What are the three elements of the traditional trinity

The traditional unities include which three elements are introduced as follows:

The traditional unities include time, place and events.

The classical unities is one of the Western theories of dramatic structure, also known as "three whole unities". It is a kind of rule about theater structure. It was first proposed by the Renaissance Italian theater theorist Cintio in 1554, and later determined and implemented by French neoclassical dramatists. It requires consistency between time, place and plot in the creation of a play. That is to say, it is required that the story narrated in a play takes place within one day (one day and one night), the place is in one scene, and the plot is subordinate to one theme.

Historical origin and development of the Trinity

The Trinity is derived from Aristotle's Poetics. In the Poetics, Aristotle discusses the consistency of dramatic action, arguing that drama "imitates nothing more than a complete action," but does not exclude the use of secondary episodes. He also mentions that "tragedy seeks to be limited to the circumference of the sun", but this only refers to the length of the performance.

In the 16th century, Aristotle's views were elaborated and misinterpreted. The Italian theorist Giraldi Cintio first suggested in 1545 that "the sun's orbit" referred to the duration of the play. Later, in his commentary on the Poetics, Lodwiga Castelvecchio further elaborated on the idea that the time of the play and the time of the performance must coincide, and argued that the drama "must be truly confined to a single place". In addition, the consistency of dramatic action was coupled with the restriction that secondary plots be excluded and that there be only one plot line.

In the 17th century, the French classical theater theorist (-D) N. Boileau summed up the Trinity as "a story to be told in a single place, in a single day, and to maintain the fullness of the stage from the beginning to the end," and used it as a structural rule that could not be violated. As a way to structure a play, it helps to make the structure of the play focused and rigorous, and the use of this structural method has produced many successful plays. However, to use it as a rule is a serious constraint on the creation of a play.

After the 18th century, Romantic playwrights, in particular, repeatedly attacked this regulation, and their creative practice has broken through this regulation.

The "Trinity" was a product of seventeenth-century classicism, formulated by the literati and scholars of the French court at that time in accordance with the political intentions of Louis XIV, and finally summarized in the classical theorist Boileau's The Art of Poetry. In the third chapter of this book, it is written, "But let us observe the rules laid down by reason, and wish to carry out the plot, respecting the technique everywhere; accomplish one thing in a day, in a place, and always maintain the fullness of the play to the end." That's the most concise way to summarize the "Three Uniforms".