F we are to base aesthetic criticism of drama on any kind of evidence that may seem tangible, we must start with plot. The chief fault of most searchers for tangible evidence is their treatment of a play as if it were a transcript of real life, a view that Stoll and his followers have effectively exploded. Characters in a play do not have secret lives off-stage that are subject to guesswork as if actions, thoughts, and emotions not portrayed, or even mentioned, in play can nevertheless be reconstructed. Speculation cannot piece together a full continuum of detail that will weld what we see and hear on-stage to what we do not see and hear off-stage. Aristotle defined plot as follows: the Plot is imitation of action:for by plot I here mean arrangement of (Poetics, VI. 6), and he remarks shortly (VI. 9), the most important of is structure of incidents; and again, the incidents and plot are end of tragedy, and end is chief thing of all (VI. io). Butcher (p. 347) paraphrases in this manner: It is plot . . . which gives to play its inner meaning and reality as soul does to body. To plot we look in order to learn what play means; here lies its essence, its true significance. Lastly, plot is 'the end of a tragedy' as well as beginning. Through plot intention of play is realised. Modern critics have tended to overlook uses of plot analysis in service of aesthetic criticism, a form that should be aimed at determination and evaluation of meaning of a work of art, insofar as this end is possible within framework of an artistic production. Meaning is a slippery term, of course. At one end of scale we have authorial conscious intention deliberately worked out in a play; at other, we have unconscious meaning penetrating and shaping any great work of art well beyond an author's precise conceptions. Let us leave unconscious to other critics and concern ourselves, more humbly, with what must be starting-point for accurate criticism, of whatever kind: an attempt to utilize evidence of plot to determine at least some elements of an author's conscious intention. In doing so we shall be escaping older-fashioned method of seeking meaning through character analysis in Bradley manner, for Aristotle places character in a tragedy as secondary to plot. We shall also be escaping presentday analysis of Shakespeare's imagery as key to his true meaning. Aristotle again disagrees, and assigns to diction a place behind plot and character. Certainly, complaint is true that