Part 3 (1/2)

[Footnote 22: Mrs Orr, ”Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning,” p 54 (1st ed)]

[Footnote 23: _A Soul's Tragedy_ ritten in 1843 or 1844, and revised immediately before publication See Letters of RB and EBB, i 474]

[Footnote 24: Letters of DG Rossetti to Williaham, p 168]

[Footnote 25: The above state; but on certain points his memory misled him Whoever is interested in the matter should consult Professor Lounsbury's valuable article ”A Philistine View of a Browning Play” in _The Atlantic Monthly_, December 1899, where questions are raised and soeniously made]

[Footnote 26: An uncle seems to have accompanied him See _Letters of RB and EBB_, i 57: and (for Shelley's Grave) i 292; for ”Sordello” at Naples, i, 349]

[Footnote 27: In later years no friendshi+p existed between the two We read in Mr WM Rossetti's Diary for 1869, ”4th July I see Browning dislikes Trelawny quite as much as Trelawny dislikes him (which is not a little)” _Rossetti Papers_, p 401]

[Footnote 28: See Mr R Holt Hutton's article on Browning in ”Essays Theological and Literary”]

[Footnote 29: Luria withdraws from life ”to prevent the har him” _Letters of RB and EBB_, i 427]

Chapter IV

The Maker of Plays--_(Continued)_

The women of the dramas, with one or two exceptions, are composed of fewer elements than the men A variety of types is presented, but each personality is somewhat constrained and controlled by its idea; the free movement, the iridescence, the variety in oneness, the incalculable multiplicity in unity, of real character are not always present They adree which places them at a distance from the inexplicable open secrets of Shakespeare's creation; they lack the simple mysteriousness, the transparent obscurity of nature With a master-key the chambers of their souls can one after another be unlocked Otti in the effrontery of sin, yet including the possibility, which Browning conceives as existing at the extre translated into a higher forht of self Anael, of _The Return of the Druses_, is pure and measureless devotion The cry of ”Hakeem!” as she falls, is not an act of faith but of love; it pierces through the shadow of the material falsehood to her one illuminated truth of absolute love, like that other falsehood which sanctifies the dying lips of Desdemona The sin of Mildred is the very innocence of sin, and does not really alter the siiving, with no limitation, whatever may prove a bounty to him whom she loves:--

Come what, come will, You have been happy

The reuish of one wholly unlearned in the dark colours of guilt This tragedy of Mildred and Mertoun is the _Ro's cycle of dramas But Mildred's cousin Guendolen, by virtue of her swift, woirlhood, is a kinswohter of Leonato in a cohter

Polyxena, the Queen of Sardinia--a daughter not of Italy but of the Rhineland--is, in her degree, an eighteenth century representative of the worave, resolute, wise, and possessing the authority of wisdoether like loyal coly but also simply, conceived as the helpmate, the counsellor, and, in the old sense of the word, the co, as happens at tiles with her wifely affection for Charles, who indeed uardian-angel she remembers on these occasions that he is only a row ielhood; he will by and by discover his error, and she can bide her ti, Polyxena is too constantly and uniforht that opaline, shi+fting hues should not disturb our impression of a character whose special virtue is steadfastness The Queen of the English Charles, who is eager to counsel, and always in her petulance and folly to counsel ill, is slightly sketched; but she may be thanked for one admirable speech--her first--when Strafford, worn and fevered in the royal service, has just arrived fro is encountered by her:--

Is it over then?

Why he looks yellower than ever! Well At least we shall not hear eternally Of service--services: he's paid at least

The Lady Carlisle of the saination--had the play been Elizabethan or Jacobean would have followed her lord in a page's dress, have lived on half a suishi+ngly and happily upon his sword; she is not quite unreal, nor yet quite real; soe property and not wholly a living woe of the boards--and as such effective--than a Shakespearian piece of nature The theatrical limbo to which such almost but not quite embodied shadows ulti's dramatic scene of 1853, _In a Balcony_, he created with unqualified success ”a very woman” in the enamoured Queen, whose heart at fifty years beats onlylovers, Constance and Norbert, are a highly meritorious pair, who express their passion in excellent and eloquent periods; we have seen their like before, and since But the Queen, with her unslaked thirst for the visionary wells under the pal sands, is an original and tragic figure--a royal Mlle de Lespinasse, and croith fiery and ilare” of Constance with the glare of ”a panther,” the Queen is large-hearted The guards, it is true, arrive as the curtain falls; but those readers who have wasted their tender e persons, whom mother Nature can easily replace, are ht, she will rise next hty years old, and her passion will, heroically slay itself in an act of generosity[31] Little more, however, than a situation is represented in this drath portraits of women in the dramas, the finest piece of work is the portrait of the happiest woer duchess, but ever

Our lady of dear Ravestein

Colo, irreducible to a formula, e know the better because there is always in her more of exquisite womanhood to be discovered Even the too fortunate Valence--all readers of his own sexher anew

In the developht of the theatre and its requiree of the mind _Strafford_, his first play, is the work of a novice, who has little of the instinct for theatrical effect, but who sets his brain to invent striking tableaux, to prepare surprises, to exhibit impressive attitudes, to calculate--not always successfully--the angle of a speech, so that itscene expounds the situation In the second Wentworth and Py surprises thee tradition requires; as Wentworth withdraws the Queen enters to unmake what he hasthe sentimental weakness of Charles:

Come, dearest!--look, the little fairy, now That cannot reach edy, with e actor, which yet is somehow not always even theatrically happy

The pathos of the closing scene where Strafford is discovered in The Tower, sitting with his children, is theatrical pathos of the most correct kind, and each little speech of little William and little Anne is uttered asin every word ”See, hoe, poor innocents, heighten the pity of it” The hastily written _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ is, perhaps, of Browning's dramas the best fitted for theatrical representation Yet it is incurably weak in the es are al up his ladder of ropes had paused, like Mertoun, to salute his mistress with a tenor morceau from the opera, it is to be feared that runaways'

and other eyes would not have winked, and that old Capulet would have coown, prepared to hasten the catastrophe with a long sword Yet _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, with its breadth of outline, its striking situations, and its mastery of the eleives us assurance that Browning ht have taken a place of considerable distinction had he been born in an age of great drah in a less degree--are Webster's _duchess of Malfi_, and Shakespeare's _Cy adopted, and no doubt deliberately, a plain, unfigured and uncoloured style, as suiting both the characters and the historical subject The political background of this play and that of _Strafford_ hardly entitles either dra was a student of history, but it was individuals and not society that interested hiland and the affairs of Sardinia serve to throw out the figures of the chief _dramatis persons_; those affairs are not considered for their own sake