er seven days of silence
the real drama opens.

VI

Of the drama itself I shall attempt no analysis, referring you
for this to the two books from which I have already quoted. My
purpose being merely to persuade you that this surpassing poem
can be studied, and ought to be studied, as literature, I shall
content myself with turning it (so to speak) once or twice in my
hand and glancing one or two facets at you.

To begin with, then, you will not have failed to notice, in the
setting out of the drama, a curious resemblance between "Job" and
the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus. The curtain in each play lifts on
a figure solitary, tortured (for no reason that seems good to us)
by a higher will which, we are told, is God's. The chorus of
Sea-nymphs in the opening of the Greek play bears no small
resemblance in attitude of mind to job's three friends. When job
at length breaks the intolerable silence with

Let the day perish wherein I was born,
And the night which said, There is a man child conceived.

he uses just such an outburst as Prometheus: and, as he is
answered by his friends, so the Nymphs at once exclaim to
Prometheus

Seest thou not that thou hast sinned?

But at once, for anyone with a sense of comparative literature,
is set up a comparison between the persistent West and the
persistent East; between the fiery energising rebel and the
patient victim. Of these two, both good, one will dare everything
to release mankind from thrall; the other will submit, and
justify himself--mankind too, if it may hap--by submission.

At once this difference is seen to give a difference of form to
the drama. Our poem is purely static. Some critics can detect
little individuality in Job's three friends, to distinguish them.
For my part I find Eliphaz more of a personage than the other
two; grander in the volume of his mind, securer in wisdom; as I
find Zophar rather noticeably a mean-minded greybeard, and Bildad
a man of the stand-no-nonsense kind. But, to tell the truth, I
prefer not to search for individuality in these men: I prefer to
see them as three figures with eyes of stone almost expressionless.
For in truth they are the conventions, all through,--the orthodox
men--addressing Job, the reality; and their words come to this:

Thou sufferest, therefore must have sinned.
All suffering is, must be a judgment upon sin.
Else God is not righteous.

They are statuesque, as the drama is static. The s