Macready was not only a notable figure on the stage at this period, but he was also (what every great actor must be) a man of thought, intense sensibility, and wide culture. Soon after Macready had appeared in Talfourd’s “Ion” (the première being on the playwright’s birthday), Talfourd gave a supper at his house, at which Browning for the first time met Wordsworth and Landor. Macready himself sat between these two illustrious poets, with Browning opposite to him. The guests included Ellen Tree, Miss Mitford, and Forster. Macready, recording this night in his diary, writes of “Wordsworth who pinned me.” Landor, it seems, talked of constructing drama, and said he “had not the faculty,” that he “could only set persons to talking; all the rest was chance.” But an ever remembered moment came for the young poet when the host proposed a toast to the author of “Paracelsus,” and Wordsworth, rising, said: “I am proud to drink to your health, Mr. Browning,” and Landor bowed with his inimitable, courteous grace, raising his glass to his lips. For some years, whenever Wordsworth visited London, Forster invited Browning to meet him. The younger poet was never an enthusiast in his mild friendship for the elder, although in after years (1875) he replied to a question by Rev. A. B. Grosart, the editor of Wordsworth’s works, that while in hasty youth he did “presume to use the great and venerated personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter’s model,” he intended in “The Lost Leader” no portrait of the entire man. While Wordsworth’s political attitude did not please the young disciple of Shelley, for Landor he conceived the most profound admiration and sympathetic affection. It was a striking sequel to this youthful attraction that in Landor’s desolate old age it should be Browning who tenderly cared for him, and surrounded his last days with unfailing comfort and solicitude.
At this memorable supper, just as Browning was about to take his leave, Macready laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, saying earnestly: “Write a play for me, and keep me from going to America.” The thought appealed to the poet, who replied: “Shall it be historical and English? What do you say to ‘Strafford’ for a subject?” Forster was then bringing out his biography of Strafford, on which Browning had assisted, so that the theme had already engaged his imagination. A few days after the supper Macready records in his diary receiving a note from Browning and adds: “What can I say upon it? It was a tribute which remunerated me for the annoyances and cares of years; it was one of the very highest, may I not say the highest, honor I have through life received.”
A certain temperamental sympathy between the two men is evident, though Macready sounded no such fathomless depths as lay, however unsuspected, in Browning; but Macready gives many indications of poetic sympathies, as, for instance, when he records in his diary how he had been looking through Coleridge’s translation of Wallenstein, “abounding with noble passages and beautiful scenes,” to see if it would lend itself to stage representation.
On November 19 of this autumn Macready notes in his journal that Browning came that night to bring his tragedy of “Strafford,” of which the fourth act was incomplete. “I requested him to write in the plot of what was deficient,” says Macready, and drove to the Garrick Club while Browning wrote out this story. Later, there was a morning call from Browning, who gave him an interesting old print of Richard, from some tapestry, and they talked of “La Vallière.” All the time we get glimpses of an interesting circle: Bulwer and Forster call, and they discuss Cromwell; Bulwer’s play of “Virginius” is in rehearsal; Macready acts Cardinal Wolsey; there is a dinner at Lady Blessington’s, where are met Lord Canterbury, Count D’Orsay, Bulwer, Trelawney, and Proctor; there is a call on Miss Martineau, and meetings with Thackeray and Dickens; Kenyon appears in the intersecting circles; Marston (the father of the blind poet) writes his play, “The Patrician’s Daughter”; Mr. Longfellow, “a Professor at one of the U. S. Universities,” appears on the scene, and there is a dinner at which “Mr. and Mrs. N. P. Willis sat next to Longfellow.” On a night when Browning came with some alterations for “Strafford,” a stranger called, “saying he was a Greek, a great lover of the drama; I introduced Browning to him as a great tragic poet,” records Macready, “and the youth wrote down his name, telling us he was setting off for Athens directly.”
The rehearsals of “Strafford” came on, but Macready seems already to have had misgivings. “In Shakespeare,” he writes, “the great poet has only introduced such events as act on the individuals concerned; but in Browning’s play we have a long scene of passion—upon what? A plan destroyed, a parliament dissolved....” It is easy to see how Browningesque this was; for to the poet no events of the objective life were so real and significant as those of the purely mental drama of thought, feeling, and purpose. The rehearsals were, however, gratifying to the author, it seems, for Macready records in his diary (that recurs like the chorus in a Greek tragedy) that he was happy “with the extreme delight Browning testified at the rehearsal of my part, which he said to him was a full recompense for having written the play, as he had seen his utmost hopes of character perfectly embodied.” The play was performed at the Covent Garden Theater on the night of May 3, 1837.
Both Edmund Gosse and William Sharp deny that Browning’s plays failed on the stage; at all events, with each attempt there were untoward circumstances which alone would have contributed to or even doomed a play to a short tenure.
In 1886 “Strafford” was produced in London under the auspices of the Browning Society, and the real power of the play surprised as well as deeply impressed the audiences who saw it. But “Pauline,” “Paracelsus,” and “Strafford” all have a peculiar element of reminiscent importance, if it may be so termed, in that they were the forerunners, the indications of the great work to come.
There is no dramatic poem of Browning’s that has not passages of superb acting effects, as well as psychological fascinations for the thinker; and the future years were to touch him with new power to produce work whose dramatic power lives in imperishable significance. “Strafford” had a run of only five nights at this first time of its production; Macready received and accepted an offer to go to America, and other things happened. Browning became absorbed in his “Sordello,” and suddenly, on Good Friday of 1838, he sailed for Venice, “intending to finish my poem among the scenes it describes,” he wrote to John Robertson, who had been introduced to Browning by Miss Martineau. On a sailing ship, bound for Trieste, the poet found himself the only passenger. It was on this voyage, while between Gibraltar and Naples, that he wrote “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.” It was written on deck, penciled on the fly-leaf of Bartoli’s De’ Simboli trasportati al Morale. When Dr. Corson first visited Browning in 1881, in his London home in Warwick Crescent, Browning showed his guest this identical copy of the book, with the penciled poem on the fly-leaves, of which Dr. Corson said, in a private letter to a friend:
“One book in the library I was particularly interested in,—Bartoli’s Simboli, or, rather, in what the poet had written in pencil on its fly-leaves, front and back, namely, ‘How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix.’”
Dr. Corson added that he had been so often asked as to what this “good news” was, that he put the question to Mr. Browning, who replied: