political. The intrigue turns on questions of government, complicated
with questions of relationship and duty. The conflict is one between
ruler and ruler, who are also father and son; and the true tragedy of
the situation seems to be this: shall Charles obey the instincts of a
son, and cede to his father's wish to resume the government he has
abdicated, or is there a higher duty which he is bound to follow, the
duty of a king to his people? The motive is a fine one, but it is
scarcely handled with Browning's accustomed skill and subtlety. King
Victor, of whose "fiery and audacious temper, unscrupulous selfishness,
profound dissimulation, and singular fertility in resources," Browning
speaks in his preface, is an impressive study of "the old age of crafty
men," the futile wiliness of decrepit and persevering craft, though we
are scarcely made to feel the once potent personality of the man, or to
understand the influence which his mere word or presence still has upon
his son. D'Ormea, who checkmates all the schemes of his old master, is a
curious and subtle study of one who "serves God at the devil's bidding,"
as he himself confesses in the cynical frankness of his continual
ironical self-criticism. After twenty years of unsuccessful intrigue, he
has learnt by experience that honesty is the best policy. But at every
step his evil reputation clogs and impedes his honest action, and the
very men whom he is now most sincere in helping are the most mistrustful
of his sincerity. Charles, whose good intentions and vacillating will
are the precise opposites of his father's strong will and selfish
purposes, is really the central figure of the play. He is one of those
men whom we at once despise and respect. Gifted with many good
qualities, he seems to lack the one thing needful to bind them together.
Polyxena, his wife, possesses just that resolution in which he is
wanting. She is a fine, firm, clear character, herself admirable, and
admirably drawn. Her "noble and right woman's manliness" (to use
Browning's phrase) is prompt to sweep away the cobwebs that entangle her
husband's path or obscure his vision of things. From first to last she
sees through Charles, Victor and D'Ormea, who neither understand one
another nor perhaps themselves; from first to last she is the same
clear-headed, decisive, consistent woman, loyal always to love, but
always yet more loyal toward truth.
7. DRAMATIC LYRICS.[17]
[Published in 1842 as No. III. of _Bells and Pomegranates_
(_Poetical Works_, 1889, dispersedly in Vols. IV., V., and
VI.).]
_Dramatic Lyrics_, Browning's first volume of short poems, contains some
of his finest, and many of his most popular pieces. The little volume,
it was only sixteen pages in length, has, however, an importance even
beyond its actual worth; for we can trace in it the germ at least of
most of Browning's subsequent work. We see in these poems for the first
time that extraordinary mastery of rhyme which Butler himself has not
excelled; that predilection for the grotesque which is shared by no
other English poet; and, not indeed for the first time, but for the
first time with any special prominence, the strong and thoughtful
humour, running up and down the whole compass of its gamut, gay and
hearty, satirical and incisive, in turn. We see also the first formal
beginning of the dramatic monologue, which, hinted at in _Pauline_,
disguised in _Paracelsus_, and developed, still disguised, in
_Sordello_, became, from the period of the _Dramatic Lyrics_ onward, the
staple form and special instrument of the poet, an instrument finely
touched, at times, by other performers, but of which he is the only
Liszt. The literal beginning of the monologue must be found in two
lyrical poems, here included, _Johannes Agricola_ and _Porphyria's
Lover_ (originally named _Madhouse Cells_), which were published in a
magazine as early as 1836, or about the time of the publication of
_Paracelsus_. These extraordinary little poems reveal not only an
imagination of intense fire and heat, but an almost finished art: a
power of conceiving subtle mental complexities with clearness and of
expressing them in a picturesque form and in perfect lyric language.
Each poem renders a single mood, and renders it completely. But it is
still only a mood: _My Last Duchess_ is a life. This poem (it was at
first one of two companion pieces called _Italy and France_) is the
first direct progenitor of _Andrea del Sarto_ and the other great blank
verse monologues; in it we see the form, save for the scarcely
appreciable presence of rhyme, already developed. The poem is a subtle
study in the jealousy of egoism, not a study so much as a creation; and
it places before us, as if bitten in by the etcher's acid, a typical
autocrat of the Renaissance, with his serene self-composure of
selfishness, quiet uncompromising cruelty, and genuine devotion to art.
