let's consider horace's thoughts by eguriase s.m okaka

LET’S CONSIDER HORACE’s THOUGHTs

By Eguriase S. M. Okaka Horace died in 8th B.C. He was a poet. He lived after the death of Aristotle he was not Aristotle’s student. He only loved and studied his works. The critical thought of Horace on drama is that: Artists are not born but they are made. Let’s find out more from his thoughts. • To be a good student of art you must go to school, to improve in your talent in order to be good at what you are doing. • The ultimate purpose of drama is to give profit and delight. The profit is the moral lessons derived and the delight means the entertainment. • Horace was the first person to raise the issue of decorum (appropriateness, fitness, correctness of various purity of dramatic genre. Don’t mix tragedy with comedy. Horace says if you are writing tragedy let it be tragedy. Do not make a bad person look funny. Separate comedy from tragedy. • Avoid displaying violence on stage such actions should be reported or announced. • Write your plots from things around you. Write contemporary issues drawn from his society. Avoid writing abstract things that can’t be substantiated. • Horace said you must avoid improper use of the Deus ex machine. That is, machines used to summon the gods. They use it to bring down the gods on stage. • Do not look for a supernatural way of solving your problems in your play. Let your plot end in a logical manner. Creating it in a way that it ends as the way you started it. Always think of something creative to end your play with, not a supernatural force appearing from nowhere to end the play for you. Horace also believes a lot in Aristotle’s works. Aristotle was not a playwright but one of the greatest philosophers in his times. Many people believed that Artist are born but Horace said Artist are not born but are made. From his write up above one can see reasons with his thoughts. To be a good student of art you must go to school, to improve in your talent in order to be good at what you are doing. Yes, you should go to school to develop yourself. In my experience as a writer I have read some works where I noticed that the writer ends his or her play using a supernatural force appearing from nowhere to end his play. This makes such work in inexplicit and unexplainable. When you use a spiritual being to end your play you are giving your audiences puzzles not suspense and that is capable of living them in confusion whereby defeating the ultimate purpose of a drama, that is, to give profit and delight.

By Eguriase S. M. Okaka