(2) Plot
A
lot of volume have been written on drama and aspects of drama of which plot is
one of them. The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines plot as a “plan or
line of events of a story especially of a novel or a story”. In dramatic plot,
unlike in the novel where the author describes the characters and incidents
they are involved in, the playwright presents the characters in action. This
means that plot in drama develops through what the characters do or say, what
is done to them, and or what is said about them or to them.
We
have seen that there are many opinions on plot but it cannot be concluded
without looking at the insistence of the foremost critic Aristotle according to
whom,” Plot is the imitation of the action- for by plot I here mean the
arrangement of the incidents”. The Greek
tragic plots were based on the destiny of man and the gods were involved in the
action. The tragic poet (playwright) was expected to base the plot on true
events, myths and legends and so his choice was limited because not many
families were “doomed” and not many individuals were driven to murder or incest
that aroused pity and fear. He maintains that incidents presented, must be
according to the law of probability and necessity. Plot is the structure of the
actions which is ordered and presented in order to achieve particular emotional
and artistic effects in a play. It helps to give the play an organic unity and
a coherence that makes the play easy to understand. A good play should
therefore possess a unified plot. Plot in simple terms is the arrangement of a
story in such a way that there will be a sequential, logical and chronological
order. The plot should be arranged in such a way that the action starts from
the beginning rises to a climax and falls to a resolution. It is arranged in
this form - exposition, discovery, point
of attack, compilation, crisis, climax, denouement or resolution. Some
people confuse plot with story. To them, plot means a story which the play
tells. A story is a series of incidents whose development does not necessarily
depend on each other which means that the incidents may or may not be related
or connected. Plot on the other hand, is the way the story is arranged and it
thrives on causality and logical unity. In it, one incident happens and as a
result the next one happens and the situation must be related to each other. It
has a beginning, middle and an end. A beginning gives rise to the middle, which
in turn raises the dramatic question that is answered in the end, thus
completing what was started in the beginning. Dramatic plot is also expected
.to produce a result or an effect on the audience. The playwright, therefore,
tries to fashion his play in a particular way to produce a particular
impression on his audience. This explains why a theme like corruption, could be
treated by different playwrights. Each playwright by the use of plot and other
devices gives his own perspective, understanding of what corruption is, its
effects on the society and why it should be eradicated. He could, also, in the
course of the plot, suggest means or ways through which corruption can be reduced
to a barest minimum or its complete eradication. The success of a play depends
mainly on the plot. It helps the audience or reader to understand the theme and
the motivations of the characters in the play. Playwrights design their plots
in most cases to achieve different purpose like to create tragic comic or
ironic effects. As the plot progresses, it arouses the reader’s curiosity and
expectations concerning future events in the play, especially the fate of some
characters. This is called suspense.
A good playwright makes an effective use of suspense to sustain his audience.
Plot is a highly specialized form of experience. Let us use our daily
experiences to illustrate and see just how specialized it is by considering
what happens to us daily: we probably converse with a number of people and
perform a variety of action. But most of these events have very little to do
with one another, and they usually serve no purpose other than .to satisfy our
pleasure, our work or our bodily necessities. Thus the events that take place
in our daily existence do not and cannot embody a significant pattern or
process even in a boarding school. There is an extent to which a person’s life
can be patterned but in drama, every event is part of a carefully designed
pattern and process. And this is what we call plot. In a good plot, the
interest of spectators has to be deeply engaged and continuously sustained.
This means that the plot must be arranged in such a way that the interest must
be aroused and engaged by events that make up a process capable of being
represented on stage. This mmm that plot is not wonted merely .to what takes
place m stage. Plot includes reported, as well as represented, action. In
Oedipus Rex, for example, we witness what we might call a process of criminal
investigation, in which the investigator discovers him to be the criminal and
inflicts the appropriate punishment for his crime. In the play, we do not
witness all of the events that make up that process and contribute to its
development. The three types of action in drama are reported, physical and
mental. In reported action, an action that is not part of the present action on
stage is reported by a character or a group of characters.
The
action could be about an incident in the past like the death of Polybus or an
incident that happened in the course of the action of the play. In the play,
the wisdom of the oracle is reported by Creon; the death of Polybus is reported
by the First Messenger, the suicide of Jocasta and the self-blinding of Oedipus
are reported by the Second Messenger. Obviously, all of these events take place
in the imaginative world of the play but are not presented directly to the
audience. They are part of the plot but are not part of what we call the
scenario—the action that takes place on stage. Thus if we wish to identify the
plot of a play, we will have to distinguish it from the scenario because it is
not the same thing as the plot. We can recognize this distinction in another
way if we consider the older in which events may be presented to us in a play.
In Oedipus Rex, for example, the death of Polybus takes place before the time
of the action on stage, however it is reported to us only after the stage
action is well under way. The physical action is based on the current incidents
in the play, the concrete action on stage. It includes the movements, gestures,
facial expressions and other forms of physical action made by the characters
and seen by the audience. The mental action includes the action in which the
audience is left to imagine what happened. In most cases, it comes at the end
of the play as the audience is left to imagine what happened to a character or a
group .of characters. This is one of the main reasons why movie producers
produce the part two of some of their films. In the plot, of course, these
events are linked to one another by an unalterable chronology. But in the
scenario, these same events have been presented to us in an entirely different
order. Thus, in studying the plot of a play, we must examine not only the
events of which it consists, but also the complex ways in which those events
are presented by the scenario.
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