Robert Browning

by Edward Dowden

Outsmoothing galingale and watermint,
Its mat-floor,

and in presence of the little temple Baccheion, with its sanctities of religion and of art. By a happy and original device the transcript of the Alkestis is much more than a translation; it is a translation rendered into dramatic action—for we see and hear the performers and they are no longer masked—and this is accompanied with a commentary or an interpretation. Never was a more graceful apology for the function of the critic put forward than that of Balaustion:

'Tis the poet speaks:
But if I, too, should try and speak at times,
Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew—
Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake!

Browning has not often played the part of a critic, and the interpretation of a poet's work by a poet has the double value of throwing light upon the mind of the original writer and the mind of his commentator.

The life of mortals and the life of the immortal gods are brought into a beautiful relation throughout the play. It is pre-eminently human in its grief and in its joy; yet at every point the divine care, the divine help surrounds and supports the children of earth, with their transitory tears and smiles. Apollo has been a herdsman in the service of Admetos; Herakles, most human of demigods, is the king's friend and guest. The interest of the play for Browning lay especially in three things—the pure self-sacrifice of the heroine, devotion embodied in one supreme deed; and no one can heighten the effect with which Euripides has rendered this; secondly, the joyous, beneficent strength of Herakles, and this Browning has felt in a peculiar degree, and by his commentary has placed it in higher relief; and thirdly, the purification and elevation through suffering of the character of Admetos; here it would be rash to assert that Browning has not divined the intention of Euripides, but certainly he has added something of his own. It has been maintained that Browning's interpretation of the spiritual significance of the drama is a beautiful perversion of the purpose of the Greek poet; that Admetos needs no purification; that in accepting his wife's offer to be his substitute in dying, the king was no craven but a king who recognised duty to the state as his highest duty. The general feeling of readers of the play does not fall in with this ingenious plea. Browning, as appears from his imagined recast of the theme, which follows the transcript, had considered and rejected it. If Admetos is to be in some degree justified, it can only be by bearing in mind that the fact by which he shall himself escape from death is of Apollo's institution, and that obedience to the purpose of Apollo rendered self-preservation a kind of virtue. But Admetos makes no such defence of his action when replying to the reproaches of his father, and he anticipates that the verdict of the world will be against him. Browning undoubtedly presses the case against Admetos far more strongly than does Euripides, who seems to hold that a man weak in one respect, weak when brought to face the test of death, may yet be strong in the heroic mastery of grief which is imposed upon him by the duties of hospitality. Readers of the Winter's Tale have sometimes wondered whether there could be much rapture of joy in the heart of the silent Hermione when she received back her unworthy husband. If Admetos remained at the close of the play what he is understood by Browning to have been at its opening, reunion with a self-lover so base could hardly have flushed with gladness the spirit of Alkestis just escaped from the shades.[^[111]] But Alkestis, who had proved her own loyalty by deeds, values deeds more than words. When dying she had put her love into an act, and had refrained from mere words of wifely tenderness; death put an end to her services to her husband; she felt towards him as any wife, if Browning's earlier poem be true, may feel to any husband; but still she could render a service to her children, and she exacts from Admetos the promise that he will never place a stepmother over them. His allegiance to this vow is an act, and it shall be for Alkestis the test of his entire loyalty. And the good Herakles, who enjoys a glorious jest amazingly, and who by that jest can benevolently retort upon Admetos for his concealment of Alkestis' death—for now the position is reversed and the king shall receive her living, and yet believe her dead—Herakles contrives to put Admetos to that precise test which is alone sufficient to assure Alkestis of his fidelity. Words are words; but here is a deed, and Admetos not only adheres to his pledge, but demonstrates to her that for him to violate it is impossible. She may well accept him as at length proved to be her very own.

Browning, who delights to show how good is brought out of evil, or what appears such to mortal eyes, is not content with this. He must trace the whole process of the purification of the soul of Admetos, by sorrow and its cruel yet beneficent reality, and in his commentary he emphasises each point of development in that process. When his wife lies at the point of death the sorrow of Admetos is not insincere, but there was a childishness in it, for he would not confront the fact that the event was of his own election. Presently she has departed, and he begins to taste the truth, to distinguish between a sorrow rehearsed in fancy and endured in fact. In greeting Herakles he rises to a manlier strain, puts tears away, and accepts the realities of life and death; he will not add ill to ill, as the sentimentalist does, but will be just to the rights of earth that remain; he catches some genuine strength from the magnanimous presence of the hero-god. He renders duty to the dead; is quieted; and enters more and more into the sternness of his solitary wayfaring. In dealing with the ignoble wrangle with old Pheres the critic is hard set; but Balaustion, speaking as interpreter for Browning, explains that for a little the king lapses back from the firmer foothold which he had attained. Perhaps it would have been wiser to admit that Euripides has marred his own work by this grim tragic-comic encounter of crabbed age and youth. But it is true that one who has much to give, like Alkestis, gives freely; and one who has little to give, like Pheres, clutches that little desperately and is starved not only in possessions but in soul. For Browning the significance of the scene lies in the idea, which if not just is ingenious, that the encounter with Pheres has an educational value for Admetos; he detests his father because he sees in him an image of his own egoism, and thus he learns more profoundly to hate his baser self. When the body of Alkestis has been borne away and the king re-enters his desolate halls the full truth breaks in upon him; nothing can be as it has been before—"He stared at the impossible mad life"; he has learnt that life, which yet shall be rightly lived, is a harder thing than death:

He was beginning to be like his wife.

And those around him felt that having descended in grief so far to the truth of things, he could not but return to the light an altered and a better man. Instructed so deeply in the realities of sorrow, Admetos is at last made worthy to receive the blessed realities of joy with the words,

When I betray her, though she is no more,
May I die.

The regeneration of Admetos is accomplished. How much in all this exposition is derived from the play, how much is added to it, may be left for the consideration of the reader who will compare the original with the transcript.