A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 6

The scene is varied by groups of students, of poor girls, and of Austrian policemen, all joking and chatting in characteristic fashion, and all playing their part in the story; and also by the appearance of Bluphocks, an English adventurer and spy, who is in league with the police for the detection of Luigi, and with the Intendant for Pippa's ruin; and the saving effect of Pippa's songs is the more dramatic that it becomes on one occasion the means of betraying herself. She goes home at sunset, unconscious of all she has effected and escaped, and wondering how near she may ever come to touching for good or evil the lives with which her fancy has been identifying her. "So far, perhaps,"

she says to herself, "that the silk she will wind to-morrow may some day serve to border Ottima's cloak. And if it be only this!"

"All service ranks the same with G.o.d-- With G.o.d, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first." (vol. iii. p. 79.)

These are her last words as she lies down to sleep.

Pippa's songs are not impressive in themselves. They are made so in every case by the condition of her hearer's mind; and the idea of the story is obvious, besides being partly stated in the heroine's own words. No man is "great" or "small" in the sight of G.o.d--each life being in its own way the centre of creation. Nothing should be "great" or "small" in the sight of man; since it depends on personal feeling, or individual circ.u.mstance, whether a given thing will prove one or the other.

"KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES" is an historical tragedy in two divisions and four parts, of which the time is 1730 and 31, and the place the castle of Rivoli near Turin. The episode which it records may be read in any chronicle of the period; and Mr. Browning adds a preface, in which he justifies his own view of the characters and motives involved in it.

King Victor II. (first King of Sardinia) was sixty-four years old, and had been nominally a ruler from the age of ten, when suddenly (1730) he abdicated in favour of his son Charles. The Queen was dead, and he had privately married a lady of the Court, to whom he had been long attached; and the desire to acknowledge this union, combined with what seems to have been a premature old age, might sufficiently have explained the abdication; but Mr. Browning adopts the idea, which for a time found favour, that it had a deeper cause: that the King's intriguing ambition had involved him in many difficulties, and he had devised this plan for eluding them.

Charles has become his father's heir through the death of an older and better loved son. He has been thrust into the shade by the favourite, now Victor's wife, and by the Minister d'Ormea; his sensitive nature crushed into weakness, his loftiness of purpose never called into play.

He seems precisely the person of whom to make at once a screen and a tool. But he has scarcely been crowned when it is evident that he will be neither. He a.s.sumes the character of king at the same time as the function; and by his honesty, courage, and humanity, restores the prosperity of his country, and the honour of his house. He secures even the devotion, interested though it be, of the unscrupulous d'Ormea himself.

Victor, however, is restless in his obscurity; and by the end of the year is scheming for the recovery of his crown. He presents himself before his son, and demands that it be restored to him; denouncing what he considers the weakness of King Charles' rule. Charles refuses, gently but firmly, to abandon what has become for him the post of duty; and King Victor departs, to conspire openly against him. D'Ormea is active in detecting the conspiracy and unveiling it; and Victor is brought back to the palace, this time a prisoner.

But Charles does not receive him as such. His filial piety is outraged by the unnatural conflict; and his wife Polixena has vainly tried to convince him that there is a higher because less obvious virtue in resisting than in giving way. He once more acknowledges his father as King. And both he and his wife are soon aware that in doing so, he is only humouring the caprice of a dying man. "_I have no friend in the wide world_ is the old King's cry. Give me what I have no power to take from you."

"So few years give it quietly, My son! It will drop from me. See you not?

A crown's unlike a sword to give away-- That, let a strong hand to a weak hand give!

But crowns should slip from palsied brows to heads 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, fict.i.tious 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 a.s.sumed 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 l.u.s.t. The cry for rescue and retribution, if not loud, is deep. It finds a pa.s.sionate response in the soul of Djabal, a son of the last Emir, who escaped as a child from the ma.s.sacre 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 pa.s.s 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 rea.s.sert 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 mediaeval 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sists 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.