The scene and the actors in this little Italian drama stand out before
us with the most natural clearness; there is some telling touch in every
line, an infinitude of cunningly careless details, instinct with
suggestion, and an appearance through it all of simple artless ease,
such as only the very finest art can give. But let the poem speak for
itself.
"My LAST DUCHESS.
"FERRARA.
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:' such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good! but thanked
Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark,'--and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
--E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!"
A poem of quite another order of art, a life-like sketch rather than a
creation, is found in _Waring_. The original of Waring was one of
Browning's friends, Alfred Domett, the author of _Ranolf and Amohia_,
then or afterwards Prime Minister in New Zealand.[18] The poem is
written in a free and familiar style, which rises from time to time into
a kind of precipitate brilliance; it is more personal in detail than
Browning often allows himself to be; and its humour is blithe and
friendly. In another poem, now known as _Soliloquy of the Spanish
Cloister_, the humour is grotesque, bitter and pungent, the humour of
hate. The snarling monk of the Spanish cloister pours out on poor,
innocent, unsuspecting "Brother Lawrence" a wealth of really choice and
masterly vituperation, not to be matched out of Shakespeare. The poem is
a clever study of that mood of active disgust which most of us have felt
toward some possibly inoffensive enough person, whose every word, look
or action jars on the nerves. It flashes, too, a brilliant comic light
on the natural tendencies of asceticism. Side by side with this poem,
under the general name of _Camp and Cloister_, was published the
vigorous and touching little ballad now known as _Incident of the French
Camp_, a stirring lyric of war, such as Browning has always been able,
rarely as he has cared, to write. The ringing _Cavalier Tunes_ (so
graphically set to music by Sir C. Villiers Stanford) strike the same
note; so, too, does the wonderfully clever little riding poem, _Through
the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr_, a _tour de force_ strung together on a
single rhyme: "As I ride, as I ride."
_Count Gismond_, the companion of _My Last Duchess_, is a vivid little
tale, told with genuine sympathy with the mediæval spirit. It is almost
like an anticipation of some of the remarkable studies of the Middle
Ages contained in Morris's first and best book of poems, _The Defence of
Guenevere_, published sixteen years later. The mediæval temper of entire
confidence in the ordeal by duel has never been better rendered than in
these two stanzas, the very kernel of the poem, spoken by the
falsely-accused girl:--
" ... Till out strode Gismond; then I knew
That I was saved. I never met
His face before, but, at first view,
I felt quite sure that God had set
Himself to Satan; who would spend
A minute's mistrust on the end?
He strode to Gauthier, in his throat
Gave him the lie, then struck his mouth
With one back-handed blow that wrote
In blood men's verdict there. North, South,
East, West, I looked. The lie was dead,
And damned, and truth stood up instead."[19]
Of the two aspects of _Queen Worship_, one, _Rudel to the Lady of
Tripoli_, has a mournfully sweet pathos in its lingering lines, and
_Cristina_, not without a touch of vivid passion, contains that personal
conviction afterwards enshrined in the lovelier casket of _Evelyn Hope_.
_Artemis Prologuizes_ is Browning's only experiment in the classic
style. The fragment was meant to form part of a longer work, which was
to take up the legend of Hippolytus at the point where Euripides dropped
it. The project was no doubt abandoned for the same wise reasons which
led Keats to leave unfinished a lovelier experiment in _Hyperion_. It
was in this poem that Browning first adopted the Greek spelling of
proper names, a practice which he has since carried out, with greater
consistency, in his transcripts from Æschylus and Euripides.
Perhaps the finest of the _Dramatic Lyrics_ is the little lyric tragedy,
_In a Gondola_, a poem which could hardly be surpassed in its perfect
union or fusion of dramatic intensity with charm and variety of music.
