POETICS|5
V
Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower
type- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous
being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect
or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious
example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply
pain.
The successive changes through which Tragedy passed, and the authors
of these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no history,
because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before
the Archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were
till then voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when
comic poets, distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it
with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of actors- these and
other similar details remain unknown. As for the plot, it came
originally from Sicily; but of Athenian writers Crates was the first
who abandoning the 'iambic' or lampooning form, generalized his themes
and plots.
Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in
verse of characters of a higher type. They differ in that Epic
poetry admits but one kind of meter and is narrative in form. They
differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavors, as far as
possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or
but slightly to exceed this limit, whereas the Epic action has no
limits of time. This, then, is a second point of difference; though at
first the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry.
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