Three Unities of English Literature:

The ancient Greek dramatists especially Aristotle in his well-known work 'Poetics'designed certain rules and regulations for the stage performance of any play for the sake of literalism which is generally known as "The Three Unities".

• Unity of Time, 
• Unity of Place, 
• Unity of Action.

Before reading further, let us first see what is the significance of these 3 Unities in writing drama or any other literature.

Significance of these 3 Unities:

• These Unities help the writers to write their plays or any writings properly.
• It helps in setting the tone of plays.
• It helps readers to get connected with the work and avoids distraction.
• It helps to understand the concept of the work effectively.

Now let us see these Unities one by one and understand them:-

1) Unity of Time:

It says that the action of the play should cover over a period of not more than 24 hrs.

According to the Classical tradition, the actions of the play should occur in one revolution of the Sun.

In the words of Great Aristotle, "Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the Sun or slightly to exceed this limit.

Unity of Time and Shakespeare:

Shakespeare never restricted himself to any such laws and treated writing as a free-flowing art. Therefore we often find Shakespeare showing stories which are stretched through months and even years.

Example:- Dramas such as King Lear and Macbeth show actions happening at intervals of months and years.

2) Unity of Place:

Aristotle did not mention Unity of Place in his Poetics. This sentence is always under scanner and different people have their different thinking about this. It is said that like 'Unity of Time', the neoclassical critics formulated the term 'Unity of Place'. It means a single place where all events of the tragedy took place. In the Greek era, tragedies were performed on a single stage. During that time, there was no print form of plays or recording like the modern era.

Therefore it is said that Aristotle does not mention about 'Unity of Place'in his Poetics.

Unity of Place & Shakespeare:

Shakespeare violated this restriction and he wrote many plays that have different places in their acts. This was not a rigid restriction as Shakespeare proved in his plays that violation of 'Unity of Place' has no effects on overall theme of the play.

He clearly violated this principle in many of his dramas.

Example:- In 'Macbeth', Unity of Place is not followed for 2 princes leave Scotland for England and Ireland.

Macduff reaches England and inspires Malcom to attack Scotland.

It is clearly seen that the Unity of Place is not followed for all these movements.

3) Unity of Action:

'Unity of Action' is the basic element of a Tragedy. Aristotle focused on this more than on any other unity.

It means, the events in a play are coherent and revolve to a single unified plot.

In a Tragedy, there are a number of incidents and events or episodes. All events should be in a logical sequence.

Unity of Action and Shakespeare:

'The Tempest' the main plot revolves around Prospero's efforts to regain his dukedom and to undo the evil which had been committed against him & his daughter Miranda.

Some critics have suggested that Shakespeare knew this was his last play and wanted to show that he could adhere to the Classical Unities.

What do you say?

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