We see, then, that there is such a thing as a false scène à faire--a scene which at first sight seems obligatory, but is in fact much better taken for granted. It may be absolutely indispensable that it should be suggested to the mind of the audience, but neither indispensable nor advisable that it should be presented to their eyes. The judicious playwright will often ask himself, "Is it the actual substance of this scene that I require, or only its repercussion?"
CHAPTER XIV
THE PERIPETY
In the Greek theatre, as every one knows, the peripeteia or reversal of fortune--the turning of the tables, as we might say--was a clearly-defined and recognized portion of the dramatic organism. It was often associated with the anagnorisis or recognition. Mr. Gilbert Murray has recently shown cause for believing that both these dramatic "forms" descended from the ritual in which Greek drama took its origin--the ritual celebrating the death and resurrection of the season of "mellow fruitfulness." If this theory be true, the peripeteia was at first a change from sorrow to joy--joy in the rebirth of the beneficent powers of nature. And to this day a sudden change from gloom to exhilaration is a popular and effective incident--as when, at the end of a melodrama, the handcuffs are transferred from the wrists of the virtuous naval lieutenant to those of the wicked baronet, and, through the disclosure of a strawberry-mark on his left arm, the lieutenant is recognized as the long-lost heir to a dukedom and £50,000 a year.
But when, as soon happened in Greece, the forms appropriate to a celebration of the death and resurrection of Dionysus came to be blent with the tomb-ritual of a hero, the term peripeteia acquired a special association with a sudden decline from prosperity into adversity. In the Middle Ages, this was thought to be the very essence and meaning of tragedy, as we may see from Chaucer's lines:
"Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As oldë bokës maken us memorie,
Of him that stood in gret prosperitee,
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree