Joyce asked:

I know the six elements of a tragedy used by Aristotle, but I don't know his explanation for putting
them in a priority.

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Aristotle identified six elements necessary to drama. In his order of importance, these are:

1. Plot

2. Character

3. Thought (i.e. the inner life of the character and his/her struggles)

4. Diction (i.e. dialog, or what is said)

5. Spectacle (i.e. the visual aspect of the play)

6. Music

The last four elements are the least important, but Aristotle felt they still must be done well for the
play to succeed.

Music and Spectacleare accessories. Music and Spectacle have an emotional attraction of their own,
but, of all the parts, they are the least artistic, because connected least with the art of poetry.

Diction is the actual composition of the lines that are recited. Thought deals with whatis said, and
diction deals with howit is said. There are many ways to say something. A good playwright composes
lines that say something extremely well.

Now, practically spoken, music, spectacle and diction are least important, because a tragedy can also
be read.

Thought is the power of saying whatever can be said and should be said at each moment of the plot.
What should be said must come before how it is said, therefore thought is prior to diction.

Character is the second most important element of tragedy, because in a perfect tragedy, character
will directly support the plot: personal motivations will be connected to the cause-and-effect chain of
actions in a complicated way, producing pity and fear in the audience. And the goal of a tragedy is to
raise these emotions of pity and fear in order to purge away their excess, to reduce these passions to
a healthy, balanced proportion at last.

And finally there is the plot: Aristotle felt that the action as the structure of the incidents of the play (its
plot) was the most important of the six elements. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an
action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a modeof action, not a quality.He said, "All
human happiness or misery takes the form of action. Character gives us qualities, but it is in our
actions — what we do — that we are happy or miserable." In Aristotle's philosophical account of the
nature of poetry, the poet imitates not what actually happens, but what might happen, what is
probable, and would befit a particular type of individual. The dramatist is not a historian, but a creative
artist. He arranges events in an order that is likely, credible or inevitable. The poet therefore imitates
ideal truth,the universal and typical. Hence "poetry is something more philosophical and of graver
import than history." Therefore again, plot, not verse form, must be the heart of tragedy.

Simone Klein