What Recognition is has been already explained.
We will now enumerate its kinds.
First, the least artistic form, which, from poverty
of wit, is most commonly employed recognition by signs.
Of these some are congenital,— such as
‘the spear which the earth-born race bear on
their bodies,’ or the stars introduced by Carcinus
in his Thyestes. Others are acquired after birth;
and of these some are bodily marks, as scars; some
external tokens, as necklaces, or the little ark in
the Tyro by which the discovery is effected.
Even these admit of more or less skilful treatment.
Thus in the recognition of Odysseus by his scar, the
discovery is made in one way by the nurse, in another
by the swineherds. The use of tokens for the
express purpose of proof —and, indeed, any
formal proof with or without tokens —is
a less artistic mode of recognition. A better
kind is that which comes about by a turn of incident,
as in the Bath Scene in the Odyssey.
Next come the recognitions invented at will by the
poet, and on that account wanting in art. For
example, Orestes in the Iphigenia reveals the fact
that he is Orestes. She, indeed, makes herself
known by the letter; but he, by speaking himself,
and saying what the poet, not what the plot requires.
This, therefore, is nearly allied to the fault above
mentioned:—for Orestes might as well have
brought tokens with him. Another similar instance
is the ‘voice of the shuttle’ in the Tereus
of Sophocles.
The third kind depends on memory when the sight of
some object awakens a feeling: as in the Cyprians
of Dicaeogenes, where the hero breaks into tears on
seeing the picture; or again in the ‘Lay of Alcinous,’
where Odysseus, hearing the minstrel play the lyre,
recalls the past and weeps; and hence the recognition.
The fourth kind is by process of reasoning. Thus
in the Choephori: ’Some one resembling
me has come: no one resembles me but Orestes:
therefore Orestes has come.’ Such too is
the discovery made by Iphigenia in the play of Polyidus
the Sophist. It was a natural reflection for Orestes
to make, ‘So I too must die at the altar like
my sister.’ So, again, in the Tydeus of
Theodectes, the father says, ’I came to find
my son, and I lose my own life.’ So too
in the Phineidae: the women, on seeing the place,
inferred their fate:—’Here we are
doomed to die, for here we were cast forth.’
Again, there is a composite kind of recognition involving
false inference on the part of one of the characters,
as in the Odysseus Disguised as a Messenger.
A said that no one else was able to bend the bow;
. . . hence B (the disguised Odysseus) imagined that
A would recognise the bow which, in fact, he had
not seen; and to bring about a recognition by this
means that the expectation A would recognise the bow
is false inference.
But, of all recognitions, the best is that which arises
from the incidents themselves, where the startling
discovery is made by natural means. Such is that
in the Oedipus of Sophocles, and in the Iphigenia;
for it was natural that Iphigenia should wish to dispatch
a letter. These recognitions alone dispense with
the artificial aid of tokens or amulets. Next
come the recognitions by process of reasoning.
