We have already seen that the drama is distinguished from all other
forms of art by its essential quality of directly enacting the things
to be communicated instead of merely describing them. Since only human
things can fitly be so enacted by human beings, dramatic art is
generally identical with human art; it is the art of representing the
actions of men and women--or of deities conceived as idealized human
beings--in such a way as to reveal the motives by which they are
impelled, their characters. The adjective "dramatic" may, however, be
understood in two ways, according as our interest is centred in the
actions themselves, their contrasts and conflicts, or in the motives
or _characters_ of the persons engaged. In the former case the
drama will endeavour to represent decisive and exciting actions
passing in rapid succession before the eyes. This may be called the
spectacular drama, and its greatest master is Schiller. When Goethe is
described as "the least dramatic of all great poets" it is in this
sense that the word is used. Goethe often hankered after spectacular
effects, but was never very successful in producing them.

But if we consider the essence of a dramatic conception to lie in the
conflict of opposing motives, not necessarily discharging themselves
as action, but subdued, and the more impressive because kept under
restraint within the soul of the actor, we shall rank Goethe amongst
the very foremost of dramatic poets. Examples of what I will call the
moral drama are all Goethe's maturer plays, such as _Tasso_ and
_Iphigenie_. To this class also belong Lessing's _Nathan der
Weise_ and the representative French plays of the classic epoch.
They are, generally speaking, bad stage plays, but are extremely
interesting to read, and gain in interest the more they are studied.
In the works of the greatest of all dramatists, such as Sophokles and
Shakespeare, the spectacular and moral elements are so closely united