Part 15 (1/2)
Therefore he added to his cry for eternity and perfection, his other cry: ”Recognise your limitations, and work within them, while you must never be content with them. Give yourself in love and patience to the present labour of mankind; but never imagine for a moment that it ends on earth.” He thus combined with the thirst of the romantic for eternity the full ethical theory of life, as well as the cla.s.sic poet's determination to represent the complete aspect of human life on earth.
At this point, but with many fantastic deviations due to his prevailing romanticism, he was partly of the cla.s.sic temper. The poem of _Sordello_ is not without an image of this temper, set vigorously in contrast with Sordello himself. This is Salinguerra, who takes the world as it is, and is only anxious to do what lies before him day by day. His long soliloquy, in which for the moment he indulges in dreams, ends in the simple resolution to fight on, hour by hour, as circ.u.mstances call on him.
Browning's position, then, is a combination of the romantic and cla.s.sical, of the Christian and ethical, of the imaginative and scientific views of human life; of the temper which says, ”Here only is our life, here only our concern,” and that which says, ”Not here, but hereafter is our life.” ”Here, and hereafter,” answered Browning. ”Live within earth's limits with all your force; never give in, fight on; but always transcend your fullest action in aspiration, faith and love.”
It amuses me sometimes the way he is taken by his readers. The romantic and the Christian folk often claim him as the despiser of this world, as one who bids us live wholly for the future, or in the mystic ranges of thought and pa.s.sion. The scientific, humanitarian, and ethical folk accept that side of him which agrees with their views of human life--views which exclude G.o.d, immortality, and a world beyond--that is, they take as the whole of Browning the lesser part of his theory of life. This is not creditable to their understanding, though it is natural enough. We may accept it as an innocent example of the power of a strong bias in human nature. But it is well to remember that the romantic, Christian, mystic elements of human life are more important in Browning's eyes than the ethical or scientific; that the latter are nothing to him without the former; that the best efforts of the latter for humanity are in his belief not only hopeless, but the stuff that dreams are made of, without the former. In the combination of both is Browning's message to mankind.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] He makes a simile of this in _Sordello_. See Book iii. before his waking up in Venice, the lines beginning
”Rather say My transcendental platan!”
CHAPTER VIII
_THE DRAMAS_
Of the great poets who, not being born dramatists, have attempted to write dramas in poetry, Browning was the most persevering. I suppose that, being conscious of his remarkable power in the representation of momentary action and of states of the soul, he thought that he could harmonise into a whole the continuous action of a number of persons, and of their pa.s.sions in sword-play with one another; and then conduct to a catastrophe their interaction. But a man may be capable of writing dramatic lyrics and dramatic romances without being capable of writing a drama. Indeed, so different are the two capabilities that I think the true dramatist could not write such a lyric or romance as Browning calls dramatic; his genius would carry one or the other beyond the just limits of this kind of poetry into his own kind. And the writer of excellent lyrics and romances of this kind will be almost sure to fail in real drama. I wish, in order to avoid confusion of thought, that the term ”dramatic” were only used of poetry which belongs to drama itself. I have heard Chaucer called dramatic. It is a complete misnomer. His genius would have for ever been unable to produce a good drama. Had he lived in Elizabeth's time, he would, no doubt, have tried to write one, but he must have failed. The genius for story-telling is just the genius which is incapable of being a fine dramatist. And the opposite is also true. Shakespeare, great as his genius was, would not have been able to write a single one of the Canterbury Tales. He would have been driven into dramatising them.
