R370507A. Strafford.
The Atlas, 7 May 1837, pp. 293–294.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 398–400.
Covent Garden. The drama has fallen upon evil days. Within a very recent period—not to go even so far back as the Provost of Bruges—three tragedies have been produced upon the boards of the national theatres—Ion, the Duchess de la Vallière, and Strafford, a play written by Mr. Browning, the author of Paracelsus, and brought forward on Monday last for the benefit of Mr. Macready. It is not assuming too much to say that not one of these pieces can survive upon the stage: the two former appear to have been already laid aside—the last, which will not suffer comparison in any single point of view with either of them, must speedily follow. Indeed, we are surprised to find that it has been repeated. The Ion of Sergeant Talfourd—notwithstanding all the dexterous praises that have been lavished upon it—is a remarkably weak and spiritless play, without redeeming by the beauty or earnestness of its poetry its manifest deficiencies of action. We are not insensible, however, to its merits as an imitation of the Greek tragedy—to the presiding influence of Destiny over the conduct of the persons engaged in the plot—and the production of its catastrophe by an agency which, however unintelligible to the multitude, is consistent with the character of the age and the people to which it is assigned. But these are merits that lie too deep to be recognized by an indiscriminate audience; nor, indeed, could such an audience appreciate them were they apparent. A tragedy constructed upon such a plan is adapted only for the closet, and, even there, it could be enjoyed only by critical readers. The faults of Mr. Bulwer’s play were of another kind. The poetry was impassioned, the scenes were striking; but the moral was pernicious. The attempt to excite sympathy in the fortunes of such a personage as Louis de la Vallière, to invest with dramatic interest the intrigues of Montespan, and to exhibit upon the stage the magnificence, the wit, the levity, and the heartlessness of the court of Louis XIV, could not be expected to succeed. But Mr. Browning’s tragedy of Strafford realizes the failure of both these plays, without reaching the merits of either.
The subject is expressed in the title. The guilty Strafford—the forsworn Strafford—the enemy of the rights of citizens—the ambitious, treacherous minister, is the hero of the piece. We have no means of ascertaining what Mr. Browning’s opinion of the character of Strafford may be, but certain it is that his dramatic portrait of that corrupt man solicits all throughout the sympathy of the audience on his behalf. The general impression it makes is pity for his fate. Now, if Mr. Browning had consulted any established authority on the subject— Guizot, for example, who is a safe guide in such matters—he must have arrived at a very different conclusion. Strafford never was the friend of liberty, and it is a glaring weakness of judgment that denounces him as an apostate. But setting aside this view of the case, which we are not called upon to discuss here, it is almost impossible to divine from the tragedy whether Strafford ever really supported the cause of the people, whether he ever fell away from the cause, or, in short, what he did, either way, to merit exaltation at the hands of the King, or condemnation from the Parliament. The whole performance is so obscure—the action, if its progress deserve the name of action, is so spasmodic—it is conducted through a dialogue of such sudden exclamations, such jerks of words, and broken sentences—and it is so utterly destitute of explanations and motives, that, if the spectator were not previously apprised of the part of our history to which it bears reference, the most acute and experienced play-goer would be totally at a loss to comprehend what it was all about. The effect of this style of composition upon the stage is ludicrous. We see the characters moving before us; we hear them speaking vehemently, and rapidly interrupting each other—we try to catch the actual purport of the scene, but beyond a vague outline of the general design, nothing is intelligible—we watch patiently for something which we suppose is coming to clear up the mystery, and open the sources of interest—presently Mr. Macready appears; he is evidently deeply engrossed in thought, he gives weight and importance to what he utters, but what it points at remains yet to be discovered—we find him in conference with the King, whom he familiarly calls “Charles,” and whom he treats with none of the respect ordinarily extended to Majesty, but whom he professes, nevertheless, to love with ardent affection—we hear of ship-money, and a Scotch war, and of sundry other things, but nothing distinctly—then there is great bustle and confusion, and we learn that Strafford is impeached, but the precise ground of the impeachment is kept out of sight—then there is a certain Countess of Carlisle, who is strangely mixed up in the business, and who is in love, we believe, with Strafford, but who conceals her passion, for no other reason that we can discover, than because Strafford is warmly attached to the King, which is a very odd reason for such an improbable sacrifice—then we find Strafford in prison, conversing with his children, and an attempt is made by the countess to effect his escape, and Charles visits him in disguise, and plays a very foolish part in the exhibition of his vain regrets, and his desire to save Strafford’s life after having signed his death-warrant—and, just as Strafford is about to avail himself of the suggestion to escape, Pym and his followers enter, and so his fate is sealed.
