R370700A. Strafford
The Edinburgh Review, July 1837, pp. 132–151.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 408–414.
This is a play which, aided by the exertions of Mr Macready and one or two more of the most noted actors of the day, has had a considerable share of success on the London theatre this year. Low as the condition of our national stage at present is, this favourable run of a simple historical play, on an English subject, by an author little known, and unassisted, as far as we can discover, by any advantage of puffing, or green-room connexion, is a phenomenon to which we feel ourselves called upon to attend. We use our best exertions to keep au courant of the literature of the day; and yet, with the single exception of “Ion,” we have scarcely had for years occasion to concern ourselves with the acting drama. If we might be permitted the use of so vainglorious an argument, we should say that this very circumstance proves how small a space the acting drama occupies in the thoughts of the literary world. This is a melancholy reflection to us, who are firm in the persuasion that high dramatic excellence, and popular interest in its exhibition, are at once causes and indications of a vigorous and healthy tone of public feeling. Nor is the prospect materially improved, when we find ourselves called upon to treat such productions as that before us with the respect [p. 133→] due to general favourites. To say that it has succeeded at all, amidst the difficulties which now beset the legitimate drama, is undoubtedly to say that it possesses merit and interest. But our commendations, we fear, can go little farther than this superficial syllogism, which deduces proof of excellence from popular applause. Nevertheless, we find fault less with Mr Browning than with the times on which he has fallen. If exaggerated, unnatural sentiments, far-fetched affectation of style, a kind of conceited poverty of language, much whine and occasional rant, and a sacrifice of all probability of plot, historical truth, and distinctness of character, for the purpose of dressing up one or two overdone parts full of points and situations, to suit reigning actors, are tolerated and enjoyed by the audience, the temptation to fall into these juvenile sins is too great for a young poet to resist. Our theatre does in fact seem approaching the last crisis of its long agony. The reading and critical part of the public have deserted it, chiefly because talent is growing more and more solitary and fastidious in its habits, and the lonely enjoyments of literature engross so much of its attention as to leave little time for the socialities of the stage. Fashionable people eschew it, because it interferes with fashionable hours, and because it brings them into unfashionable places and company. And of the more sober and simple class of society—in which perhaps, no longer ago than the later days of Garrick and the earlier ones of Kemble, the drama found its strongest support—prevalent religious scruples, it is said, now keep away a very large proportion. Theatrical writers have of course participated in this decay. The largest division of them consists, as it always did, of regular mercenaries—we mean no disrespect by the phrase—men who make that employment an exclusive or subsidiary profession. Many of them are of no common order of talent; but their object is merely to sell. Adaptations from the French farces, occasional pieces to suit the talents of particular actors, and those lowest specimens of what the human intellect can do, the libretti of comic operas—these are the commodities in which they chiefly deal. And, like men of sense, they make it their business to please the taste of the day, although they may occasionally be heard, at theatrical-fund dinners and on similar exciting occasions, to talk very big about guiding and purifying it. The other, or unprofessional class of dramatists (those on whom we chiefly depend for contributions to the regular drama, which requires too great an outlay of time and mind, the author’s capital, to be taken up by the operatives), is unfortunately small in number and poor in names. How can it be otherwise, when, after all that Mr Bulwer’s legislative labours have effected, both the fame and the profit of a well-puffed [p. 134→] fashionable novel are likely to exceed by far the utmost which can be attained in the labours of the higher drama? Ambition, in this line, seems to be generally regarded as at once more hopeless and less creditable than in any other. And, as far as tragedy is concerned, it appears to have been abandoned of late years almost exclusively to a peculiar set or clique of authors, mutually patronising and patronised by our few tragic actors—drawing their notions of external things from the scenery of the stage-painter, their characters and language from the green-room—and the stage thus produces the drama, instead of serving for its developement; and very seldom receives any accession of fresh thought or vigorous life from the world of man and nature without.
Mr Browning has done wisely in making the plot of his play simple, and as near the historical outline as possible. The opening scene presents us with the chiefs of the Roundhead party, met in private conclave to discuss the dissolution of the Scots Parliament, and the expected arrival of the apostate Wentworth from Ireland. Vane and the more eager Puritans, denounce him as the chief cause of the renovated strength of the King’s affairs, and excite each other with denunciations against England’s great enemy. Pym holds somewhat aloof, as anxious once more to put his former friend to the trial, before he finally devotes him as a sacrifice to his injured country. In the next, Lady Carlisle explains to Strafford, who has just arrived from Ireland at Whitehall, the posture of affairs; and tells him how Savill, Holland, Vane the elder, and the rest of the Queen’s party, seek to disparage the services he has rendered to the royal cause—in her own choice phrase, how they
Sneer, make light of, one may say
Nibble, at what you do.
