Pauline is interesting chiefly for the evidence it presents of the poet’s early tastes. Shelley was the poet to whom in this piece he owed most; but Shelley’s genius was not in harmony with Browning’s, and afterwards his influence vanished almost as completely as did that of Byron from the works of Tennyson. Pauline was followed by Paracelsus (1835), a poem in which the writer seemed to spring all at once to the full maturity of his powers. He failed however to maintain his ground. Strafford (1837) was the first of a series of dramas published between that year and 1846, when the last number of Bells and Pomegranates, containing Luria and A Soul’s Tragedy, appeared. Browning never afterwards attempted the drama proper, for In a Balcony, first published among Men and Women, is rather a dramatic episode than a drama. Besides the dramas, there had appeared during those years Sordello (1840), the most enigmatical poem Browning ever wrote. Despite the beauty of the descriptive passages in the poem, it may be questioned whether the enigma is worth the trouble of solution; at any rate, all the ingenuity bestowed upon it has not yet suggested a satisfactory explanation. There had appeared also, as parts of the series of Bells and Pomegranates, Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845). Pippa Passes (1841) is sometimes misleadingly classed as a drama. It is far more closely akin to the dramatic romances and dramatic lyrics.
The decade between Strafford and A Soul’s Tragedy may be described then as, for Browning, a period of dramatic experiment. The result was to demonstrate that, though his genius was in some respects intensely dramatic, he was not fitted to write for the stage. His failure is all the more remarkable because of his keen interest in character and his great success, under certain conditions, in understanding and interpreting it. The question naturally arises whether there is any connexion between Browning’s failure and the often noted incapacity of the present century to nourish a dramatic literature. This incapacity is conspicuous in the preceding period as well as in that now under discussion. Scott failed completely as a dramatist. The once great reputation of Joanna Baillie has withered away. The dramas of Byron are striking, but their centre is always George Gordon. Shelley succeeded once, in The Cenci; for, great as is Prometheus Unbound, its greatness is not dramatic. With respect to the present period, the most convincing proof of the scarcity of dramatic talent is the fact that there is no need to devote a separate section to the criticism of this form of literature. To most writers the drama has been a mere interlude among other literary work, and this in spite of the fact that fiction alone can compare with it in respect of the material rewards it offers. Almost the sole exception, among those who can be regarded as rising into the ranks of literature, is James Sheridan Knowles who belongs more to the preceding period than to this. As literature, his plays are far from remarkable. His tragedies are of little interest, and his comedies, while ingenious, are pieces of skilful mechanism rather than works inspired by the poetic spirit. Men like Tom Taylor and James Robinson Planché and Douglas Jerrold, gifted with fluency, and capable of writing as many dramas as the theatres might demand, have a place only in ephemeral literature. Even better men, such as Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854) and John Westland Marston (1819-1890), hold but a low position in its annals. The cold dignity of Talfourd’s style hardly atones for the commonplace character of his thought; and Marston betrays an incapacity, fatal in a dramatist, to draw clear and consistent characters. Henry Taylor, who ranks much higher, will be considered elsewhere. As a rule, such drama as there is in the period comes under names more conspicuous in other departments. Great as are his literary defects, Bulwer Lytton is pretty nearly the best in the dramatic list; and, like Charles Reade, he is a novelist first and a dramatist only in the second place.
In some of these cases it might be fairly urged that the cause of failure is want of dramatic talent in the man himself; but this does not explain the strange fact that in one age, the Elizabethan, nearly all writers should prove themselves capable of producing dramas, always respectable and often great; while in another, our own, no one, except Tennyson in his old age, has written a drama that is likely to rank permanently among the treasures of literature. We can only account for this by the operation of the law of development in literature. We observe, in point of fact, that particular literary forms flourish at particular times. We observe, further, that in ancient Greece and in modern France and Spain, as well as in England, the golden age of the drama is neither at the beginning nor at the end, and that in each case it coincides with a period of great national activity and exaltation. The fact is susceptible of a psychological explanation. The drama requires an even balance between the spirit of action and the spirit of reflexion. On the one hand, we can hardly conceive of the drama being as naïve as the poems of Homer; on the other hand, the growth of self-consciousness is apt to interfere, as it did in Byron’s case, with true dramatic portraiture.
Herein we find the secret of Browning’s failure. Though he rightly proclaimed that all his poetry was ‘dramatic in principle,’ yet he never wrote a successful drama. The reason is that in him the spirit of reflexion predominates unduly over the spirit of action. In his plays the action stagnates, because he has no interest in it. All his wealth of intellect is devoted to the unfolding of motive and inner feeling, because, little as he cares for what a man does, he cares very much for what he is and why he does it. The characters therefore, in Browning’s mode of conception, are seen individually, each in himself; they are not developed, in accordance with the true dramatic method, by mutual interaction. Hence too it comes that Browning’s stage is never more than half filled, and that even of the sparse dramatis personæ only one as a rule, or at most two or three, are brought out with tolerable fulness of detail.
In the dramas then we may say that Browning was merely learning what he could not do. Side by side with them he was doing work which taught him what he could do eminently well. His name is associated, more than that of any other poet, with the dramatic monologue. Excluding the regular dramas, nearly all his work of the period under consideration is either dramatic monologue or closely akin to it. Pippa Passes is only slightly different, a series of dramatic scenes, bound together by a lyric thread and by the character and doings of the girl Pippa. Most of the Dramatic Lyrics and Dramatic Romances are pure monologues. Paracelsus may be described as modified monologue. And not only during these years, but throughout his life, Browning’s success depended principally upon two things; first, on the fidelity with which he kept to monologue; and secondly, on his remembrance of the fact that the poet must be not only intellectual, but artistic. With few exceptions Browning’s greatest things—in Men and Women, in Dramatis Personæ and in The Ring and the Book, as well as in the works above named—are monologues in which he bears this fact in mind. With few exceptions his failures in later days are due to the fact that he forgets the poet in the philosopher.
Reasons may easily be found to account for the fact that dramatic monologue proved so much more suitable to the genius of Browning than either the regular drama or any other form of verse. It gave scope to his interest in character, without demanding of him that interest in action which he only showed spasmodically. Moreover, it suited his analytic method. For Browning is not, like Shakespeare, an intuitive but a reflective artist. His delineations are the result of a conscious mental process; and hence he can hardly call up more than one character at a time. Further, he does not care to trace character through a train of events. His pictures are usually limited to moments of time, to single moods. They reveal the inner depth seen through some crisis in life; and therefore, though they are highly impressive, they do not exhibit growth. Now, for purposes such as these the monologue is admirably adapted. It leaves the poet free to choose his own moment, to begin when he likes and end when he likes; and this is essential to the effect of many of Browning’s poems, as for instance In a Gondola and The Lost Mistress. It explains likewise the extraordinary suddenness of his style, which is one among the many causes of the difficulty so often felt in understanding him. There is no preparation, no working up to the crisis. The scene opens abruptly on some tempest of the soul, and the reader has to penetrate the mystery amidst thunder-claps and lightning-flashes. Yet the method does not always give rise to difficulty. There is no better example of it in Browning than