Mildred tacitly owns her guilt, and invokes any punishment her brother may adjudge to it; but she will not betray her lover by confessing his name, and she will not forbid Mertoun to come. The Earl's mind does not connect the two. No extenuating circ.u.mstance suggests itself. He has loved his young sister with a chivalrous admiration and trust; and he is one of those men to whom a blot in the 'scutcheon is only less terrible than the knowledge that such trust has been misplaced. He is stung to madness by what seems this crowning proof of his sister's depravity; and by the thought of him who has thus corrupted her. He surprises Mertoun on the way to the last stolen visit to his love; and, before there has been time for an explanation, challenges and kills him.

The reaction of feeling begins when he perceives that Mertoun has allowed himself to be killed. Remorse and sorrow deepen into despair as the dying youth gasps out the story of his constant love, of his boyish error--of his manly desire of reparation; above all, as he reminds his hearer of the sister whose happiness he has slain; and asks if he has done right to set his "thoughtless foot" upon them both, and say as they perish--

"... Had I thought, 'All had gone otherwise'...."

(vol iv. p. 59.)

Mildred is waiting for her lover. The usual signal has been made: the lighted purple pane of a painted window sends forth its beckoning gleam.

But Mertoun does not appear; and as the moments pa.s.s, a despairing apathy steals over her, which is only the completed certainty of her doom. She has never believed in the promised happiness. In a strange process of self-consciousness she has realized at once the moral and the natural consequences of her transgression; the lost peace of conscience, the lost morning of her love. Her paramount desire has been for expiation and rest. In one more pang they are coming. Lord Tresham breaks in on her solitude. His empty scabbard shows what he has done.

But she soon sees that reproach is unnecessary, and that Mertoun's death is avenged. It is best so. The cloud has lifted. The friend and the brother are one in heart again. She dies because her own heart is broken, but forgiving her brother, and blessing him. He has taken poison, and survives her by a few minutes only.

Mildred has a firm friend in her cousin Gwendolen: a quick-witted, true-hearted woman, the betrothed of Austin Tresham, who is next heir to the earldom. She alone has guessed the true state of the case, and, with the help of Austin, would have averted the tragedy, if Lord Tresham's precipitate pa.s.sion had not rendered this impossible. These two are in no need of their dying kinsman's warning, to remember, if a blot should again come in the 'scutcheon, that "vengeance is G.o.d's, not man's."

This tragedy was performed in 1843, at Drury Lane Theatre, during the ownership of Macready; in 1848, at "Sadlers Wells," under the direction of Mr. Phelps, who had played the part of Lord Tresham in the Drury Lane performance.

COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY is a play in five acts, of which the scene is the palace at Juliers, the time 16--. Colombe of Ravestein is ostensibly d.u.c.h.ess of Juliers and Cleves; but her t.i.tle is neutralized by the Salic law under which the Duchy is held; and though the Duke, her late father, has wished to evade it in her behalf, those about her are aware that he had no power to do so, and that the legal claimant, her cousin, may at any moment a.s.sert his rights. This happens on the first anniversary of her accession, which is also her birthday.

Prince Berthold is to arrive in a few hours. He has sent a letter before him from which Colombe will learn her fate; and the handful of courtiers who have stayed to see the drama out are disputing as to who shall deliver it. Valence, an advocate of Cleves, arrives at this juncture, with a pet.i.tion from his townspeople who are starving; and is allowed to place it in the d.u.c.h.ess's hands, on condition of presenting the Prince's letter at the same time. He does this in ignorance of its contents; he is very indignant when he knows them; and the incident naturally const.i.tutes him Colombe's adviser and friend; while the reverence with which he owns himself her subject, also determines her if possible to remain his sovereign.

