An Introduction to the Study of Browning Part 4

_Count Gismond_, the companion of _My Last d.u.c.h.ess_, is a vivid little tale, told with genuine sympathy with the mediaeval spirit. It is almost like an antic.i.p.ation of some of the remarkable studies of the Middle Ages contained in Morris's first and best book of poems, _The Defence of Guenevere_, published sixteen years later. The mediaeval temper of entire confidence in the ordeal by duel has never been better rendered than in these two stanzas, the very kernel of the poem, spoken by the falsely-accused girl:--

" ... Till out strode Gismond; then I knew That I was saved. I never met His face before, but, at first view, I felt quite sure that G.o.d had set Himself to Satan; who would spend A minute's mistrust on the end?

He strode to Gauthier, in his throat Gave him the lie, then struck his mouth With one back-handed blow that wrote In blood men's verdict there. North, South, East, West, I looked. The lie was dead, And d.a.m.ned, and truth stood up instead."[19]

Of the two aspects of _Queen Worship_, one, _Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli_, has a mournfully sweet pathos in its lingering lines, and _Cristina_, not without a touch of vivid pa.s.sion, contains that personal conviction afterwards enshrined in the lovelier casket of _Evelyn Hope_.

_Artemis Prologuizes_ is Browning's only experiment in the cla.s.sic style. The fragment was meant to form part of a longer work, which was to take up the legend of Hippolytus at the point where Euripides dropped it. The project was no doubt abandoned for the same wise reasons which led Keats to leave unfinished a lovelier experiment in _Hyperion_. It was in this poem that Browning first adopted the Greek spelling of proper names, a practice which he has since carried out, with greater consistency, in his transcripts from aeschylus and Euripides.

Perhaps the finest of the _Dramatic Lyrics_ is the little lyric tragedy, _In a Gondola_, a poem which could hardly be surpa.s.sed in its perfect union or fusion of dramatic intensity with charm and variety of music.

It was suggested by a picture of Maclise, and tells of two Venetian lovers, watched by a certain jealous "Three"; of their brief hour of happiness, and of the sudden vengeance of the Three. There is a brooding sense of peril over all the blithe and flitting fancies said or sung to one another by the lovers in their gondola; a sense, however, of future rather than of present peril, something of a zest and a piquant pleasure to them. The sudden tragic ending, antic.i.p.ated yet unexpected, rounds the whole with a dramatic touch of infallible instinct. I know nothing with which the poem may be compared: its method and its magic are alike its own. We might hear it or fancy it perhaps in one of the Ballades of Chopin, with its entrancing harmonies, its varied and delicate ornamentation, its under-tone of pa.s.sion and sadness, its storms and gusts of wind-like lashing notes, and the piercing shiver that thrills through its suave sunshine.

It is hardly needful, I hope, to say anything in praise of the last of the _Dramatic Lyrics_, the incomparable child's story of _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_,[20] "a thing of joy for ever," as it has been well said, "to all with the child's heart, young and old." This poem, probably the most popular of Browning's poems, was written for William Macready, the son of the actor, and was thrown into the volume at the last moment, for the purpose of filling up the sheet.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: It should be stated here that the three collections of miscellaneous poems published in 1842, 1845 and 1855, and named respectively _Dramatic Lyrics_, _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, and _Men and Women_, were in 1863 broken up and the poems re-distributed. I shall take the volumes as they originally appeared; a reference to the list of contents of the edition of 1863, given in the Bibliography at the end of this book, will enable the reader to find any poem in its present locality.]

[Footnote 18: See _Robert Browning and Alfred Domett_. Edited by F.G.

Kenyon. (Smith, Elder & Co., 1906).]

[Footnote 19: It is worth noticing, as a curious point in Browning's technique, that in the stanza (_ababcc_) in which this and some of his other poems are written, he almost always omits the pause customary at the end of the fourth line, running it into the fifth, and thus producing a novel metrical effect, such as we find used with success in more than one poem of Carew.]

[Footnote 20: Browning's authority for the story, which is told in many quarters, was North Wanley's _Wonders of the Little World_, 1678, and the books there cited.]

8. THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES: A Tragedy in Five Acts.

[Published in 1843 as No. IV. of _Bells and Pomegranates_ (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. III., pp. 167-255). Written in 1840 (in five days), and named in MS. _Mansoor the Hierophant_. The action takes place during one day.]

The story of _The Return of the Druses_ is purely imaginary as to facts, but it is founded on the Druse belief in divine incarnations, a belief inculcated by the founder of their religion, Hakeem Biamr Allah, the sixth Fatemite Caliph of Egypt, whose pretension to be an incarnation of the Divinity was stamped in the popular mind by his mysterious disappearance, and the expectation of his glorious return. Browning here gives the rein to his fervid and pa.s.sionate imagination; in event, in character, in expression, the play is romantic, lyrical and Oriental.

The first line--

"The moon is carried off in purple fire,--"

sounds the note of the new music; and to the last line the emotion is sustained at the same height. Pa.s.sionate, rapid, vivid, intense and picturesque, no stronger contrast could be imagined than that which exists between this drama and _King Victor and King Charles_. The cause of the difference must be sought in the different nature of the two subjects, for one of Browning's most eminent qualities is his care in harmonising treatment with subject. _King Victor and King Charles_ is a modern play, dealing with human nature under all the restrictions of a pervading conventionality and an oppressive statecraft. It deals, moreover, with complex and weakened emotions, with the petty and prosaic details of a secondary Western government. _The Return of the Druses_, on the other hand, treats of human nature in its most romantic conditions, of the mystic East, of great and immediate issues, of the most inspiring of crises, a revolt for liberty, and a revolt under the leadership of a "Messiah," about whom hangs a mystery, and a reputation of more than mortal power. The characters, like the language, are all somewhat idealised. Djabal, the protagonist, is the first instance of a character specially fascinating to Browning as an artistic subject: the deceiver of others or of himself who is only partially insincere, and not altogether ill-intentioned. Djabal is an impostor almost wholly for the sake of others. He is a patriotic Druse, the son of the last Emir, supposed to have perished in the ma.s.sacre of the Sheikhs, but preserved when a child and educated in Europe. His sole aim is to free his nation from its bondage, and lead it back to Lebanon. But in order to strengthen the people's trust in him, and to lead them back in greater glory, he pretends that he is "Hakeem," their divine, predestined deliverer. The delusion grows upon himself; he succeeds triumphantly, but in the very moment of triumph he loses faith in himself, the imposture is all but discovered, and he dies, a victim of what was wrong in him, while the salt of his n.o.ble and successful purpose keeps alive his memory among his people. In striking contrast with Djabal stands Loys, the frank, bright, young Breton knight, with his quick, generous heart, his chivalrous straightforwardness of thought and action, his earnest pity for the oppressed Druses, and his pa.s.sionate love for the Druse maiden Anael. Anael herself is one of the most "actual yet uncommon" of the poet's women. She is a true daughter of the East, to the finest fibre of her being. Her tender and fiery soul burns upward through error and crime with a leaping, quenchless flame. She loves Djabal, believing him to be "Hakeem" and divine, with a love which seems to her too human, too much the love evoked by a mere man's nature. Her attempt at adoration only makes him feel more keenly the fact of his imposture. Misunderstanding his agitation and the broken words he lets drop, she fancies he despises her, and feels impelled to do some great deed, and so exalt herself to be worthy of him. Fired with enthusiasm, she antic.i.p.ates his crowning act, the act of liberation, and herself slays the tyrannical Prefect. The magnificent scene in which this occurs is the finest in the play, and there is a singularly impressive touch of poetry and stagecraft in a certain line of it, where Djabal and Anael meet, at the moment when she has done the deed which he is waiting to do. Unconscious of what she has done, he tells her to go:--

"I slay him here, And here you ruin all. Why speak you not?

Anael, the Prefect comes!" [ANAEL _screams_.]

