One, Two, Many, None

Number systems and the evolution of the tale

Yesterday, in ‘The Deuteragonist Kills the Narrator’ we talked about the origins of the ancient Greek drama — how at first there was only the chorus, then one actor spoke in between the verses the chorus sang, and then a second actor was added, at which point true drama was born.

Then there was the third actor. The first actor was the protagonist, the second the deuteragonist, and the third the tritagonist. One important distinction here is that actor does not here equal character as the deuteragonist would assume various roles — but there was at that point in the development of the drama only two actors allowed on stage at any moment.

After the third actor, there was no ‘quadragonist’ so far as I know. There might be a curious reason for this, a reason rooted in the way our brains count.

In most languages, there are only two numbers of importance. There is singular and there is plural. But in some, very old languages, there were three numbers: singular for one, dual for two, and plural covered three or more.

The fact that whole languages did this, indicates that there is something in the way man’s brain considers numbers, that differentiates between two, which has a binary or polar opposition, and every number greater than two. These cultures could only count that high, too: one, two … many was how they counted.

When there are two actors in a scene, it has a qualitative difference from a scene with only one actor … and also a qualitative difference from a scene with three actors or more.

‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd,’ to quote an old English saying.

What is also interesting about the development of the —agonists in Greek drama, is that Homer had scenes with several speakers. The first big scene in the Iliad shows a conference of the Achaian kings, discussing the plague Apollo has visited upon their camp, because King Agamemnon won’t give up the god’s chief priest’s daughter, who is his bed-slave and war prize. Several of the kings rise and speak, urging Agamemnon to see reason; at last Achilles rails against the King, and Agamemnon is enraged, and says he will give up his girl, if Achilles will hand over the girl Achilles claimed, to Agamemnon in compensation. At this point Achilles boast and sulks at once, about how he’s the one doing all the fighting, that Agamemnon doesn’t win any battles, and nobody appreciates Achilles and all he does.

The Iliad precedes the deuteragonist in the drama by centuries. This is another clue that the drama was not born out of the narrative poem such as Homer sang.

Now, to consider all this in light of the text tale or oral tale.

It’s possible to consider the first tales as either having direct dialogue or not. For example, many are the folk tale, the bar-room tale, and the office gossip, that do include dialogue:

I told the boss I wouldn’t work on Sundays anymore. He tells me I’d better, or else I’d be hurting come the next performance review. ‘Well,’ I tell him, ‘if that’s your attitude, I guess I know where I stand.’

Or it could go:

I told the boss I wouldn’t work on Sundays anymore. He told me I’d better, or else he’d mark me down on the performance review. Well, if that was his attitude, then I guess I know where I stand.

There is a tremendous difference in the quality of the tale when the dialogue is quoted directly. Direct dialogue comes to us in a different ‘voice’ than the narrator’s flat, even tones. A sort of sonic color is added. From monotone to dualtone (there must be musical terms for these things, but I am illiterate musically, alas).

When a second voice is added, the thing really comes alive. Now there is point and counterpoint within the dream state — for we have to consider the narrator’s voice to exist in some middle ground in between the tale’s world and the world where narrator and we in the audience stand and breathe.

And when the third voice is added, there is a crowd, polyphonies, great complexity, even cacophony. Beyond three, as we know from our ancestors, there is no qualitative difference: at three there is a crowd, and at a hundred the crowd is denser, louder, but nonetheless remains a crowd.

Now, the qualitative difference of the One voice, the narrator’s, is something to explore further on another day.

(Composed on keyboard Tuesday, July 8, 2008)