It was suggested by a picture of Maclise, and tells of two Venetian
lovers, watched by a certain jealous "Three"; of their brief hour of
happiness, and of the sudden vengeance of the Three. There is a brooding
sense of peril over all the blithe and flitting fancies said or sung to
one another by the lovers in their gondola; a sense, however, of future
rather than of present peril, something of a zest and a piquant pleasure
to them. The sudden tragic ending, anticipated yet unexpected, rounds
the whole with a dramatic touch of infallible instinct. I know nothing
with which the poem may be compared: its method and its magic are alike
its own. We might hear it or fancy it perhaps in one of the Ballades of
Chopin, with its entrancing harmonies, its varied and delicate
ornamentation, its under-tone of passion and sadness, its storms and
gusts of wind-like lashing notes, and the piercing shiver that thrills
through its suave sunshine.
It is hardly needful, I hope, to say anything in praise of the last of
the _Dramatic Lyrics_, the incomparable child's story of _The Pied
Piper of Hamelin_,[20] "a thing of joy for ever," as it has been well
said, "to all with the child's heart, young and old." This poem,
probably the most popular of Browning's poems, was written for William
Macready, the son of the actor, and was thrown into the volume at the
last moment, for the purpose of filling up the sheet.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 17: It should be stated here that the three collections of
miscellaneous poems published in 1842, 1845 and 1855, and named
respectively _Dramatic Lyrics_, _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, and _Men
and Women_, were in 1863 broken up and the poems re-distributed. I shall
take the volumes as they originally appeared; a reference to the list of
contents of the edition of 1863, given in the Bibliography at the end of
this book, will enable the reader to find any poem in its present
locality.]
[Footnote 18: See _Robert Browning and Alfred Domett_. Edited by F.G.
Kenyon. (Smith, Elder & Co., 1906).]
[Footnote 19: It is worth noticing, as a curious point in Browning's
technique, that in the stanza (_ababcc_) in which this and some of his
other poems are written, he almost always omits the pause customary at
the end of the fourth line, running it into the fifth, and thus
producing a novel metrical effect, such as we find used with success in
more than one poem of Carew.]
[Footnote 20: Browning's authority for the story, which is told in many
quarters, was North Wanley's _Wonders of the Little World_, 1678, and
the books there cited.]
8. THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES: A Tragedy in Five Acts.
[Published in 1843 as No. IV. of _Bells and Pomegranates_
(_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. III., pp. 167-255). Written in
1840 (in five days), and named in MS. _Mansoor the
Hierophant_. The action takes place during one day.]
The story of _The Return of the Druses_ is purely imaginary as to facts,
but it is founded on the Druse belief in divine incarnations, a belief
inculcated by the founder of their religion, Hakeem Biamr Allah, the
sixth Fatemite Caliph of Egypt, whose pretension to be an incarnation of
the Divinity was stamped in the popular mind by his mysterious
disappearance, and the expectation of his glorious return. Browning here
gives the rein to his fervid and passionate imagination; in event, in
character, in expression, the play is romantic, lyrical and Oriental.