The most palpable fault of this tragedy as an acting play is [p. 294→] the darkness in which the links of the story are involved. We see nothing clearly—the subject is not developed—and all the efforts of the actors cannot illuminate the incoherent dialogue. The principal figure, too, is historically incorrect, so far as the author has made it visible. We are constantly thrown back upon our recollection of the facts of history in order to be enabled to follow the events that are thus displayed as it were in a thick mist, through which we can discern only incidental fragments: we are obliged, in fact, to supply the connecting parts which are necessary to a complete comprehension of the subject, and which the author ought to have supplied either in action or description. A passage or two will exemplify the obstructions that are thrown in the way of the audience. The following is the opening of the scene in which Strafford, before he has obtained his earldom, first appears before the audience.
Wentworth. And the King?
Carlisle. Dear Wentworth, lean on me; sit then;
I’ll tell you all; this horrible fatigue
Will kill you.
Wentworth. No; or—Lucy, just your arm;
I’ll not sit till I’ve cleared this up with him;
After that, rest. The King?
Carlisle. Confides in you.
Wentworth. Why? why now?
—They have kind throats, the people!
Shout for me .. they!—poor fellows.
Carlisle. Did they shout?
—We took all measures to keep off the crowd—
Did they shout for you?
Wentworth. Wherefore should they not?
Again:—
Carlisle. The King, dear Wentworth, purposes, I know
To grant you, in the face of all the court …
Wentworth. All the court! Evermore the court about us!
Savile and Holland, Hamilton and Vane
About us,—then the King will grant me … Lady,
Will the King leave these—leave all these—and say
“Tell me your whole mind, Wentworth!”
Carlisle. But you said
You would be calm,
Wentworth. Lucy, and I am calm!
How else shall I do all I come to do,
—Broken, as you may see, body and mind—
How shall I serve the King? time wastes meanwhile,
You have not told me half … His footstep! No.
—But now, before I meet him,—(I am calm)—
Why does the King distrust me?
Carlisle. He does not
Distrust you.
Wentworth. Lucy, you can help me .. you
Have even seemed to care for me: help me!
Is it the Queen?
Carlisle. No—not the Queen—the party
That poisons the Queen’s ear,—Savile—and Holland …
This exclamatory and shattered conversation, which resembles a dialogue broken into bits, as if the types had fallen out of the places, and been picked up and put together at random, puzzled the audience sorely, as the reader may easily conceive, and the best exertions of Mr. Macready could not infuse a spirit or meaning into the curious character he was called upon to impersonate. A few—a very few—snatches of perfect sentences here and there broke upon the medley like a light revealing the shape and colour of the objects it fell upon, but they were ineffectual to sustain the interest, and only rendered the surrounding obscurity the more obvious. The scene in the ante-chamber of the House of Lords is the boldest in the play; the tableau was striking, and Mr. Macready’s performance inspired it with deep interest. Parts, too, of the last scene were exceedingly well played by Mr. Macready. There he had some room for a genius which is singularly fortunate in describing wild and choaking emotions; and to his exertions throughout the endurance of the audience may be solely attributed. Miss Faucitt’s performance of the Countess of Carlisle was distinguished by an evident desire to escape the inconsistencies of the character, and she succeeded better than any other actress now upon the stage could have done. But the whole group of patriots made a sorry exhibition. Mr. Vandenhoff distorted all our preconceived notions of Pym, but it was hardly his fault so much as it was the fault of the author, who has given us in this play a Pym such as history bears no testimony to, and such as we cannot help thinking was drawn more from fancy than research.
The Paracelsus of Mr. Browning led us to expect a drama of a higher and nobler cast; and our disappointment is in proportion to our expectations. The Paracelsus displayed a subtle and searching analysis of character, and abounded in passages of lofty poetry. In Strafford we cannot discover, even incidentally, any traces of the same hand.
Reviewed:
Strafford (RB), London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, 1837.
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