Shakspeare, that the very essence of the former consists in the sternest
separation of the diverse in kind and the disparate in the degree,
whilst the latter delights in interlacing by a rainbow-like transfusion
of hues the one with the other.

And here it will be necessary to say a few words on the stage and on
stage-illusion.

A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general term for all
places of amusement through the ear or eye, in which men assemble in
order to be amused by some entertainment presented to all at the same
time and in common. Thus, an old Puritan divine says:--"Those who attend
public worship and sermons only to amuse themselves, make a theatre of
the church, and turn God's house into the devil's. 'Theatra aedes
diabololatricae'." The most important and dignified species of this genus
is, doubtless, the stage, ('res theatralis histrionica'), which, in
addition to the generic definition above given, may be characterized in
its idea, or according to what it does, or ought to, aim at, as a
combination of several or of all the fine arts in an harmonious whole,
having a distinct end of its own, to which the peculiar end of each of
the component arts, taken separately, is made subordinate and
subservient,--that, namely, of imitating reality--whether external
things, actions, or passions--under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude
imitates a landscape at sunset, but only as a picture; while a
forest-scene is not presented to the spectators as a picture, but as a
forest; and though, in the full sense of the word, we are no more
deceived by the one than by the other, yet are our feelings very
differently affected; and the pleasure derived from the one is not
composed of the same elements as that afforded by the other, even on the
supposition that the 'quantum' of both were equal. In the former, a