What a Discovery
is has been already stated. Footnote 1In chapter 11. As for kinds of Discovery, first comes the least artistic kind, which is largely used owing to incompetence—discovery by tokens.
These may be congenital, like the spear the Earth-born bear
or stars, like those which Carcinus Footnote 2A prolific tragedian of the early fourth century. The family are agreeably ridiculed in Aristophanes’ Wasps. uses in his Thyestes Footnote 3These were birth-marks.
The spear-head
distinguished the descendants of the Spartoi at Thebes; the star or bright spot on the descendants of Pelops commemorated his ivory shoulder, and in Carcinus’s play it seems to have survived cooking. ;
or they may be acquired and these may be on the body, for instance, wounds, or external things like necklaces, and in the Tyro Footnote 4A play by Sophocles. Tyro’s twins by Poseidon, who appeared to her in the guise of the river Enipeus, were exposed in a little boat or ark, like Moses in the bulrushes, and this led to their identification. the discovery by means of the boat.
There is a better and a worse way of using these tokens; for instance Odysseus, by means of his wound, was discovered in one way by the nurse and in another way by the swine-herds. Footnote 5Hom. Od. 19.386ff., 205ff. The first came about automatically, the second was a deliberate demonstration to prove the point.
Aristotle here distinguishes between a discovery inevitably produced by the logic of events (e.g. it was inevitable or at least probable that Odysseus, arriving as a strange traveller, should be washed by Eurycleia, and that she should thus see the old scar on his thigh and discover his identity) and a discovery produced by a deliberate declaration (e.g. Odysseus’s declaration of his identity to Eumaeus). The latter kind is manufactured by the poet,
not logically caused by what has gone before.
Discovery scenes constructed to prove the point are inartistic and so are all such scenes, but those are better which arise out of a reversal scene, as, for instance, in The Washing.
Footnote 6Hom. Od. 19.392. See preceding note.
In the second place come those which are manufactured by the poet and are therefore inartistic. For instance, in the Iphigeneia Footnote 7Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris. See Aristot. Poet. 11.8, note. Orestes revealed himself. She was revealed to him through the letter,
but Orestes says himself what the poet wants and not what the plot requires. So this comes near to the fault already mentioned, for he might just as well have actually brought some tokens. Footnote 8To prove his identity Orestes mentions Pelops’ lance and other things from home,
which is much the same as producing visible tokens. And there is the voice of the shuttle
Footnote 9When Philomela’s tongue was cut out, she wove in embroidery the story of her rape by Tereus. Thus the facts were discovered to her sister, Procne, by deliberate demonstration. In Sophocles’ Tereus.
The third kind is due to memory, to showing distress on seeing something. An example of this is the scene in the Cyprians by Dicaeogenes; on seeing the picture he burst into tears Footnote 10Teucer, returning to Salamis in disguise and seeing a portrait of his dead father Telamon, burst into tears and was thus discovered. So, too, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona Julia is discovered because she swoons on hearing Valentine offer Sylvia to his rival. : and again in the Tale of Alcinous,
Footnote 11Hom. Od. 8.521ff. hearing the minstrel he remembered and burst into tears; and thus they were recognized.
The fourth kind results from an inference; for instance, in the Choephoroe Someone like me has come; but nobody is like me except Orestes; therefore he has come.
And there is Polyidus’s Footnote 12A Sophist who either wrote an Iphigeneia with this denouement or more probably suggested in a work of criticism (cf. Aristot. Poet. 17.6) that Orestes on being led to his fate should speculate aloud upon the odd coincidence that both he and his sister should be sacrificed, thus revealing his identity to Iphigeneia. Like most critics, Polyidos would have been a poor dramatist. There is an example of this form of discovery in the French opera Coeur de Lion, where the old knight says goddam
and is thus discovered to be an Englishman. idea about Iphigeneia, for it is likely enough that Orestes should make an inference that, whereas his sister was sacrificed, here is the same thing happening to him. And in Theodectes’ Tydeus that having come to find a son, he is perishing himself.
And the scene in the Phineidae, where on seeing the spot the women inferred their fate, that they were meant to die there for it was there that they had been exposed. Footnote 13In these cases the inference was presumably uttered aloud and hence the identity of the speakers discovered. Nothing else is known of these plays.
There is also a kind of fictitious discovery which depends on a false inference on the part of the audience, for instance in Odysseus the False Messenger, he said he would recognize the bow, which as a matter of fact he had not seen, but to assume that he really would reveal himself by this means is a false inference. Footnote 14The text is obscure, and our ignorance of the play or rhapsody adds to the darkness, but the reference may be to the ruse, common in detective stories, of misleading the audience by false clues in order to make the final revelation more effective.
Best of all is the discovery which is brought about directly by the incidents, the surprise being produced by means of what is likely—take the scene in Sophocles’ Oedipus or in the Iphigeneia—for it is likely enough that she should want to send a letter. These are the only discovery scenes which dispense with artificial tokens, like necklaces. Footnote 15The classical example of these tokens in English drama is the strawberry mark on the left arm
in Box and Cox. But Aristotle seems here to use tokens
in a wider sense than at the beginning of the chapter and to include not only birthmarks, necklaces, etc., but any statement or action which may be used as a sign in the scene of Discovery.
In the second place come those that are the result of inference.