There are not only dramatic dialogue and movement, but dramatic
monologue and episode. For illustration, we might refer to Hagar in the
wilderness. Her tragic loneliness and shuddering despair alight upon the
page of Scripture with the interest that attends the introduction of the
veiled Niobe with her children into the Grecian theatre.

There are those who say, that the truth of particular events, so far as
we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure as well as the
dignity of the drama,--in other words, that the Bible is too true to
afford what is called dramatic delight, while the semblance of truth in
Shakspeare is exactly graduated to this particular affection. Between
the advocates of this theory, and those who say that Shakspeare is true
as truth itself, we can safely leave the point.

The subject has another aspect, which appears in the inquiry, What is
the true object of the drama? If, as has been asserted, the object of
the drama be the exhibition of the human character,--if, agreeably to
Aristotle, tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity,--or if,
according to a recent writer, it interests us through the moral and
religious principles of our nature,--or even if, according to Dr.
Johnson, it be the province of comedy to bring into view the customs,
manners, vices, and the whole character of a people,--it is obvious that
the Bible and the drama have some correspondence. If, in the somewhat
heated language of Mrs. Jameson, "whatever in religion is holy and
sublime, in virtue amiable and grave, whatever hath passion or
admiration in the changes of fortune or the refluxes of feeling,
whatever is pitiful in the weakness, grand in the strength, or terrible
in the perversion of the human intellect," be the domain of tragedy,
this correspondence increases upon us.