[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ] Transcriber's comments on the preparation of this e-text:
Closing brackets i.e. ">[" have been added to some of the stage directions.
Leading blanks are reproduced from the printed text. Eg.:
GUENDOLEN. Where are you taking me?
TRESHAM. He fell just here.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
ROBERT BROWNING stands, in respect to his origin and his career, in marked contrast to the two aristocratic poets beside whose dramas his "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is here printed. His father was a bank clerk and a dissenter at a time when dissent meant exclusion from Society; the poet went neither to one of the great public schools nor to Oxford or Cambridge; and no breath of scandal touched his name. Born in London in 1812, he was educated largely by private tutors, and spent two years at London University, but the influence of his father, a man of wide reading and cultivated tastes, was probably the most important element in his early training. He drew well, was something of a musician, and wrote verses from an early age, though it was the accidental reading of a volume of Shelley which first kindled his real inspiration. This indebtedness is beautifully acknowledged in his first published poem, "Pauline" (1833).
Apart from frequent visits to Italy, there is little of incident to chronicle in Browning's life, with the one great exception of his more than fortunate marriage in 1846 to Elizabeth Barrett, the greatest of English poetesses.