Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, no. 22, August 1859 | Page 8

and disgusting. The contemptible machinery by which they
mimic the storm in which he goes out is not more inadequate to
represent the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to
represent Lear. In the acted Othello, the black visage of the Moor is
obtruded upon you; in the written Othello, his color disappears in his
mind. When Hamlet compares the two pictures of Gertrude's first and
second husband, who wants to see the pictures? But in the acting, a
miniature must be lugged out. "The truth is," he adds, "the characters of
Shakspeare are more the objects of meditation than of interest or
curiosity as to their actions."
All this applies with force to what we have been saying. The Jews, in
respect of their dramatic culture, seem more like one who enjoys
Shakspeare in the closet; the Greeks, like those who are tolled off to the
theatre to see him acted. The Greeks would have contrived a pair of
bellows to represent the whirlwind; mystic, vast, inaudible, it passes
before the imagination of the Jew, and its office is done. The Jew
would be shocked to see his God in a human form; such a thing pleased
the Greek. The source of the difference is to be sought in the theology
of the two nations. The theological development of the Jews was very
complete,--that of the Greeks unfinished.
Yet the Jews were very deficient in art, and the Greeks perfect; both
failed in humanity. The Greeks had more ideality than the Jews; but
their ideality was very intense; it was continually, so to speak, running
aground; it must see its conceptions embodied; and more,--when they
were embodied, Pygmalion-like, it must seek to imbue them with

motion and sensibility. The conception of the Jews was more vague,
perhaps, but equally affecting; they were satisfied with carrying in their
minds the faint outline of the sublime, without seeking to chisel it into
dimension and tangibility. They cherished in their bosoms their sacred
ideal, and worshipped from far the greatness of the majesty that shaded
their imaginations. Hence we look to Athens for art, to Palestine for
ethics; the one produces rhetoricians,--the other, prophets.
So, we see, the theologico-dramatic forms of the two nations--and there
were no other--are different. The one pleases the prurient eye,--the
other gratifies the longing soul; the one amuses,--the other inspires; the
one is a hollow pageant of divine things,--the other is a glad, solemn
intimation from the unutterable heart of the universe.
The Song of Solomon, that stumbling-block of criticism and pill of
faith, a recent writer regards as a parable in the form of a drama, in
which the bride is considered as representing true religion, the royal
lover as the Jewish people, and the younger sister as the Gospel
dispensation. But it is evidently conceived in a very different spirit
from the Book of Job or the Psalms of David, and its theological
character is so obscured by other associations as to lead many to
inquire whether an enlightened religious sensibility dictated it.
We cannot dismiss this part of our subject without allusion to a species
of drama that prevailed in the Middle Ages, called Mysteries, or
Moralities. These were a sort of scenical illustration of the Sacred
Scripture, and the subjects were events taken sometimes from the New
Testament and sometimes from the Old. It is said they were designed to
supply the place of the Greek and Roman theatre, which had been
banished from the Church. The plays were written and performed by
the clergy. They seem to have first been employed to wile away the
dulness of the cloister, but were very soon introduced to the public.
Adam and Eve in Paradise, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection were
theatrized. The effect could hardly be salutary. The different persons of
the Trinity appeared on the stage; on one side of the scene stretched the
yawning throat of an immense wooden dragon; masked devils ran
howling in and out.
"In the year 1437,"--we follow the literal history, as we find it quoted in
D'Israeli,--"when the Bishop of Metz caused the Mystery of the Passion
to be represented near that city, God was an old gentleman, a curate of

the place, and who was very near expiring on the cross, had he not been
timely assisted. He was so enfeebled that another priest finished his
part. At the same time this curate undertook to perform the
Resurrection, which being a less difficult task, he did it admirably well.
Another priest, personating Judas, had like to have been stifled while
he hung on the tree, for his neck slipped. This being at length luckily
perceived, he was cut down, and recovered." In another instance, a man
who assumed the Supreme Being becoming nearly suffocated by