Prince Berthold arrives unprepared for any show of resistance; and is a little startled to find that Colombe defies him, and that one of her courtiers (not choosing to be outdone by Valence) has the courage to tell him so; but he treats the d.u.c.h.ess and her adviser with all the courtesy of a man whose right is secure; and Valence, to whom he entrusts his credentials, is soon convinced that it is so. But he has a far-sighted ambition which keeps him alive to all possible risks: and it occurs to him as wiser to secure the little sovereignty by marrying its heiress than by dispossessing her. He desires Valence to convey to the young d.u.c.h.ess the offer of his hand. The offer is worth considering, since as he a.s.serts, it may mean the Empire: to which the Duchy is, in his case, but a necessary stepping-stone; and Valence, who has loved Colombe since his first glimpse of her at Cleves, a year ago; who has begun to hope that his affection is returned; and who knows that the Prince's message is not only a test of her higher nature, but a snare to it, feels nevertheless bound to leave her choice free. This choice lies clearly between love and power; for Berthold parades a cynicism half affected, half real; and on being questioned as to his feeling for the lady, has dismissed the question as irrelevant.

Valence is, throughout the play, an advocate in the best sense of the word. As he has pleaded the wrongs of an oppressed people, he sets forth the happiness of a successful prince--the happiness which the young d.u.c.h.ess is invited to share; and he departs from all the conventionalities of fiction, by showing her the true poetry, not the artificial splendours, of worldly success. Colombe is almost as grateful as the young Prince could desire, for she a.s.sumes that he has fallen in love with her, whether he says so or not; and here, too, Valence must speak the truth. "The Prince does not love her." "How does he know this?" "He knows it by the insight of one who does love." Astonished, vaguely pained, Colombe questions him as to the object of his attachment, and, in probably real ignorance of who it can be, draws him on to a confession. For a moment she is disenchanted. "So much unselfish devotion to turn out merely love! She will at all events see Valence's rival."

In the last act she discusses the Prince's proposal with himself. He frankly rests it on its advantages for both. He has much to say in favour of such an understanding, and reminds his listener as she questions and temporizes, that if he gives no heart he also asks none.

The courtiers now see their opportunity. They inform the Prince that by her late father's will the d.u.c.h.ess forfeits her rights in the event of marrying a subject. They point to such a marriage as a natural result of the loving service which Valence has this day rendered to her, and the love which is its only fitting reward. And Colombe, listening to the just if treacherous praises of this man, feels no longer "sure" that she does "not love him." Valence is summoned; requested to a.s.sert his claim or to deny it; given to understand that the lady's interests demand the latter course. The manly dignity and exalted tenderness with which he resigns her convert, as it seems, the doubt into certainty; and Colombe takes him on this her birthday at the sacrifice of "Juliers and the world."

Berthold has a confidant, Melchior, a learned and thoughtful man, who is affectionately attached to the young prince, and who views with regret the easy worldly successes which neutralize his higher gifts. Melchior has also appreciated the genuineness of Colombe's nature, and conducted the last interview with Valence as one who desired that loyalty should be attested and love triumph. He now turns to Berthold with what seems an appeal to his generosity. But Berthold cannot afford to be generous.

As he reminds the happy bride before him he wants her duchy much more than she does. He is, however, the sadder, and perhaps the wiser, for having found this out.

"Colombe's Birthday" was performed in 1853, at the Haymarket Theatre; in 1853 or '54, in the United States, at Boston. The part of Colombe was taken, as had been those of Mildred Tresham and Lady Carlisle, by Miss Helen Faucit, now Lady Martin.

"A SOUL'S TRAGEDY" brings us near to the period of the "Men and Women;"

and displays, for the first time in Mr. Browning's work, a situation quite dramatic in itself, but which is nevertheless made by the characters, and imagined for them. It is a story of moral retrogression; but, setting aside its very humorous treatment, it is no "tragedy" for the reader, because he has never believed in that particular "soul,"

though its proprietor and his friends are justly supposed to do so. The drama is divided into two acts, of which the first represents the "poetry," the second the prose, of a certain Chiappino's life. The scene is Faenza; the time 15--.

Chiappino is best understood by comparison with Luitolfo, his fellow-townsman and friend. Luitolfo has a gentle, genial nature; Chiappino, if we may judge him by his mood at the time of the action, an ill-conditioned one. Luitolfo's gentleness is allied to physical timidity, but his moral courage is always equal to the occasion.

Chiappino is a man more of words than of deeds, and wants both the courage and the rect.i.tude which ill-conditioned people often possess.

