In the 4th Century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, which quite simply is the first manual of playwriting. In this benchmark text, Aristotle establishes the principle of "action" or "praxis" as the basis for all drama. Aristotle establishes a hierarchy of elements for the drama beginning with Plot (mythos), Character (ethos), Thought (dianoia), Diction (lexis), Music (melopeia), and Spectacle (lusis). The ends of drama were plot, character, and thought, the means of drama were language and music, and the manner of presentation was spectacle. Since the myths, upon which Greek tragedy were based, were widely known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of materials. Character was equated with choice, as opposed to psychology, thus, character is determined by action. In tragedy, the notion of ethical choice determined the character of the man. Thought had more to do with arguments, and rhetorical strategies, rather than "theme" has it would today. Language and Music were the material means of drama, much like paint and brushes are the means of the painter. Aristotle's methodology was inductive and based on reading the great tragedians of his day. In other words, he redacted his theories from the plays themselves, rather than begin with a theoretical approach. As such, it is not intended as dogma (as it would later become) but was written as a guide describing best practices. His definition of tragedy as "the imitation of an action that is serious.....etc." brought in the concept of mimesis from real life, rather than from the ideal that Plato had touted. Thus, he developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, which was really an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist. The Poetics, while very brief, is highly condensed and worthy of study by any playwright today. It provides the basis of the "conflict-driven" play, a term we still tout as the sine qua non of dramaturgy. Perhaps, the most Aristotelian of contemporary playwrights is David Mamet. Mamet embraces the idea of character as "agent of the action" and exemplifies causality in the structure of his plays. His recently revived, Speed the Plow, is quintessentially Aristotelian: it observes the unities, with exception of Act Ii's change in place, and builds its plot through a causal stream of discoveries and reversals.
The term playwright appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. He always described himself as a poet, since plays during that time were always written in meter and so regarded as the provenance of poets. This view was held even as late as the early 19th century. The term later lost this negative connotation.
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