Argument

Long ago, when men were men and women were won by those who deserved them, people who were considered well-educated studied under a medieval theory of education known as the Trivium. Forgive the somewhat chauvinistic beginning, that's a line from a boyhood favorite novel—The Passport of Mallam Ilia by the African writer, Cyprian Ekwensi.

The Trivium consists of learning three subjects: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word in Latin means “Three Roads” one each for the three subjects listed. The theory is a sound one and follows the general pattern by which human beings grasp knowledge.

Isn't it interesting that most things we do as humans involve patterns of threes? One is born, one lives then one dies. A beginning, a middle, and an end. The Trivium is also one of those “threes.”

First comes grammar, ostensibly the mechanics of language. Next is logic, the art of thinking and finally, the last and highest of the arts, rhetoric which is the use of language to persuade.

If one thinks about it, the way we learn a new skill follows the pattern of the Trivium. First we learn the grammar or mechanics of the subject. The mundane, everyday things we need to know about that subject. In language, it's first learning the alphabet then come words, sentences, parts of sentences, etc. We learn syntax, why words belong only in certain locations in a sentence, how to string them together to form something meaningful.

In, say, Tennis, the beginner learns the basic strokes, fixing muscle memory with how to actually hit a ball. The rules and so forth come in later, they don't form part of the mechanics of Tennis.

Thereafter, logic is the next station on the road to attaining knowledge. Now that we understand the basics of the subject, we need to put them in a form that makes sense. It is not enough to know the words and how to construct a sentence if that sentence doesn't make sense.

This sentence is grammatically correct: “The cat barked.”

While correct, it doesn't make sense, it's illogical. The study of logic teaches the student how to analyze the content of grammar for consistency and truth.

Finally, rhetoric—the one area with which screen and dramatic writing concerns itself—the high art of communication, the adaptation of language to circumstance. I call this a high art because it is the terminus, this is what we're all trying to achieve. This is what all that study is for, communicating our grammatically correct, logically consistent thoughts to others.

What does this hold for the dramatist? Plenty. First, it is imperative that as a dramatist, one grasps the fundamentals, the mechanics of drama. We first concern ourselves with structure and plot, narrative, premise and theme, character. We need to understand these in the “grammar” stage.

The dramatist next concerns himself with the logic of drama. There is a reason why the term premise is used in drama and what passes for formal logic. They both share that term because in both (with some variations), premise means the same thing.

The logician starts with a premise, something presumed true such “as all men are mortal.” In drama, premise refers to the fundamental concept that drives the plot such as “a small boy sees dead people.” Once the premise is in place, both the dramatist and the logician attempts to prove the truth of the premise and by so doing, teach us a lesson in humanity.

And how both the logician and the dramatist proves this premise is through the application of logic through rhetoric . The dramatist persuades the audience using rhetoric that the premise of the story is true and thus fulfills the theme of the argument or story (theme is what I take to be the moral of the story).

So drama is argument. As dramatists, we ask a question in the set up of the story. Some call this Act I. The second part of the story, the middle or Act II, consists of deliberating on the question, examining its every facet and finding logical holes. The third and final part, the end or Act III, finds us either answering the question or not.

In the case of not answering the question, we fail at proving the premise or, as logic would have it, we fail to reach a conclusion or we reach an illogical conclusion. Whatever the outcome, the theme of the story always teaches the audience a lesson.