The first line--
"The moon is carried off in purple fire,--"
sounds the note of the new music; and to the last line the emotion is
sustained at the same height. Passionate, rapid, vivid, intense and
picturesque, no stronger contrast could be imagined than that which
exists between this drama and _King Victor and King Charles_. The cause
of the difference must be sought in the different nature of the two
subjects, for one of Browning's most eminent qualities is his care in
harmonising treatment with subject. _King Victor and King Charles_ is a
modern play, dealing with human nature under all the restrictions of a
pervading conventionality and an oppressive statecraft. It deals,
moreover, with complex and weakened emotions, with the petty and prosaic
details of a secondary Western government. _The Return of the Druses_,
on the other hand, treats of human nature in its most romantic
conditions, of the mystic East, of great and immediate issues, of the
most inspiring of crises, a revolt for liberty, and a revolt under the
leadership of a "Messiah," about whom hangs a mystery, and a reputation
of more than mortal power. The characters, like the language, are all
somewhat idealised. Djabal, the protagonist, is the first instance of a
character specially fascinating to Browning as an artistic subject: the
deceiver of others or of himself who is only partially insincere, and
not altogether ill-intentioned. Djabal is an impostor almost wholly for
the sake of others. He is a patriotic Druse, the son of the last Emir,
supposed to have perished in the massacre of the Sheikhs, but preserved
when a child and educated in Europe. His sole aim is to free his nation
from its bondage, and lead it back to Lebanon. But in order to
strengthen the people's trust in him, and to lead them back in greater
glory, he pretends that he is "Hakeem," their divine, predestined
deliverer. The delusion grows upon himself; he succeeds triumphantly,
but in the very moment of triumph he loses faith in himself, the
imposture is all but discovered, and he dies, a victim of what was wrong
in him, while the salt of his noble and successful purpose keeps alive
his memory among his people. In striking contrast with Djabal stands
Loys, the frank, bright, young Breton knight, with his quick, generous
heart, his chivalrous straightforwardness of thought and action, his
earnest pity for the oppressed Druses, and his passionate love for the
Druse maiden Anael. Anael herself is one of the most "actual yet
uncommon" of the poet's women. She is a true daughter of the East, to
the finest fibre of her being. Her tender and fiery soul burns upward
through error and crime with a leaping, quenchless flame. She loves
Djabal, believing him to be "Hakeem" and divine, with a love which seems
to her too human, too much the love evoked by a mere man's nature. Her
attempt at adoration only makes him feel more keenly the fact of his
imposture. Misunderstanding his agitation and the broken words he lets
drop, she fancies he despises her, and feels impelled to do some great
deed, and so exalt herself to be worthy of him. Fired with enthusiasm,
she anticipates his crowning act, the act of liberation, and herself
slays the tyrannical Prefect. The magnificent scene in which this occurs
is the finest in the play, and there is a singularly impressive touch of
poetry and stagecraft in a certain line of it, where Djabal and Anael
meet, at the moment when she has done the deed which he is waiting to
do. Unconscious of what she has done, he tells her to go:--
"I slay him here,
And here you ruin all. Why speak you not?
Anael, the Prefect comes!" [ANAEL _screams_.]
There is drama in this stage direction. With this involuntary scream
(and the shudder and start aside one imagines, to see if the dead man
really is coming) a great actress might thrill an audience. Djabal,
horror-stricken at what she has done, confesses to her that he is no
Hakeem, but a mere man. After the first revulsion of feeling, her love,
hitherto questioned and hampered by her would-be adoration, burst forth
with a fuller flood. But she expects him to confess to the tribe. Djabal
refuses: he will carry through his scheme to the end. In the first flush
of her indignation at his unworthiness, she denounces him. In the final
scene occurs another wonderful touch of nature, a touch which reminds
one of Desdemona's "Nobody: I myself," in its divine and adorable
self-sacrifice of truth. Learning what Anael has done, Djabal is about
to confess his imposture to the people, who are still under his
fascination, when Anael, all her old love (not her old belief) returning
upon her, cries with her last breath, "HAKEEM!" and dies upon the word.
The Druses grovel before him; as he still hesitates, the trumpet of his
Venetian allies sounds. Turning to Khalil, Anael's brother, he bids him
take his place and lead the people home, accompanied and guarded by
Loys. "We follow!" cry the Druses, "now exalt thyself!"
"_Dja._ [_bends over_ ANAEL.] And last to thee!
Ah, did I dream I was to have, this day,
Exalted thee? A vain dream--has thou not
Won greater exaltation? What remains
But press to thee, exalt myself to thee?
Thus I exalt myself, set free my soul!
[_He stabs himself; as he falls, supported by_ KHALIL _and_ LOYS, _the
Venetians enter: the_ ADMIRAL _advances_.
_Admiral_. God and St. Mark for Venice! Plant the Lion!
[_At the clash of the planted standard, the Druses shout and move
tumultuously forward_, LOYS, _drawing his sword_.
