The Three Unities According to Aristotle Poetics

The dramatic unities are three: 

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1. Unity of action
2. Unity of time
3. Unity of place

Of these, Aristotle insists only on the unity of action. He mentions the unity of time only in passing, while the unity of place is not at all mentioned by him. But through the ages, all the three unities were attributed to Aristotle. In the name of Aristotle, the 3 unities were emphasized by the English, the French and the Italian critics.

Unity of Action

According to Aristotle, the action of tragedy must be a complete entire. By ‘complete’ he defines that it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. ‘A beginning’ is that which does not itself come after anything else in a necessary sequence, but after which some other thing does naturally exist or come to pass. The beginning of action might be perceived as a sort of momentary slack water before the turn of the tide.

After beginning comes the middle. A middle is that which naturally comes after something else and is followed by a third thing. And an end is that which naturally comes after something else, either by necessity, or as a rule, but is followed by nothing. Thus the middle must naturally follow upon the beginning and must logically lead to the end, or to the catastrophe.

To Aristotle, the unity of action is an organic unity which gives form and meaning of tragedy. An action is a process of change from happiness to misery, joy to sadness or vice versa. In an action, there may be a number of incidents and events, but together, they must constitute one, and only one, action.

Thus the plot may have diversity, but still, be a Unity. This unity arises from the fact that every event has a logical connection with the rest of the action and none of them is not devoted. There might be episodes, but they must be properly integrated with the main plot. It must not be possible to remove the episodes without causing any injury to the plot. They must be essential, and they must follow each other inevitably. Otherwise, episodic plots are worst of all.

Also, Aristotle rules out the plurality of action. According to him, there might be one action, not two. Thus he is against the introduction of sub-plot. Similarly, he is against a double-ending- tragic end for some of the characters, and happy end for the others. The plurality of action and such double-end distract attention and weaken the tragic effect. They defeat the very purpose of tragedy, which is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear. Aristotle thus rules out tragic-comedy and the introduction of comic relief.

Unity of Time

It is admitted that Aristotle prescribed and emphasised the unity of action as essential to poetic imitation, but his name is also associated with other unities - unity of time and unity of place. Aristotle's comment on the length of tragedy gave rise to the doctrine of the unity of time. Aristotle mere says in the Poetics that tragedy should confine its action to a single revolution of the sun, as far as possible. No law is implied here, he has simply made a suggestion of the fact in the theatre of his age.

He states a fact as to what Greek drama does. But the Italian Renaissance critics took it as the injunction of Aristotle and tried to limit the action of a play within a single revolution of the sun on the principle of verisimilitude. They argued that spectators would not believe in the reality of an action that compressed several days into a three-hour drama. And if the spectators did not believe in the reality of the action, the tragedy would not have its proper effect.

Unity of Place

The unity of place demands that the action of a drama should occur in a single place. About the unity of place, Aristotle says nothing important. While comparing epic and tragedy he merely says that the epic may narrate several actions taking place simultaneously at several places, but in a drama, simultaneous actions cannot be represented because the stage is one place and not several places. From this chance remark, the Italian Renaissance critics hoist the unity of place on Aristotle and on the basis of his assumed authority, they make it into a rigid rule for dramatic composition.

Aristotle does not prescribe the unity of place, he was simply mentioning the general practice of Greek dramatists who mostly observed the unity of place because of the presence of the chorus, which are characters in the play. The chorus might not seem to be kept too long away from their homes. They could not be transported to different places, too distant from each other, without violating dramatic illusion too flagrantly.

We come to the conclusion that though the three unities are called Aristotlean unities, there is no sanction for such an interpretation in Aristotle. Aristotle never connected the unites of time and place with imitation. Hence the unity of action is the highest and controlling law of the drama. The unities of time and place are only of a secondary or minor and purely derivative value.

But we should not treat the unities of time and place with contempt. Shakespeare and Ben Jonson are the two towering figures in the sphere of English drama. Ben Jonson achieved great success in drama by observing all the three unities, even though he sometimes violated them. Shakespeare, on the other hand, won even greater triumphs in the field of drama by a violation of all the three unities.