A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)

by Mrs. Sutherland Orr

Young as this head:...." (vol. iii. p. 162-3.)

Charles places the crown on his father's head. A strange conflict of gratified ambition, of remorseful tenderness, of dreamy regret, stirs the failing spirit. But command and defiance flash out in the old King's last words.

This death on the stage is the only point on which Mr. Browning diverges from historical truth. King Victor lived a year longer, in a modified captivity to which his son had most unwillingly consigned him; and he is made to suggest this story in the half-insanity of his last moments as one which may be told to the world; and will give his son the appearance of reigning, while he remains, in secret, King.

"THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES" is a tragedy in five acts, fictitious in plot, but historical in character. The Druses of Lebanon are a compound of several warlike Eastern tribes, owing their religious system to a caliph of Egypt, Hakeem Biamr Allah; and probably their name to his confessor Darazi, who first attempted to promulgate his doctrine among them; some also impute to the Druse nation a dash of the blood of the Crusaders. One of their chief religious doctrines was that of divine incarnations. It seems to have originated in the pretension of Hakeem to be himself one; and as organized by the Persian mystic Hamzi, his Vizier and disciple, it included ten manifestations of this kind, of which Hakeem must have formed the last. Mr. Browning has assumed that in any great national emergency, the miracle would be expected to recur; and he has here conceived an emergency sufficiently great to call it forth.

The Druses, according to him, have colonized a small island belonging to the Knights of Rhodes, and become subject to a Prefect appointed by the Order. This Prefect has almost extirpated the Druse sheikhs, and made the remainder of the tribe victims of his cruelty and lust. The cry for rescue and retribution, if not loud, is deep. It finds a passionate response in the soul of Djabal, a son of the last Emir, who escaped as a child from the massacre of his family, and took refuge in Europe; and who now returns, with a matured purpose of patriotic and personal revenge. He has secured an ally in the young Lois de Dreux—an intended Knight of the Order, and son of a Breton Count, whose hospitality he has enjoyed—and induced him to accompany him to the islet, and pass his probation there. This, he considers, will facilitate the murder of the Prefect, which is an essential part of his plan; and he has obtained the promise of the Venetians, who are hostile to the Knights, to lend their ships for his countrymen's escape as soon as the death of the tyrant shall have set them free.

So far his course is straight. But he has scarcely returned home, when he falls in love with Anael, a Druse girl, whose devotion to her tribe is a religion, and who is determined to marry none but the man who will deliver it; and he is then seized by an impulse to heighten the act of deliverance by a semblance of more than human power. He declares himself Hakeem, the Divine founder of the sect, again present in human form, and who will again be transformed, or "exalted," so soon as by the slaughter of their tyrant he has set the Druses free. His bride will be exalted with him. The imposture succeeds only too well. "Mystic" as well as "schemer," Djabal, for a moment, deceives even himself; and when the crisis is at hand, and reason and conscience reassert themselves, the enthusiasm which he has kindled still forces him on. His only refuge is in flight; and even this proves impossible. He nerves himself, before escaping, to the Prefect's murder; and is confronted on the threshold of the Prefect's chamber, by his promised wife, who has herself done the deed.

Anael has loved Djabal, believing him Divine, with what seemed to her too human a love. She felt unworthy to share his exaltation. She has done that which her humanity disclaimed that she might no longer be so. A few moments more, and they both know that the crime has been superfluous. Lois, who also loves Anael, and hopes to win her, has procured from the Chapter of his Order the removal of the tyrant, and been appointed by it in his place; the day of Druse oppression was already over. But Djabal and Anael are inseparably united. The scorn with which she received his now inevitable confession was intense but momentary. The woman's heart in her revels in its new freedom to cherish and to protect; and she embraces her lover's shame with a far greater joy than their common triumph could have aroused in her. She is brought forward as the Prefect's murderer in presence of all the personages of the drama; and falls dead with a cry of "Hakeem" on her lips. Djabal stabs himself on her body, thus "exalting" himself to her. But he has first committed his Druses to the care of Lois, to be led back to their mountain home. He remains Hakeem for them, though branded as an impostor by the rest of the world. Directly, or indirectly, he has done the work of the deliverer.

"A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON" is a tragedy in three acts, less intricate as well as shorter than those which precede it; and historical only in the simple motive, the uncompromising action, and the mediæval code of honour, which in some degree fix its date. Mr. Browning places this somewhere in the eighteenth century.

Lord Henry Mertoun has fallen in love with Mildred Tresham. His estates adjoin those of Earl Tresham, her brother and guardian. He inherits a noble name, and an unsullied reputation; and need only offer himself to be accepted. But the youthful reverence which he entertains for Lord Tresham makes him shrink from preferring his suit; and he allows himself and Mildred to drift into a secret intimacy, which begins in all innocence, but does not end so. Then his shyness vanishes. He seeks an interview with the Earl, and obtains his joyful consent to the union. All seems to be going well. But Mildred's awakened womanhood takes the form of an overpowering remorse and shame; and these become the indirect cause of the catastrophe.

Gerard, an old retainer of the family, has witnessed Lord Mertoun's nightly visits to the castle; and, amidst a bitter conflict of feeling, he tells the Earl what he has seen. Tresham summons his sister. He is writhing under the sense of outraged family honour; but a still stronger fraternal affection commends the culprit to his mercy. He assists her confession with touching delicacy and tenderness; shows himself prepared to share her shame, to help her to live it through—to marry her to the man she loves. He insists only upon this, that Mertoun shall not be deceived: and that she shall cancel the promise of an interview which she has given him for the following day.