_Dja._ [_leading them a few steps between_ KHALIL _and_ LOYS.] On to the
Mountain! At the Mountain, Druses! [_Dies_.]"
This superb last scene shows how well Browning is able, when he likes,
to render the tumultuous action of a clashing crowd of persons and
interests. The whole fourth and fifth acts are specially fine; every
word comes from the heart, every line is pregnant with emotion.
9. A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON: A Tragedy in Three Acts.
[Published in 1843 as No. V. of _Bells and Pomegranates_,
written in five days (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. IV., pp.
1-70). Played originally at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane,
February 11, 1843 (_Mildred_, Miss Helen Faucit; _Lord
Tresham_, Mr. Phelps). Revived by Mr. Phelps at Sadler's
Wells, November 27, 1848; played at Boston, U.S., March 16,
1885, under the management of Mr. Lawrence Barrett, who took
the part of _Lord Tresham_; at St. George's Hall, London, May
2, 1885, and at the Olympic Theatre, March 15, 1888, by the
Browning Society; and by the Independent Theatre at the Opera
Comique, June 15, 1893. The action takes place during two
days.]
_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ is the simplest, and perhaps the deepest and
finest of Browning's plays. The Browning Society's performances, and Mr.
Barrett's in America, have proved its acting capacities, its power to
hold and thrill an audience.[21] The language has a rich simplicity of
the highest dramatic value, quick with passion, pregnant with thought
and masterly in imagination; the plot and characters are perhaps more
interesting and affecting than in any other of the plays; while the
effect of the whole is impressive from its unity. The scene is English;
the time, somewhere in the eighteenth century; the motive, family honour
and dishonour. The story appeals to ready popular emotions, emotions
which, though lying nearest the surface, are also the most
deeply-rooted. The whole action is passionately pathetic, and it is
infused with a twofold tragedy, the tragedy of the sin, and that of the
misunderstanding, the last and final tragedy, which hangs on a word,
spoken only when too late to save three lives. This irony of
circumstance, while it is the source of what is saddest in human
discords, is also the motive of what has come to be the only satisfying
harmony in dramatic art. It takes the place, in our modern world, of the
Necessity of the Greeks; and is not less impressive because it arises
from the impulse and unreasoning wilfulness of man rather than from the
implacable insistency of God. It is with perfect justice, both moral and
artistic, that the fatal crisis, though mediately the result of
accident, of error, is shown to be the consequence and the punishment of
wrong. A tragedy resulting from the mistakes of the wholly innocent
would jar on our sense of right, and could never produce a legitimate
work of art. Even Oedipus suffers, not merely because he is under the
curse of a higher power, but because he is wilful, and rushes upon his
own fate. Timon suffers, not because he was generous and good, but from
the defects of his qualities. So, in this play, each of the characters
calls down upon his own head the suffering which at first seems to be a
mere caprice and confusion of chance. Mildred Tresham and Henry Mertoun,
both very young, ignorant and unguarded, have loved. They attempt a late
reparation, apparently with success, but the hasty suspicion of Lord
Tresham, Mildred's brother, diverted indeed into a wrong channel, brings
down on both a terrible retribution. Tresham, who shares the ruin he
causes, feels, too, that his punishment is his due. He has acted without
pausing to consider, and he is called on to pay the penalty of "evil
wrought by want of thought."
The character of Mildred, a woman "more sinned against than sinning," is
exquisitely and tenderly drawn. We see her, and we see and feel
"The good and tender heart,
Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,
How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,
How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free
As light where friends are"--
as her brother, in a memorable passage, describes her. She is so
thrillingly alive, so beautiful and individual, so pathetic and pitiful
in her desolation. Every word she speaks comes straight from her heart
to ours. "I know nothing that is so affecting," wrote Dickens in a
letter to Forster, "nothing in any book I have ever read, as Mildred's
recurrence to that 'I was so young--had no mother.' I know no love like
it, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its
conception like it."[22] Not till Pompilia do we find so pathetic a
portrait of a woman.