Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Perhaps not rules per se, but...

Shakespeare broke every single one.

Aristotle promulgated only three: the Unities.

Unity of time: all the action is to take place in a 24-hour day. The action can refer to past events, but a new day may not break more than once in the course of the play.

Unity of place: all action is to be set in one place and one place only. Events elsewhere may be described, but may not occur as part of the action.

Unity of action: all action must be pursuant to a single plot thread. No subplots allowed. No digressions for sheer entertainment purposes.

Aeschylan and Sophoclean tragedies measured up to (and predated) these standards. They were called "classical", and were the rule in French tragedy and drama during its golden age (Corneille, Moliere, Racine), when absolute monarchy was the political reality and strict etiquette occupied the minds of courtiers, the better to keep them from wild rebellion. Rules, naturally, were the fashion, winding their way into the world of art as well.

But Shakespeare? Nah. He set plays in multiple places. The action sometimes spans a period of months. And subplots? I give you Twelfth Night.

For that matter, not much written for the theater in Europe since the 1780s has kept to the Unities, and nothing written in Asia. Though Aristotle considered the Unities to be rules, playwrights have generally considered them to be an interesting conceit, but surely nothing that needs to bind a play in order to keep it together.

Rules are made to be broken. Especially rules written for playwrights by a philosopher who, as far as we know, never wrote a play.

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