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XI
Reversal of the Situation is a change by which the action veers round to
its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity.
Thus in the Oedipus, the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him
from his alarms about his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces
the opposite effect. Again in the Lynceus, Lynceus is being led away to
his death, and Danaus goes with him, meaning, to slay him; but the
outcome of the preceding incidents is that Danaus is killed and Lynceus
saved. Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to
knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the
poet for good or bad fortune. The best form of recognition is coincident
with a Reversal of the Situation, as in the Oedipus. There are indeed
other forms. Even inanimate things of the most trivial kind may in a
sense be objects of recognition. Again, we may recognise or discover
whether a person has done a thing or not. But the recognition which is
most intimately connected with the plot and action is, as we have said,
the recognition of persons. This recognition, combined, with Reversal,
will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these effects are
those which, by our definition, Tragedy represents. Moreover, it is upon
such situations that the issues of good or bad fortune will depend.
Recognition, then, being between persons, it may happen that one person
only is recognised by the other-when the latter is already known--or it
may be necessary that the recognition should be on both sides. Thus
Iphigenia is revealed to Orestes by the sending of the letter; but
another act of recognition is required to make Orestes known to
Iphigenia.
Two parts, then, of the Plot--Reversal of the Situation and Recognition--
turn upon surprises. A third part is the Scene of Suffering. The Scene of
Suffering is a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage,
bodily agony, wounds and the like.
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