unities, the
unities, the,principles of dramatic composition supposedly derived from Aristotle's Poetics . Recording the practice of the tragedians whose works he knew, Aristotle states that a play should have the unity of a living organism, and that the action it represents should last, if possible, no longer than a single revolution of the sun. It was from these hints that 16th-cent. critics developed the rule of the three unities: action, time, and place. The most influential of these critics, Castelvetro , had a low opinion of the imaginative powers of the average audience and held that they would be upset by the time of the action lasting longer than the time of its performance and that they could not be made to accept changes of scene. Castelvetro's ideas left their mark on neo-classical drama, especially in France, but they did not go unchallenged. The exclusion of sub-plots became the rule in France only after the controversy over ...
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