Historically,
too, we find that drama has everywhere originated in the portrayal of an
action--some exploit or some calamity in the career of some demigod or
hero. Thus story or plot is by definition, tradition, and practical
reason, the fundamental element in drama; but does it therefore follow
that it is the noblest element, or that by which its value should be
measured? Assuredly not. The skeleton is, in a sense, the fundamental
element in the human organism. It can exist, and, with a little
assistance, retain its form, when stripped of muscle and blood and
nerve; whereas a boneless man would be an amorphous heap, more helpless
than a jelly-fish. But do we therefore account the skeleton man's
noblest part? Scarcely. It is by his blood and nerve that he lives, not
by his bones; and it is because his bones are, comparatively speaking,
dead matter that they continue to exist when the flesh has fallen away
from them. It is, therefore, if not a misreading of Aristotle,[4] at any
rate a perversion of reason, to maintain that the drama lives by action,
rather than by character.
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