15


In the Characters there are four points to aim at. First and foremost,
that they shall be good. There will be an element of character in the
play, if (as has been observed) what a personage says or does reveals
a certain moral purpose; and a good element of character, if the
purpose so revealed is good. Such goodness is possible i.e.ery type
of personage, even in a woman or a slave, though the one is perhaps an
inferior, and the other a wholly worthless being. The second point is
to make them appropriate. The Character before us may be, say, manly;
but it is not appropriate in a female Character to be manly, or
clever. The third is to make them like the reality, which is not the
same as their being good and appropriate, in our sense of the term.
The fourth is to make them consistent and the same throughout; even if
inconsistency be part of the man before one for imitation as
presenting that form of character, he should still be consistently
inconsistent. We have an instance of baseness of character, not
required for the story, in the Menelaus in _Orestes_; of the
incongruous and unbefitting in the lamentation of Ulysses in _Scylla_,
and in the (clever) speech of Melanippe; and of inconsistency in
_Iphigenia at Aulis_, where Iphigenia the suppliant is utterly unlike
the later Iphigenia. The right thing, however, is in the Characters
just as in the incidents of the play to endeavour always after the
necessary or the probable; so that whenever such-and-such a personage
says or does such-and-such a thing, it shall be the probable or