een the Satan of Milton and the Macbeth of
Shakspeare. Aeschylus is equally artful with Sophocles--it is the
criticism of ignorance that has said otherwise. But there is this
wide distinction--Aeschylus is artful as a dramatist to be read,
Sophocles as a dramatist to be acted. If we get rid of actors, and
stage, and audience, Aeschylus will thrill and move us no less than
Sophocles, through a more intellectual if less passionate medium. A
poem may be dramatic, yet not theatrical--may have all the effects of
the drama in perusal, but by not sufficiently enlisting the skill of
the actor--nay, by soaring beyond the highest reach of histrionic
capacities, may lose those effects in representation. The storm in
"Lear" is a highly dramatic agency when our imagination is left free
to conjure up the angry elements,

"Bid the winds blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled waters."

But a storm on the stage, instead of exceeding, so poorly mimics the
reality, that it can never realize the effect which the poet designs,
and with which the reader is impressed. So is it with supernatural
and fanciful creations, especially of the more delicate and subtle
kind. The Ariel of the "Tempest," the fairies of the "Midsummer
Night's Dream," and the Oceanides of the "Prometheus," are not to be
represented by human shapes. We cannot say that they are not
dramatic, but they are not theatrical. We can sympathize with the
poet, but not with the actor. For the same reason, in a lesser
degree, all creations, even of human character, that very highly task
the imagination, that lift the reader wholly out of actual experience,
and above the common earth, are comparatively feeble when reduced to
visible forms. The most metaphysical plays of Shakspeare are the
least popular in representation. Thus the very genius of Aeschylus,
that kindles us in the closet, must often have militated against him
on the stage. But in Sophocles all--even the divinities themselves--
are touched with humanity; they are not too subtle or too lofty to be
submitted to mortal gaze. We feel at once that on the stage Sophocles
ought to have won the prize from Aeschylus; and, as a proof of this,
if we look at the plays of each, we see that scarcely any of the great
characters of Aeschylus could have called into sufficient exercise the
powers of an actor. Prometheus on his rock, never changing even his
position, never absent from the scene, is denied