Life of Robert Browning

by William Sharp

It was an eventful first of May — an eventful twelvemonth, indeed, for it was the initial year of the Victorian era, notable, too, as that wherein the Electric Telegraph was established, and, in letters, wherein a new dramatic literature had its origin. For "Strafford", already significant of a novel movement, and destined, it seems to me, to be still more significant in that great dramatic period towards which we are fast converging, was not less important to the Drama in England, as a new departure in method and radically indicative of a fresh standpoint, than "Hernani" was in France. But in literary history the day itself is doubly memorable, for in the forenoon Carlyle gave the first of his lectures in London. The play was a success, despite the shamefully inadequate acting of some of those entrusted with important parts. There was once, perhaps there were more occasions than one, where success poised like the soul of a Mohammedan on the invisible thread leading to Paradise, but on either side of which lies perdition. There was none to cry `Timbul' save Macready, except Miss Helen Faucit, who gained a brilliant triumph as Lady Carlisle. The part of Charles I. was enacted so execrably that damnation for all was again and again within measurable distance. "The Younger Vane" ranted so that a hiss, like an embodied scorn, vibrated on vagrant wings throughout the house. There was not even any extraneous aid to a fortunate impression. The house was in ill repair: the seats dusty, the "scenery" commonplace and sometimes noticeably inappropriate, the costumes and accessories almost sordid. But in the face of all this, a triumph was secured. For a brief while Macready believed that the star of regeneration had arisen. Unfortunately 'twas, in the words of a contemporary dramatic poet, "a rising sorrow splendidly forlorn." The financial condition of Covent Garden Theatre was so ruinous that not even the most successful play could have restored its doomed fortunes.

After the fifth night one of the leading actors, having received a better offer elsewhere, suddenly withdrew.

This was the last straw. A collapse forthwith occurred. In the scramble for shares in the few remaining funds every one gained something, except the author, who was to have received 12 Pounds for each performance for the first twenty-five nights, and 10 Pounds each for ten nights further. This disaster was a deep disappointment to Browning, and a by no means transitory one, for three or four years later he wrote (Advt. of "Bells and Pomegranates"): "Two or three years ago I wrote a play, about which the chief matter I much care to recollect at present is, that a pitful of good-natured people applauded it. Ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in the same way that should better reward their attention." But, except in so far as its abrupt declension from the stage hurt its author in the eyes of the critics, and possibly in those of theatrical managers, "Strafford" was certainly no failure. It has the elements of a great acting play. Everything, even the language (and here was a stumbling-block with most of the critics and criticasters), was subordinated to dramatic exigencies: though the subordination was in conformity with a novel shaping method. "Strafford" was not, however, allowed to remain unknown to those who had been unable to visit Covent Garden Theatre.* Browning's name had quite sufficient literary repute to justify a publisher in risking the issue of a drama by him, one, at any rate, that had the advantage of association with Macready's name. The Longmans issued it, and the author had the pleasure of knowing that his third poetic work was not produced at the expense of a relative, but at that of the publishers. It had but an indifferent reception, however.

—
* "It is time to deny a statement that has been repeated ad nauseam
in every notice that professes to give an account of Mr. Browning's career.
Whatever is said or not said, it is always that his plays have `failed'
on the stage. In point of fact, the three plays which he has brought out
have all succeeded, and have owed it to fortuitous circumstances
that their tenure on the boards has been comparatively short."
— E. W. Gosse, in article in `The Century Magazine'.
—

Most people who saw the performance of "Strafford" given in 1886, under the auspices of the Browning Society, were surprised as well as impressed: for few, apparently, had realised from perusal the power of the play as made manifest when acted. The secret of this is that the drama, when privily read, seems hard if not heavy in its diction, and to be so inornate, though by no means correspondingly simple, as to render any comparison between it and the dramatic work of Shakespeare out of the question. But when acted, the artistry of the play is revealed. Its intense naturalness is due in great part to the stern concision of the lines, where no word is wasted, where every sentence is fraught with the utmost it can convey. The outlines which disturbed us by their vagueness become more clear: in a word, we all see in enactment what only a few of us can discern in perusal. The play has its faults, but scarcely those of language, where the diction is noble and rhythmic, because it is, so to speak, the genuine rind of the fruit it envelops. But there are dramatic faults — primarily, in the extreme economy of the author in the presentment of his `dramatis personae', who are embodied abstractions — monomaniacs of ideas, as some one has said of Hugo's personages — rather than men as we are, with manifold complexities in endless friction or fusion. One cardinal fault is the lack of humour, which to my mind is the paramount objection to its popular acceptance. Another, is the misproportionate length of some of the speeches. Once again, there is, as in the greater portion of Browning's longer poems and dramas, a baneful equality of emphasis. The conception of Charles I. is not only obviously weak, but strangely prejudiced adversely for so keen an analyst of the soul as Browning. For what a fellow-dramatist calls this "Sunset Shadow of a King", no man or woman could abase every hope and energy. Shakespeare would never have committed the crucial mistake of making Charles the despicable deformity he is in Browning's drama. Strafford himself disappears too soon: in the fourth act there is the vacuum abhorred of dramatic propriety.

When he again comes on the scene, the charm is partly broken. But withal the play is one of remarkable vigour and beauty. It seems to me that too much has been written against it on the score of its metrical rudeness. The lines are beat out by a hammer, but in the process they are wrought clear of all needless alloy. To urge, as has been lately urged, that it lacks all human touch and is a mere intellectual fanfaronade, and that there is not once a line of poignant insight, is altogether uncritical. Readers of this mind must have forgotten or be indifferent to those lines, for example, where the wretched Charles stammeringly excuses himself to his loyal minister for his death-warrant, crying out that it was wrung from him, and begging Strafford not to curse him: or, again, that wonderfully significant line, so full of a too tardy knowledge and of concentrated scorn, where Strafford first begs the king to "be good to his children," and then, with a contempt that is almost sublime, implores, "Stay, sir, do not promise, do not swear!" The whole of the second scene in the fifth act is pure genius. The reader, or spectator, knows by this time that all hope is over: that Strafford, though all unaware, is betrayed and undone. It is a subtle dramatic ruse, that of Browning's representing him sitting in his apartment in the Tower with his young children, William and Anne, blithely singing.

Can one read and ever forget the lines giving the gay Italian rhyme, with the boy's picturesquely childish prose-accompaniment? Strafford is seated, weary and distraught: —

"`O bell' andare
Per barca in mare,
Verso la sera
Di Primavera!'
William. The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while —
`Verso la sera
Di Primavera!'
And the boat shoots from underneath the moon
Into the shadowy distance; only still
You hear the dipping oar —
`Verso la sera,'
And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone,
Music and light and all, like a lost star.
Anne. But you should sleep, father: you were to sleep.
Strafford. I do sleep, Anne; or if not — you must know
There's such a thing as . . .
William. You're too tired to sleep.
Strafford. It will come by-and-by and all day long,
In that old quiet house I told you of:
We sleep safe there.
Anne. Why not in Ireland?
Strafford. No!
Too many dreams! —"

To me this children's-song and the fleeting and now plaintive echo of it, as "Voices from Within" — "Verso la sera, Di Primavera" — in the terrible scene where Strafford learns his doom, is only to be paralleled by the song of Mariana in "Measure for Measure", wherein, likewise, is abduced in one thrilling poignant strain the quintessential part of the tense life of the whole play.

So much has been written concerning the dramas of Robert Browning — though indeed there is still room for a volume of careful criticism, dealing solely with this theme — that I have the less regret in having so inadequately to pass in review works of such poetic magnitude as those enumerated above.