The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859. Various
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is no Falstaff in the Bible, yet the qualities of Falstaff exist in the Bible and in Nature, but in combination, and this combination modifies their aspect and effect.
There is laughter in the Bible, but it is not uttered to make you laugh. There are also events recorded, which, at the time, may have produced effects analogous to comedy. The approach of the Gibeonites to the camp of Israel in their mock-beggarly costume might be mentioned. Shimei's cursing David has always seemed to us to border on the ludicrous.
But to leave these matters and return to the general thread of thought. Dramas have been formed on the Bible. We hardly need name "Paradise Lost," or "Samson Agonistes," or the "Cain" of Byron, the "Hadad" of Hillhouse, or Mrs. More's "David and Goliah." "Pilgrim's Progress" has a Scriptural basis.
Moreover, if we may trust the best critics, certain portions of the sacred volume are conceived in a dramatic spirit, and are propounded to a dramatic interpretation. These are the Book of Job, the Song of Solomon, and, possibly, the Apocalypse of St. John. If we were disposed to contend for this view, we need but mention such authorities as Calmet, Carpzov, Bishops Warburton, Percy, Lowth, Bossuet.
The Book of Job has a prose prologue and epilogue, the intermediate portions being poetic dialogue. The characters are discriminated and well supported. It does not preserve the unities of Aristotle, which, indeed, are found neither in the Bible nor in Nature,—which Shakspeare neglects, and which are to be met with only in the crystalline artificialness of the French stage. "It has no plot, not even of the simplest kind," says Dr. Lowth. It has a plot,—not an external and visible one, but an internal and spiritual one; its incidents are its feelings, its progress is the successive conditions of mind, and it terminates with the triumph of virtue. If it be not a record of actual conversation, it is an embodiment of a most wonderful ideality. The eternity of God, the grandeur of Nature, the profundity of the soul, move in silent panorama before you. The great and agitating problems of human existence are depicted with astonishing energy and precision, and marvellous is the conduct of the piece to us who behold it as a painting away back on the dark canvas of antiquity.
We said the Jews had no drama, no theatre, because they would not introduce the Divinity upon the stage. Yet God appears speaking in the Book of Job, not bodily, but ideally, and herein is all difference. This drama addresses the imagination, not the eye. The Greeks brought their divinities into sight, stood them on the stage,—or clothed a man with an enormous mask, and raised him on a pedestal, giving him also corresponding apparel, to represent their god. The Hebrew stage, if we may share the ordinary indulgence of language in using that term, with an awe and delicacy suitable to the dignity of the subject, permits the Divinity to speak, but does not presume to employ his person; the majesty of Infinitude utters itself, but no robe-maker undertakes to dress it for the occasion. In the present instance, how exalted, how inspiring, is the appearance of God! how free from offensive diminution and costumal familiarity! "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said." Dim indeed is the representation, but very distinct is the impression. The phenomenon conforms to the purity of feeling, not to the grossness of sense. Devotion is kindled by the sublime impalpableness; no applause is enforced by appropriate acting. The Greeks, would have played the Book of Job,—the Jews were contented to read it.
And here we might remark a distinction between dramatic reading and dramatic seeing; and in support of our theory we can call to aid so good an authority as Charles Lamb. "I cannot help being of opinion," says this essayist, "that the plays of Shakspeare are less calculated for performance on a stage than those of almost any other dramatist whatever."
How are the love dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, by the inherent fault of stage representation, sullied and turned from their very nature by being exposed to a large assembly! How can the profound sorrows of Hamlet be depicted by a gesticulating actor? So, to see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful 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 the paint applied to his face, it was wisely announced that for the future the Deity should be covered by a cloud. These plays, carried about the country, taken up by the baser sort of people, descended through all degrees of farce to obscenity, and, in England, becoming