Faenza is governed by a provost from Ravenna. The present provost is a tyrant; and Chiappino has been agitating in a somewhat purposeless manner against him. He has been fined for this several times, and is now sentenced to exile, and confiscation of all his goods.

Luitolfo has helped him until now by paying his fines; but this is an additional grievance to him, for he is in love with Eulalia, the woman whom his friend is going to marry, and declares that he has only refrained from urging his own suit, because he was bound by this pecuniary obligation not to do so. He is not too delicate, however, to depreciate Luitolfo's generosity, and generally run him down with the woman who is to be his wife; and this is what he is doing in the first scene, under cover of taking leave of her, and while her intended husband is interceding with the provost in his behalf. A hurried knock, which they recognise as Luitolfo's, gives a fresh impulse to his spite; and he begins sneering at the milk-and-watery manner in which Luitolfo has probably been pleading his cause, and the awful fright in which he has run home, on seeing that the provost "shrugged his shoulders" at the intercession.

Luitolfo _is_ frightened, for his friendship for Chiappino has been carrying him away; and on finding that entreaties were of no use, he has struck at the provost, and, as he thinks, killed him. A crowd which he imagines to be composed of the Provost's attendants has followed him from the palace. Torture stares him in the face; and his physical sensitiveness has the upper hand again. For a moment Chiappino becomes a hero; he is shamed into n.o.bleness. He flings his own cloak over Luitolfo, gives him his pa.s.sport, hurries him from the house, a.s.sumes his friend's blood-stained garment, and claims his deed. But he has scarcely done so when he perceives their mistake. Luitolfo's fears have distorted a friendly crowd into a hostile one; and the throng which Chiappino has nerved himself to defy is the populace of Faenza applauding him as its saviour. He postpones the duty of undeceiving it under pretence of the danger being not yet over. The next step will be to refuse to do so. His moral collapse, the "tragedy" of his "soul," has begun.

In the second act, a month later, this is complete. The papal legate, Ogniben, has ridden on his mule in to Faenza to find out what was wanted. "He has not come to punish; there is no harm done: for the provost was not killed after all. He has known twenty-three leaders of revolts," and therefore, so we understand, is not disposed to take such persons too seriously. He has made friends with Chiappino, accepting him in this character, and lured him on with the hope of becoming provost himself; and Chiappino again rising--or falling--to the situation, has discovered patriotic reasons for accepting the post. He has outgrown his love, as well as modified his ideas of civic duty; and he disposes of the obligations of friendship, by declaring (to Eulalia) that the blow imputed to him was virtually his, because Luitolfo would fain have avoided striking it, while he would have struck it if he could. The legate draws him out in a humorous dialogue; satirizes his flimsy sophistries under cover of endorsing them, and leads him up to a final self-exposure.

This occurs when he reminds Chiappino in the hearing of the crowd of the private agreement they have come to: that he is to have the t.i.tle and privileges of Provost on the one hand, and pay implicit obedience to Rome, in the person of her legate, on the other; but with the now added condition, that if the actual a.s.sailant of the late provost is discovered, he shall be dealt with as he deserves. At which new view of the situation Chiappino is silent; and Luitolfo, who had missed all the reward of his deed, characteristically comes forward to receive its punishment. The legate orders him to his own house; advises Chiappino, with a little more joking at his expense, to leave the town for a short time; takes possession of the key of the provost's palace, to which he does _not_ intend to give a new inmate; bids a cheery goodbye to every one, and rides away as he came. He has

"known _four_ and twenty leaders of revolts." (vol. iii. p. 302.)

The tragedy of "LURIA" is supposed to be enacted at some period of the fifteenth century; being an episode in the historical struggle between Florence and Pisa. It occupies one day; and the five acts correspond respectively to its "Morning," "Noon," "Afternoon," "Evening," and "Night." The day is that of a long-expected encounter which is to end the war. The Florentine troops are commanded by the Moorish mercenary Luria. He is encamped between the two cities; and with, or near him, are his Moorish friend and confidant Husain; Puccio--the officer whom he has superseded; Braccio--Commissary of the Republic; his secretary Jacopo, or Lapo; and a n.o.ble Florentine lady, Domizia.