Neither Tennyson nor Browning had dramatic genius--that is, the power to conceive, build, co-ordinate and finish a drama. But they thought they had, and we may pardon them for trying their hand. I can understand the hunger and thirst which beset great poets, who had, like these two men, succeeded in so many different kinds of poetry, to succeed also in the serious drama, written in poetry. It is a legitimate ambition; but poets should be acquainted with their limitations, and not waste their energies or our patience on work which they cannot do well. That men like Tennyson and Browning, who were profoundly capable of understanding what a great drama means, and is; who had read what the master-tragedians of Greece have done; who knew their Shakespeare, to say nothing of the other Elizabethan dramatists; who had seen Moliere on the stage; who must have felt how the thing ought to be done, composed, and versed; that they, having written a play like _Harold_ or _Strafford_, should really wish to stage it, or having heard and seen it on the stage should go on writing more dramas, would seem incomprehensible, were it not that power to do one thing very well is so curiously liable to self-deceit.
The writing of the first drama is not to be blamed. It would be unnatural not to try one's hand. It is the writing of the others which is amazing in men like Tennyson and Browning. They ought to have felt, being wiser than other men in poetry, that they had no true dramatic capacity. Other poets who also tried the drama did know themselves better. Byron wrote several dramas, but he made little effort to have them represented on the stage. He felt they were not fit for that; and, moreover, such scenic poems as _Manfred_ and _Cain_ were not intended for the stage, and do not claim to be dramas in that sense. To write things of this kind, making no claim to public representation, with the purpose of painting a situation of the soul, is a legitimate part of a poet's work, and among them, in Browning's work, might be cla.s.sed _In a Balcony_, which I suppose his most devoted wors.h.i.+pper would scarcely call a drama.
Walter Scott, than whom none could conduct a conversation better in a novel, or make more living the clash of various minds in a critical event, whether in a cottage or a palace; whom one would select as most likely to write a drama well--had self-knowledge enough to understand, after his early attempts, that true dramatic work was beyond his power.
Wordsworth also made one effort, and then said good-bye to drama.
Coleridge tried, and staged _Remorse_. It failed and deserved to fail.
To read it is to know that the writer had no sense of an audience in his mind as he wrote it--a fatal want in a dramatist. Even its purple patches of fine poetry and its n.o.ble melody of verse did not redeem it.
Sh.e.l.ley did better than these brethren of his, and that is curious. One would say, after reading his previous poems, that he was the least likely of men to write a true drama. Yet the _Cenci_ approaches that goal, and the fragment of _Charles the First_ makes so great a grip on the n.o.ble pa.s.sions and on the intellectual eye, and its few scenes are so well woven, that it is one of the unfulfilled longings of literature that it should have been finished. Yet Sh.e.l.ley himself gave it up. He knew, like the others, that the drama was beyond his power.
Tennyson and Browning did not so easily recognise their limits. They went on writing dramas, not for the study, which would have been natural and legitimate, but for the stage. This is a curious psychological problem, and there is only one man who could have given us, if he had chosen, a poetic study of it, and that is Browning himself. I wish, having in his mature age read _Strafford_ over, and then read his other dramas--all of them full of the same dramatic weaknesses as _Strafford_--he had a.n.a.lysed himself as ”the poet who would be a dramatist and could not.” Indeed, it is a pity he did not do this. He was capable of smiling benignly at himself, and sketching himself as if he were another man; a thing of which Tennyson, who took himself with awful seriousness, and walked with himself as a Druid might have walked in the sacred grove of Mona, was quite incapable.
However, the three important dramas of Tennyson are better, as dramas, than Browning's. That is natural enough. For Browning's dramas were written when he was young, when his knowledge of the dramatic art was small, and when his intellectual powers were not fully developed.
Tennyson wrote his when his knowledge of the Drama was great, and when his intellect had undergone years of careful training. He studied the composition and architecture of the best plays; he worked at the stage situations; he created a blank verse for his plays quite different from that he used in his poems, and a disagreeable thing it is; he introduced songs, like Shakespeare, at happy moments; he imitated the old work, and at the same time strove hard to make his own original. He laboured at the history, and _Becket_ and _Harold_ are painfully historical. History should not master a play, but the play the history. The poet who is betrayed into historical accuracy so as to injure the development of his conception in accordance with imaginative truth, is lost; and _Harold_ and _Becket_ both suffer from Tennyson falling into the hands of those critical historians whom Tennyson consulted.
