Structure: The Fragmented and the Episodic

Abstract

Aristotle famously declared that tragedy must contain six parts: spectacle, melody, diction, character, thought and plot (1969, p. 13). The last is of particular interest as we discuss the issue of structure in the British avant-garde. He went on to say that this plot ‘must connect the various incidents in such a way that the whole will be disjoined and dislocated if any one of them is transposed or removed’ (1969, p. 17). Though by no means universal, this sequential plot structure had become a predominant form in British theatre, engendered by the late nineteenth-century cult of the ‘well-made play’ and the London productions of plays from the Continent (particularly Ibsen)1 and from Shaw (Irish but situationally British), but also by a new commitment to constructing British plays in their image and to creating a local naturalist tradition. Writers such as John Galsworthy explored this genre at length.