There is drama in this stage direction. With this involuntary scream (and the shudder and start aside one imagines, to see if the dead man really is coming) a great actress might thrill an audience. Djabal, horror-stricken at what she has done, confesses to her that he is no Hakeem, but a mere man. After the first revulsion of feeling, her love, hitherto questioned and hampered by her would-be adoration, burst forth with a fuller flood. But she expects him to confess to the tribe. Djabal refuses: he will carry through his scheme to the end. In the first flush of her indignation at his unworthiness, she denounces him. In the final scene occurs another wonderful touch of nature, a touch which reminds one of Desdemona's "n.o.body: I myself," in its divine and adorable self-sacrifice of truth. Learning what Anael has done, Djabal is about to confess his imposture to the people, who are still under his fascination, when Anael, all her old love (not her old belief) returning upon her, cries with her last breath, "HAKEEM!" and dies upon the word.

The Druses grovel before him; as he still hesitates, the trumpet of his Venetian allies sounds. Turning to Khalil, Anael's brother, he bids him take his place and lead the people home, accompanied and guarded by Loys. "We follow!" cry the Druses, "now exalt thyself!"

"_Dja._ [_bends over_ ANAEL.] And last to thee!

Ah, did I dream I was to have, this day, Exalted thee? A vain dream--has thou not Won greater exaltation? What remains But press to thee, exalt myself to thee?

Thus I exalt myself, set free my soul!

[_He stabs himself; as he falls, supported by_ KHALIL _and_ LOYS, _the Venetians enter: the_ ADMIRAL _advances_.

_Admiral_. G.o.d and St. Mark for Venice! Plant the Lion!

[_At the clash of the planted standard, the Druses shout and move tumultuously forward_, LOYS, _drawing his sword_.

_Dja._ [_leading them a few steps between_ KHALIL _and_ LOYS.] On to the Mountain! At the Mountain, Druses! [_Dies_.]"

This superb last scene shows how well Browning is able, when he likes, to render the tumultuous action of a clashing crowd of persons and interests. The whole fourth and fifth acts are specially fine; every word comes from the heart, every line is pregnant with emotion.

9. A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON: A Tragedy in Three Acts.

[Published in 1843 as No. V. of _Bells and Pomegranates_, written in five days (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. IV., pp.

1-70). Played originally at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, February 11, 1843 (_Mildred_, Miss Helen Faucit; _Lord Tresham_, Mr. Phelps). Revived by Mr. Phelps at Sadler's Wells, November 27, 1848; played at Boston, U.S., March 16, 1885, under the management of Mr. Lawrence Barrett, who took the part of _Lord Tresham_; at St. George's Hall, London, May 2, 1885, and at the Olympic Theatre, March 15, 1888, by the Browning Society; and by the Independent Theatre at the Opera Comique, June 15, 1893. The action takes place during two days.]

_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ is the simplest, and perhaps the deepest and finest of Browning's plays. The Browning Society's performances, and Mr.

Barrett's in America, have proved its acting capacities, its power to hold and thrill an audience.[21] The language has a rich simplicity of the highest dramatic value, quick with pa.s.sion, pregnant with thought and masterly in imagination; the plot and characters are perhaps more interesting and affecting than in any other of the plays; while the effect of the whole is impressive from its unity. The scene is English; the time, somewhere in the eighteenth century; the motive, family honour and dishonour. The story appeals to ready popular emotions, emotions which, though lying nearest the surface, are also the most deeply-rooted. The whole action is pa.s.sionately pathetic, and it is infused with a twofold tragedy, the tragedy of the sin, and that of the misunderstanding, the last and final tragedy, which hangs on a word, spoken only when too late to save three lives. This irony of circ.u.mstance, while it is the source of what is saddest in human discords, is also the motive of what has come to be the only satisfying harmony in dramatic art. It takes the place, in our modern world, of the Necessity of the Greeks; and is not less impressive because it arises from the impulse and unreasoning wilfulness of man rather than from the implacable insistency of G.o.d. It is with perfect justice, both moral and artistic, that the fatal crisis, though mediately the result of accident, of error, is shown to be the consequence and the punishment of wrong. A tragedy resulting from the mistakes of the wholly innocent would jar on our sense of right, and could never produce a legitimate work of art. Even Oedipus suffers, not merely because he is under the curse of a higher power, but because he is wilful, and rushes upon his own fate. Timon suffers, not because he was generous and good, but from the defects of his qualities. So, in this play, each of the characters calls down upon his own head the suffering which at first seems to be a mere caprice and confusion of chance. Mildred Tresham and Henry Mertoun, both very young, ignorant and unguarded, have loved. They attempt a late reparation, apparently with success, but the hasty suspicion of Lord Tresham, Mildred's brother, diverted indeed into a wrong channel, brings down on both a terrible retribution. Tresham, who shares the ruin he causes, feels, too, that his punishment is his due. He has acted without pausing to consider, and he is called on to pay the penalty of "evil wrought by want of thought."