Nevertheless, by dint of laborious intellectual work, but not by the imagination, not by dramatic genius, Tennyson arrived at a relative success. He did better in these long dramas than Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott or Byron. _Queen Mary_, _Harold_, and _Becket_ get along in one's mind with some swiftness when one reads them in an armchair by the fire.
Some of the characters are interesting and wrought with painful skill.
We cannot forget the pathetic image of Queen Mary, which dwells in the mind when the play has disappeared; nor the stately representation in _Becket_ of the mighty and overshadowing power of Rome, claiming as its own possession the soul of the world. But the minor characters; the action; the play of the characters, great and small, and of the action and circ.u.mstance together towards the catastrophe--these things were out of Tennyson's reach, and still more out of Browning's. They could both build up characters, and Browning better than Tennyson; they could both set two people to talk together, and by their talk to reveal their character to us; but to paint action, and the action of many men and women moving to a plotted end; to paint human life within the limits of a chosen subject, changing and tossing and unconscious of its fate, in a town, on a battlefield, in the forum, in a wild wood, in the king's palace or a shepherd farm; and to image this upon the stage, so that nothing done or said should be unmotived, unrelated to the end, or unnatural; of that they were quite incapable, and Browning more incapable than Tennyson.
There is another thing to say. The three long dramas of Tennyson are better as dramas than the long ones of Browning. But the smaller dramatic pieces of Browning are much better than the smaller ones of Tennyson. _The Promise of May_ is bad in dialogue, bad in composition, bad in delineation of character, worst of all in its subject, in its plot, and in its motives. _The Cup_, and _The Falcon_, a beautiful story beautifully written by Boccaccio, is strangely dulled, even vulgarised, by Tennyson. The _Robin Hood_ play has gracious things in it, but as a drama it is worthless, and it is impossible to forgive Tennyson for his fairies. All these small plays are dreadful examples of what a great poet may do when he works in a vehicle--if I may borrow a term from painting--for which he has no natural capacity, but for which he thinks he has. He is then like those sailors, and meets justly the same fate, who think that because they can steer a boat admirably, they can also drive a coach and four. The love scene in _Becket_ between Rosamund and Henry ill.u.s.trates my meaning. It was a subject in itself that Tennyson ought to have done well, and would probably have done well in another form of poetry; but, done in a form for which he had no genius, he did it badly. It is the worst thing in the play. Once, however, he did a short drama fairly well. _The Cup_ has some dramatic movement, its construction is clear, its verse imaginative, its scenery well conceived; and its motives are simple and easily understood. But then, as in _Becket_, Irving stood at his right hand, and advised him concerning dramatic changes and situations. Its pa.s.sion is, however, cold; it leaves us unimpressed.
On the contrary, Browning's smaller dramatic pieces--I cannot call them dramas--are much better than those of Tennyson. _Pippa Pa.s.ses_, _A Soul's Tragedy_, _In a Balcony_, stand on a much higher level, aim higher, and reach their aim more fully than Tennyson's shorter efforts. They have not the qualities which fit them for representation, but they have those which fit them for thoughtful and quiet reading. No one thinks much of the separate personalities; our chief interest is in following Browning's imagination as it invents new phases of his subject, and plays like a sword in sunlight, in and out of these phases. As poems of the soul in severe straits, made under a quasi-dramatic form, they reach a high excellence, but all that we like best in them, when we follow them as situations of the soul, we should most dislike when represented on the stage.
_Strafford_ is, naturally, the most immature of the dramas, written while he was still writing _Paracelsus_, and when he was very young. It is strange to compare the greater part of its prosaic verse with the rich poetic verse of _Paracelsus_; and this further ill.u.s.trates how much a poet suffers when he writes in a form which is not in his genius.