerned, however, it becomes clear that there are a
number of minor plots which combine to form the story of what happened to the
King of Naples and his men after they were ship-wercked on the island. While
the overarching plot that holds everything together in Prospero’s ‘revenge’ on
his brother, undertaken with the help of the spirit, Ariel, other subplots
emerge. Thus, there is the love story between Ferdinand and Miranda, Antonio’s
and Sebastian’s plan to kill the king, and Kaliban’s plan to become master of
the island. The alternation of scenes among the various subplots and places on
the island contribute to a sense of fast movement and speedy action, which, in
turn, makes the play more interesting to watch.
FREYTAG’S
PYRAMID
Another
model frequently used to describe the overall structure of plays is the
so-called Freytag’s Pyramid. In his book Die Technik des Dramas (Technique of
the drama 1863), the German journalist and writer, Gustav Freytag, described
the classical five-chart structure of play in the shape of a pyramid, and he
attributed a particular function to each of the five acts. Freytag’s Pyramid
can be lenier atised like this :
Act
I contains all introductory information and thus serves as exposition: The main
characters are introduced and, by presenting a conflict, the play prepares the
audience for the action in subsequent acts. To illustrate this with an example:
In the first act of Halmet, Price of Denmark, the protagonist Halmet is
introduced and he is confronted with the ghost of his dead father, who inform
him that King Claudius was responsible for his death. As a consequence, Hamlet
swears vengeance and the scene is thus set for the following play.
The
second act usually propels the plot by introducing further circumstance or
problem related to the main issue. The main conflict starts to develop and
characters are presented in greater detail. Thus, Hamlet wavers between taking
action and his doubt concerning the apparition. The audience get to know him as
an introverted and melancholic character. In addition, Hamlet puts on “an antic
disposition” (Hamlet, I, 5: 180), i.e, he pretends to be mad, in order to hide
his plans from the king.
In
act III, the plot reaches its climax. A crisis occurs where the deed is
committed that will lead to the catastrophe, and this bring about the turn
(peripety) in the plot. Helmet, by organizing a play performed at court, assures
himself of the king’s guilt. In a state of fenzy, he accidentally kills
Polonius. The king realizes the danger of the situation and decides to send
Hamlet to England and to have him killed on his way there.
The
fourth act creates new tension in that it delays the final catastrophe by
further events. In Helmet, the dramatic effect of the plot is reinforced by a
number of incidents: Polonius’ daughter, Ophelia, commits suicide and her
brother, Laertes, swears vengeance
against Halmet. He and the king conspire to arrange a duel between Halmet and
Laertes. Having escaped his murderers, Halmet returns court.
The
fifth act finally offers a solution to the conflict presented in the play.
While tragedies end in a catastrophe, usually the death of the protagonist,
comedies are simply ‘resolved’ (traditionally in a wedding or another type of
festitivity). A term that is applicable to both types of ending is the French
denouement, which literary means the ‘unknotting’ of the plot. In the final
duel, Hamled is killed by Laertes but therefore he stabs Laertes and wounds and
poisions the king. The queen is poisoned by mistake when she drinks from a cup
intended for Halmet.
OPEN
AND CLOSE DRAMA
While
traditional plays usually, albeit not exclusively, adhere to the five-act
structure, modern plays have deliberately moved away from his rigid format,
partly because it is considered to artificial and representative and partly
because many contemporary plywrights generally do not believe in structure and
order anymore (see postructrualism, discussed in ch 1 4 3)
Another
way to look at this is that traditional employ tipically employ a closed
structure while most contemporary plays are open. The terms ‘open’ and ‘closed’
drama go beck to the German literary critic, Volker Klotz (1978), who
distinguished between play where the individual acts are tighly connected and
logically built on the other, finally leading to a clear resolution of the plot
(closed form), and plays where scenes only loosely hang together and are even
exchangeable at times and where the ending does not really bring about any
conclusive solution or result (compare also open endings and closed endings in
narrative text ch 2823)
Open
plays tipically also neglect the concept of the unities and are rather free as
far as their overall arrangement is concerned. An example is Samuel Beckett’s
famous play Waiting for Godot. Belonging
to what is classified as the theatre of the absurd, this play is permised on
the assumption that life is ultimately incomperhansible for mankind and that
consecuently all our actions are some what futile. The two main characters, the
tramps Estragon and Vladimir, wait seemingly endlessly for the appearance of a
person named Godot and minewhile duspute the place and time of their appointment.
While Estagron and Vladimir pass the time talking in an almost random manner,
employing funny repartees and word-play, nothing really happens throughout the
two acts of the play. Significantly, each of the acts ands with an announcement
of Godot’s imminent appearance and the two characters’ decision to leave, and
yet even than nothing happens as is indicated in the stage directions: “They do
not move”. The audience is left in a puzzled atate because what is presented on
stage does not really seem to take sense. There is no real plot in the sense of
a sequence of casually motivated actions, and there is hardly any coherence.
The play does not provide any information on preceding event that could be
relevant, e.g, with regard to that mysterious Godot (Who is he? Why did
Vladimir and Estragon make an appointment to see him?), and it does not offer a
conclusive ending since the audience does not know what is going to happen (if
anything) and what the actual point of this action is. Hence, there is no
lenier structure or logical sequence which leads to a closed ending but the
play remains open and opaque on every imaginable level: plot, characters, their
language, etc.
The
fact that some authors adhere to certain dramatic conversations (see Poetic and
Genre 1 4 2), i.e. follow certain known practices and traditions, and others do
not, is obviously interesting factor to consider in drama analysis since this
may give us a clue to certain ideological or philosophical concept or beliefs
expressed in a play. Breckett’s Waiting for Godot, for example, enacts the
absurdity of human existance. Just as the plot does not seem to move anywhere
and the characters’ actions or rather, inactivity, do not make sense, life
comes across and purposeless and futile. And the audience’s Bewilderment in a
way reflect mandkind’s bewilderment in view of an incomprehensible world. Plays
with a closed structure, by contrast, present life as comprehensible and events
as casually connected. Moreover, they suggest that problems are solvable and that
there is a certain order in the world which needs to be re-established if lost.
