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