in Dramatic Poetry, the fourth and last part in the ancient drama; or that immediately succeeding the catastasis; or, according to others, the third only; the whole drama being divided into protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe; or in the terms of Aristotle, prologue, epilogue, and exode.

The catastrophe clears up every thing, and is nothing else but the discovery or winding up of the plot. It has its peculiar place: for it ought entirely to be contained, not only in the last act, but in the very conclusion of it: and, when the plot is finished, the play should be so also. The catastrophe ought to turn upon a single point, or start up on a sudden.

The great art in the catastrophe is, that the clearing up of all difficulties may appear wonderful, and yet easy, simple, and natural.

It is a very preposterous artifice in some writers to show the catastrophe in the very title of the play. Mr Dryden thinks that a catastrophe resulting from a mere change in the sentiments and resolutions of a person, without any other machinery, may be so managed as to be exceedingly beautiful.

It is a dispute among the critics, whether the catastrophe should always fall out favourably on the side of virtue or not. The reasons on the negative side seem the strongest. Aristotle prefers a shocking catastrophe to a happy one.—The catastrophe is either simple or complex. The first is that in which there is no change in the state of the principal persons, nor any discovery or unravelling, the plot being only a mere passage out of agitation into quiet repose. In the second, the principal persons undergo a change of fortune, in the manner already defined.