The lady departs, leaving Wentworth harassed and indignant, and Pym breaks in upon his solitude. The two old friends bandy some sarcasms, and keep each other at a very stiff distance, until the taunts of the Roundhead, concerning Charles’s rejection of Wentworth’s repeated prayer for an earldom, rouse the pride of the royalist; who seems once more on the point of going back to his old party, when, by another of those opportune arrivals which abound in the play, King Charles enters. Wentworth lets fall Pym’s hand, and is his Sovereign’s devoted servant again. He prays the King to trust him for once—combats his irresolution by reasoning and entreaty—and induces him to promise the assembling of a Parliament in Ireland and in England, to assist in this juncture of the quarrel with the Scots. The King, though sorely shaken again by the taunts of his Queen, Henrietta, adheres for a while to this resolution; and, in the second Act, we [p. 135→] find that the two Parliaments have been called, and that Strafford (who has now obtained his earldom) has succeeded in rendering that of Ireland a serviceable tool for his master’s purposes. He arrives at Whitehall, confident in anticipated triumph, only to find, in a long scene with the King, his plans altered, his counsel rejected, his enemies in full possession of power, and, finally, that his last sheet-anchor, the English Parliament, has been dissolved, after refusing Vane’s ill-judged or treacherous demand of twelve subsidies for the Scottish war. He breaks out into the bitterest reproaches against his Sovereign, accuses him of having
A hideous heart—
A heart of stone—of smooth, cold, frightful stone.
But on the entry of some of the Puritan leaders, he drops his violent attitude of accusation, and falls on his knee before the King, producing a good theatrical “situation.” The next Act carries us rapidly forward. The new Parliament meets. Strafford is impeached, and arrives post-haste from the north to confront his enemies. Here the author’s zeal for building up a hero has rather carried him beyond the limits of historical truth. Some writers have indeed imagined that Strafford’s arrival at this crisis was an act of voluntary daring; but Whitelock and the best informed contemporaries represent him as obeying, much against his will, the express mandate of the King, and deeply apprehensive of the result. However, Mr Browning’s Strafford comes, in full boldness and daring, attended by a host of adherents, armed, as he informs Lady Carlisle, with proofs both against the Puritans and the Queen’s courtiers of treasonable intrigues with the Scots, and resolved to seize them alike in the palace and in the two houses.
Full proof—see, ample proof—does the Queen know
I have such damning proof? Bedford and Essex,
Broke, Warwick, Savile (did you notice Savile,
The simper which I spoilt?) say, Mandeville,
Sold to the Scots, body and soul, by Pym.
. . . . From Savile and his lord, to Pym,
I crush them, girl; Pym shall not ward the blow,
Nor Savile crawl aside from it.
Then follows that celebrated scene, so graphically described by the Scots deputy, Baillie—one of the most dramatic in our annals—when Strafford presented himself at the door of the House of Lords, surrounded by adherents, and “advanced with a proud glooming look” to take his accustomed seat in despite of the pending impeachment; when, being met on all sides by cries of “Void the house,” and general tumult among its members, his [p. 136→] heart failed him—his followers shrank from him—and Maxwell, usher of the house, laid his hand on his shoulder, and conducted him without resistance to his lodging as a prisoner. Mr Browning has appropriated the most remarkable features of this striking event—the best occurrence for his purpose which the whole life of Strafford furnishes. Unfortunately he has not been able to resist the temptation to overdo and exaggerate, instead of following the vivid descriptions of contemporary writers. It is true that Strafford did not figure to the greatest advantage at that crisis of his fate. The mortification of so utter a failure, in lieu of anticipated triumph, seems for a moment to have overawed his spirit, and benumbed his faculties. But there is no proof that he acted the bully and the madman, as he is here made to do. He “staggers” out of the house—boxes the usher Maxwell’s ears—flourishes his sword—surrenders it—begs his followers to kill him—then turns craven, and offers his services to Pym and the Presbyterians—tears off his George—and is carried out by his scandalized attendants in a sort of frenzy.