The character of Mildred, a woman "more sinned against than sinning," is exquisitely and tenderly drawn. We see her, and we see and feel

"The good and tender heart, Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy, How pure yet pa.s.sionate, how calm yet kind, How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free As light where friends are"--

as her brother, in a memorable pa.s.sage, describes her. She is so thrillingly alive, so beautiful and individual, so pathetic and pitiful in her desolation. Every word she speaks comes straight from her heart to ours. "I know nothing that is so affecting," wrote d.i.c.kens in a letter to Forster, "nothing in any book I have ever read, as Mildred's recurrence to that 'I was so young--had no mother.' I know no love like it, no pa.s.sion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception like it."[22] Not till Pompilia do we find so pathetic a portrait of a woman.

In Thorold, Earl Tresham, we have an admirable picture of the head of a great house, proud above all things of the honour of the family and its yet stainless 'scutcheon, and proud, with a deep brotherly tenderness of his sister Mildred: a strong and fine nature, one whom men instinctively cite as "the perfect spirit of honour." Mertoun, the apparent hero of the play, is a much less prominent and masterly figure than Tresham, not so much from any lack of skill in his delineation, as from the essential ineffectualness of his nature. Guendolen Tresham, the Beatrice of the play (her lover Austin is certainly no Bened.i.c.k) is one of the most pleasantly humorous characters in Browning. Her gay, light-hearted talk brightens the sombre action like a gleam of sunlight. And like her prototype, she is a true woman. As Beatrice stands by the calumniated Hero, so Guendolen stands by Mildred, and by her quick woman's heart and wit, her instinct of things, sees and seizes the missing clue, though too late, as it proves, to avert the impending disaster.

The play contains one of Browning's most delicate and musical lyrics, the serenade beginning, "There's a woman like a dew-drop." This is the first of the love-songs in long lines which Browning wrote so often at the end of his life, and so seldom earlier.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: A contemporary account, written by Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett, says: "The first night was magnificent ... there could be no mistake at all about the honest enthusiasm of the audience. The gallery (and this, of course, was very gratifying, because not to be expected at a play of _Browning_) took all the points quite as quickly as the pit, and entered into the general feeling and interest of the action far more than the boxes.... Altogether the first night was a triumph."--_Robert Browning and Alfred Domett_, 1906, p. 65.]

[Footnote 22: Forster's _Life of d.i.c.kens_, vol. ii., p. 24.]

10. COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY: A Play in Five Acts.

[Published in 1844 as No. VI. of _Bells and Pomegranates_ (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. IV., pp. 71-169). Played at the Haymarket Theatre, April 25, 1853, Miss Helen Faucit taking the part of _Colombe_; also, with Miss Alma Murray as _Colombe_, at St. George's Hall, November 19, 1885, under the direction of the Browning Society. The action takes place from morning to night of one day].

_Colombe's Birthday_, a drama founded on an imaginary episode in the history of a German duchy of the seventeenth century, is the first play which is mainly concerned with inward rather than outward action; in which the characters themselves, what they are in their own souls, what they think of themselves, and what others think of them, const.i.tute the chief interest, the interest of the characters as they influence one another or external events being secondary. Colombe of Ravestein, d.u.c.h.ess of Juliers and Cleves, is surprised, on the first anniversary of her accession (the day being also her birthday), by a rival claimant to the duchy, Prince Berthold, who proves to be in fact the true heir.

