Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859

Again, the fifty-seventh Psalm is assigned, in respect of place, to the cave of En-gedi, into which David fled from the vengeance of Saul. Here, surrounded by lofty rocks, whose promontories screen a wide extent of vale, he breaks forth,—

Dramatically touched, and disposed according to the natural unities of the subject, these sublime and affecting songs would appear on their motive occasions, and be surrounded by their actual accompaniments.

The present effect may be compared to that which would be felt, if we should detach the songs of the artificial drama from their original impulse and feeling, (for instance, the willow dirge of Desdemona, and the fantastic moans of Ophelia,) and produce them in a parlor. Not but that these lyrics have a universal fitness, and a value which no time can change or circumstance diminish; but as we are looking at them simply in a dramatic view, we claim the right to suggest their dramatic force and pertinency. This effect, we might remark, is particularly and most truthfully regarded in the Lament of David over Saul and Jonathan. That monody would be shorn of its interest, if it were inserted anywhere else. The Psalms are more impersonal and more strictly religious than that, and hence their universal application; only we say, we can easily conceive that the revival of them in the order of their history, and in all the purity of their native pathos, would render them more attractive.

In connection with what we would further observe of the Psalms of David, let us again call attention to the ancient chorus,—how it was a species of melodrama, how it sang its parts, and comprised distinct vocalists and musicians, who pursued the piece in alternate rejoinder. What we would observe is, that many of the Psalms were written for the chorus, and, so to speak, were performed by it. There are some of them which it is impossible to understand without attention to this dramatic method of rehearsal. Psalm cxviii., for instance, includes several speakers. Psalm xxiv. was composed on the occasion of the transfer of the ark to the tabernacle on Mount Zion. And David, we read, and all the house of Israel, brought up the ark with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet. In the midst of the congregated nation, supported by a varied instrumental accompaniment, with the smoke of the well-fed altar surging into the skies, the chorus took up the song which had been prepared to their hand,—one group calling out, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?"—the other pealing their answer, "He that hath clean hands and a pure heart." Meanwhile, they dance before the Lord,—that is, we suppose, preserving with their feet the unities of the music.

It was during a melodrama like this, in the midst of its exciting grandeur and all-pervading transport, executed at the Feast of Tabernacles, in the open area of the Temple, when the Jews were wont to pour upon the altar water taken from the pool of Siloam, chanting at the same time the twelfth chapter of Isaiah, and one division of the chorus had just sung the words,—

"With joy we draw water from the wells of salvation,"

and before the other had replied,—it was at this moment, that Christ, as Dr. Furness very reasonably conjectures, took up the response in his own person, and overwhelmed attention by that memorable declaration, "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink; and from within him shall flow rivers of living water."

It is what we may term the dramatic proprieties that give to many of the Psalms, in the language of a recent commentator, "a greater degree of fitness, spirit, and grandeur"; and they impart to the history of David a certain decorousness of illustration and perspicuity of feature which it would not otherwise possess. They would produce upon it the same result as is achieved by the sister arts on this and other portions of the sacred volume, without marring the text or doing violence to truth. Not, let us repeat, that the Bible can be theatrized. Neither church nor playhouse can revive the forms of Judaism, without recalling its lost spirit. And that must be a bold hand, indeed, that shall undertake to mend again the shivered vail of the Temple, or collect from its ruins a ritual which He that was greater than Solomon typically denounced in foretelling the overthrow of that gorgeous pile. The Bible, as to its important verities and solemn doctrine, is transparent to the imagination and affections, and does not require the mediation of dumb show or scenic travesty.

It is not difficult to trace many familiar dramatic resemblances in the Old Testament. Shakspeare, who was certainly well read in the Bible and frequently quotes it, in the composition of Lear may have had David and Absalom in mind; the feigned madness of Hamlet has its prototype in that of David; Macbeth and the Weird Sisters have many traits in common with Saul and the Witch of Endor. Jezebel is certainly a suggestive study for Lady Macbeth. The whole story has its key in that verse where we read, "There was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel, his wife, stirred up ." As in the play, so in this Scripture, we have the unrestrained and ferocious ambition of the wife conspiring with the equally cruel, but less hardy ambition of the husband. When Macbeth had murdered sleep, when he could not screw his courage to the sticking-point, when his purpose looked green and pale, his wife stings him with taunts, scathes him with sarcasm, and by her own energy of intellect and storm of will arouses him to action. So Ahab came in heavy and displeased, and laid him down on his bed, and turned away his face, and so his wife inflames him with the sharpness of her rebuke. "Why art thou sad?" she asks. "Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? Arise, eat bread, and be merry!" The lust of regal and conjugal pride, intermixed, works in both. Jezebel, whose husband was a king, would crown him with kingly deeds. Lady Macbeth, whose husband was a prince, would see him crowned a king. Jezebel would aggrandize empire, which her unlawful marriage thereto had jeoparded. Lady Macbeth will run the risk of an unlawful marriage with empire, if she may thereby aggrandize it. Jezebel is insensible to patriotic feelings,—Lady Macbeth to civil and hospitable duties. The Zidonian woman braves the vengeance of Jehovah,—the Scotch woman dares the Powers of Darkness; the one is incited by the oracles of Baal,—the other by the predictions of witches. Lady Macbeth has more intellectual force,—Jezebel more moral decision; Lady Macbeth exhibits great imagination,—Jezebel a stronger will. As the character of Lady Macbeth is said to be relieved by the affection she shows for her husband, so is that of Jezebel by her tenderness for Ahab. The grandness of the audacity with which Jezebel sends after the prophet Elisha, saying, "So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time," has its counterpart in the lofty terror of the invocation which Lady Macbeth makes to the "spirits that wait on mortal thoughts,"—

But the last moments of these excessive characters are singularly contrasted. Jezebel scoffs at approaching retribution, and, shining with paint and dripping with jewels, is pitched to the dogs; Lady Macbeth goes like a coward to her grave, and, curdled with remorse, receives the stroke of doom.