Terence Patrick Murphy and Kelly S. Walsh Volume 42, Issue 1, March 2018 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/fc.13761232.0042.108 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/] In this essay, we explore the multiple plot structure in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). In contrast with thematic analysis, our concern is with plot structure, specifically the manner in which the Meredith Logue and Peter Smith-Kingsley plotlines intersect with the main plot of Tom Ripley’s attempts to get away with murder. Absent from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and René Clément’s cinematic adaptation Plein Soleil (1960), the Meredith plot operates to heighten the significance of coincidence, while engendering new forms of suspense. In contrast, Peter temporarily opens the chance for an alternative future, one in which Tom might realize his social aspirations and a more authentic identity. Ultimately, it is the coincidental resurfacing of the Meredith plot that foils Tom’s attempt to escape his past, ensuring his own tragic defeat and a future of dwelling in counterfactuality. Critical literature on the double plot is not particularly extensive. The traditions of comedy encouraged classical playwrights to utilize compositional schema that made provisions for more than one plot. Plautus, for example, used the convention of the double plot in Menaechmi (n.d.), which was later cribbed by William Shakespeare for The Comedy of Errors (1594). For his part, Terence employs a double plot in four of his major comedies: Heauton Timorumenos (163 BC), Phormio [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phormio_(play) ] (161 BC), Eunuchus [ https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Eunuchus ] (161 BC), and Adelphoe (160 BC). Within the literature on classical tragedy, by contrast, most critics, at least until the Renaissance, subscribed to Aristotle’s injunction that a single action accords best with the nature of tragic drama. The development of English tragedy, particularly in the age of Shakespeare, however, entailed a decisive break with this Aristotelian precept. King Lear (1606), for instance, flouts the convention of a single action, introducing the subplot of Gloucester and his two sons to throw the central drama of Lear and his three daughters into relief. Consequently, John Dryden, writing during the Restoration, expressed the view that the subplot could be an integral part of the whole: it is not “difficult to imagine how the under Plot, which is only different, not contrary to the great design, may naturally be conducted along with it.” [1] [ #N1 ] In his major study The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama (1971), Richard Levin notes that most critics nevertheless continued to lament the effects of the subplot in tragic drama. This was particularly the case when the subplot was a comic one, which was seen to distract from tragedy’s aesthetic seriousness. [2] [ #N2 ] Starting in the 1930s, however, this dismissive attitude gradually gave way to a more nuanced and accepting position. In 1935, William Empson devoted a long chapter of Coincidence and Counterfactuality: The Multiple Plot Structure of The T... https://preview.quod.lib.umich.edu/f/fc/13761232.0042.108/--coincidenc... 1 of 16 6/6/2018, 8:25 AM