Berthold, instead of pressing his claim, offers to marry her. But he conceives the honour and the favour to be sufficient, and makes no pretence at offering love as well. On the other hand, Valence, a poor advocate of Cleves, who has stood by Colombe when all her other friends failed, offers her his love, a love to which she can only respond by "giving up the world"; in other words, by relinquishing her duchy, and the alliance with a Prince who is on the way to be Emperor. We have nothing to do with the question of who has the right and who has the might: that matter is settled, and the succession agreed on, almost from the beginning. Nor are we made to feel that any disgrace or reputation of weakness will rest on Colombe if she gives up her duchy; not even that the pang at doing so will be over-acute or entirely unrelieved. All the interest centres in the purely personal and psychological bearings of the act. It is perhaps a consequence of this that the style is somewhat different from that of any previous play. Any one who notices the stage directions will see that the persons of the drama frequently speak "after a pause." The language which they use is, naturally enough, more deliberate and reflective, the lines are slower and more weighty, than would be appropriate amid the breathless action of _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ or _The Return of the Druses_. A certain fiery quality, a thrilling, heart-stirred and heart-stirring tone, which we find in these is wanting; but the calm sweep of the action is carried onward by a verse whose large harmonies almost recall _Paracelsus_.

Colombe, the true heroine of the play named after her is, if not "the completest full-length portrait of a woman that Browning has drawn,"

certainly one of the sweetest and most stable. Her character develops during the course of the play; as she herself says,

"This is indeed my birthday--soul and body, Its hours have done on me the work of years--"

and it leaves her a n.o.bler and stronger, yet not less charming woman than it found her. Hitherto she has been a mere "play-queen," shut in from action, shut in from facts and the world, and caring only to be gay and amused. But now, at the first and yet final trial, she is proved and found to be of n.o.ble metal. The gay girlishness of the young d.u.c.h.ess, her joyous and generous light heart; her womanliness, her earnestness, her clear, deep, n.o.ble nature, attract us from her first words, and leave us, after the hour we have spent in her presence, with a memory like that of some woman whom we have met, for an hour or a moment, in the world or in books.

Berthold, the weary and unsatisfied conqueror, is a singularly unconventional figure. He is a man of action, with some of the sympathies of the scholar and the lover; resolute in the attainment of ends which he sees to be, in themselves, vulgar; his ambition rather an instinct than something to be pursued for itself, and his soul too keenly aware of the joys and interests he foregoes, to be quite satisfied or content with his lot and conduct. The grave courtesy of his speech to Colombe, his somewhat condescending but not unfriendly tone with Valence, his rough home-truths with the parasitical courtiers, and his frank confidence with Melchior, are admirably discriminated.

Melchior himself, little as he speaks, is a fine sketch of the contemplative, bookish man who finds no more congenial companion and study than a successful man of action. His att.i.tude of detachment, a mere spectator in the background, is well in keeping with the calm and thoughtful character of the play. Valence, the true hero of the piece, the "pale fiery man" who can speak with so moving an eloquence, whether he is pleading the wrongs of his townsmen or of Colombe, the rights of Berthold or of himself, is no less masterly a portrait than the Prince, though perhaps less wholly unconventional a character. His grave earnestness, his honour as a man and pa.s.sion as a lover, move our instinctive sympathy, and he never forfeits it. Were it for nothing else, he would deserve remembrance from the fact that he is one of the speakers in that most delightful of love-duets, the incomparable scene at the close of the fourth act. "I remember well to have seen," wrote Moncure D. Conway in 1854, "a vast miscellaneous crowd in an American theatre hanging with breathless attention upon every word of this interview, down to the splendid climax when, in obedience to the d.u.c.h.ess's direction to Valence how he should reveal his love to the lady she so little suspects herself to be herself, he kneels--every heart evidently feeling each word as an electric touch, and all giving vent at last to their emotion in round after round of hearty applause."