ta Esther et Achashverosh_,
published at Prague in 1720, and enacted there by the pupils of the
celebrated rabbi David Oppenheim, "on a regular stage with drums and
other instruments." "The Deeds of King David and Goliath," and a
travesty, "Haman's Will and Death" also belong to the category of Purim
farces.

By an abrupt transition we pass from their consideration to the Hebrew
classical drama modelled after the pattern of Moses Chayyim Luzzatto's.
Greatest attention was bestowed upon historical dramas, notably those on
the trials and fortunes of Marranos, the favorite subjects treated by
David Franco Mendez, Samuel Romanelli, and others. Although their
language is an almost pure classical Hebrew, the plot is conceived
wholly in the spirit of modern times. At the end of the eighteenth
century, a large number of writers turned to Bible heroes and heroines
for dramatic uses, and since then Jewish interest in the drama has never
flagged. The luxuriant fruitfulness of these late Jewish playwrights,
standing in the sunlight of modern days, fully compensates for the
sterility of the Jewish dramatic muse during the centuries of darkness.

The first Jewish dramatist to use German was Benedict David Arnstein, of
Vienna, author of a large number of plays, comedies and melodramas, some
of which have been put upon the boards of the Vienna imperial theatre
(_Burgtheater_). He was succeeded by L. M. Bueschenthal, whose drama,
"King Solomon's Seal," was performed at the royal theatre of Berlin.
Since his time poets of Jewish race have enriched dramatic literature in
all its departments. Their works belong to general literature, and need
not be individualized in this essay.

In the province of dramatic music, too, Jews have made a prominent
position for themselves. It suffices to mention Meyerbeer and Offenbach,
representatives of two widely divergent departments of the art. Again,
to assert the prominence of Jews as actors is uttering a truism. Adolf
Jellinek, one of the closest students of the racial characteristics of
Jews, thinks that they are singularly well equipped for the theatrical
profession by reason of their marked subjectivity, which always induces
objective, disinterested devotion to a purpose, and their
cosmopolitanism, which enables them to transport themselves with ease
into a new world of thought.[60] "It is natural that a race whose
religious, literary, and linguistic development in hundreds of instances
proves u