Aeschylus and Sophocles further differ from one another in their approach to character Aeschylus reduces his characters to their decisions, painting emotion as black and white, while Sophocles dares to create a conscience that adds dimension to his characters. The result: both playwrights develop a sophisticated and event-packed plot. Though both focused on plot, Sophocles and Aeschylus approach the challenge of the plot in different ways Aeschylus approaches his plot politically while Sophocles approaches his plot emotively. And, although a tragedy can be without character development, it may lend itself to a monotonous story. In other words, one cannot have a tragedy without a plot. Character, second to plot, is defined as the “virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents”. Aristotle categorizes plot as the most important of the six components, defining it as the “construction of events”. In Aristotle’s Poetics, Aristotle claims that tragedy has six components: “plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry”. Though the two playwrights have gone about writing their tragedies differently, they remain tragedies, nonetheless. Aeschylus (525 – 455 BC) and Sophocles (497 BC – 405 BC) are two of the three Greek playwrights whose tragedies have survived.
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