action proper Hosain prays to be granted at the day of
judgment the key of the treasure of intercession; and the final scene
shows the fulfilment of his prayer, which opens paradise to those who
have helped the holy martyr, or who have so much as shed a single tear
for him. It will thus be seen that not only is this complex and
elaborate production unapproached in its length and in its patient
development of a long sequence of momentous events by any chronicle
history or religious drama, but that it embodies together with the
passionately cherished traditions of a great religious community the
expression of a long-lived resentment of foreign invasion--and is thus a
kind of Oberammergau play and complaint of the Nibelungs in one.

The temachas.

The other kind of Persian drama is the _temacha_ (= spectacle), a kind
of comedy or farce, sometimes called _teglid_ (disguising), performed by
wandering minstrels or _joculatores_ called _loutys_, who travel about
accompanied by their _bayaderes_, and amuse such spectators as they find
by their improvised entertainments, which seem to be on much the same
level as English "interludes." A favourite and ancient variety of the
species is the _karaguez_ or puppet-play, of which the protagonist is
called _ketchel pehlevan_ (the bald hero).

The modern Persian drama seems to have admitted Western influences, as
in the case of such comedies as _The Pleaders of the Court_, and,
avowedly, _Monsieur Jourdan and Musla'li Shah_, of whom the former
steals away the wits of young Persia by his pictures of the delights of
Paris.

Hebrew literature.

There is no necessity for any reference here to the civilization or to
the literature of the Hebrews, or to those of other Semitic peoples,
with whom the drama is either entirely wanting, or only appears as a
quite occasional and exotic growth. Dramatic elements are apparent in
two of the books of the Hebrew scripture--the _Book of Ruth_ and the
_Book of Job_, of which latter the author of _Everyman_, and Goethe in
his _Faust_, made so impressive a use.

South Seas; Peru.

From Polynesia and aboriginal America we also have isolated traces of
drama. Among these are the performances, accompanied by dancing and
intermixed with recitation and singing, of the South Sea Islanders,
first described by Captain Cook, and reintroduced to the notice of
students of comparative mythology by W. Wyatt Gill. Of the so-called
Inca drama of the Pe