The fourth Act, according to its proverbial use, interposes some delay between the development of the plot in the third, and its completion in the fifth. We have various intrigues in the court. Hollis endeavours unsuccessfully to prevail with the King to save Strafford by firmness.
Eighteen days long he throws, one after one,
Our charges back—a blind moth-eaten law!
He’ll break from us at last—and whom to thank?
The mouse that gnawed the lion’s net for him
Got a good friend; but he, that other mouse,
That looked on while the lion freed himself—
Fared he so well, does any fable say?
The Queen, however, counteracts the effects of Hollis’s negotiation and Carlisle’s entreaties on Charles’s feeble temper. The trial proceeds. Strafford rebuts the impeachment triumphantly. The leaders of the hostile party meet, and Pym, now thoroughly steeled against his ancient ally, overcomes all their scruples and reluctance, and forces on them the great measure of the Bill of Attainder. It is carried: and Pym, by paying Charles an unexpected visit, easily frightens him into subscribing his assent to it. The last Act opens on Strafford in prison, playing with his children, as usual with theatrical captives under sentence of death. A scene of real power and much dramatic effect follows, between him, Hollis, and the King in disguise. Strafford, confident in the King’s written and secret promise that he should take “no hurt in life, honour, or estate,” receives Hollis’s visit in [p. 137→] company with a muffled attendant, as an expected message from the King touching the mode of his deliverance. Little confident in the courage or honour of the King, his only fear is, lest the messenger should have come to propose an escape, which he is determined to refuse, and not expose himself and his children to the penalties of attainder. He relies on his own services and his necessity to his sovereign; and does not doubt that by taking this proud stand he shall force him to grant a public pardon at last. Hollis, all the while, is vainly endeavouring to prepare him for the fearful announcement, that the King dare not save him in either way, and that he must die. His warrant is signed. He lifts up his voice to curse the King, who throws aside his disguise, and falls at his feet imploring forgiveness! Strafford recovers himself to bestow it, with more of contempt than pity. The crowd without are heard howling for his blood: the King at last nerves himself to something like resolution, and declares that he and the Warden, Balfour, will open the prison doors, and lead him through the midst of them; but Strafford, with a returning gush of affection, refuses the offer, and blesses his unworthy master. Just then, however, Lady Carlisle enters with attendants; she, too, has laid her plan of escape; all is ready, the warders gained, the boat under the Tower walls; the King’s prayers vanquish Strafford’s reluctance, and he consents to fly; when all is broken up by the sudden and unannounced arrival of Pym, with a half-a-dozen more of the Puritans. These gentlemen seem to come in this abrupt manner for no earthly purpose except to have an hour or two’s conversation, de omnibus rebus, with the prisoner; whose keepers, like those of our distinguished murderers in the present times, appear to think no better way can be devised for passing a criminal’s time agreeably before his execution. However, by this means the plot of the play, if such it may be called, is brought to an end; and it closes with a strange overstrained dialogue between the two chief actors, in which Pym expresses his hopes of meeting his friend Wentworth again, purged and renewed, in that other world to which he is sending him. Strafford replies by forgiving Pym, and endeavours to force from him a promise that in all the future storms of the political world he will spare the King’s life. Pym sternly refuses to promise, and Strafford totters out, exclaiming.
O God! I shall die first! I shall die first!
It will be perceived from this slight sketch, that Mr Browning’s enterprise is one of no ordinary boldness. Coleridge, as well as other authorities, seem to lay it down as an æsthetic rule, that the historical drama should confine itself to those parts of real [p. 138→] history which are least known. And the reason which he gives is undoubtedly a weighty one. “After Henry VIII.” (says he, speaking of English history), “the events are too well and distinctly known to be, without plump inverisimilitude, crowded together in one night’s exhibition. Whereas, the history of our ancient kings—the events of their reigns, I mean—are like stars in the sky; whatever the real interspaces may be, and however great, they seem close to each other. The stars—the events—strike us and remain in our eye, little modified by the difference of dates.” Admitting all the force of this remark, we cannot but think that there are many portions of history familiar to us in detail, and yet well adapted for dramatic purposes; in which there is no need for violating probability by too great a huddling together of distant events. Coleridge’s objection is indeed only valid against converting the reigns of modern kings into that form of dramatic chronicle which was employed by Shakspeare and his cotemporaries; not against selecting single events, or single personages, for this species of idealization. And it would be a pity if the dramatic muse were deterred by this difficulty from all resort to subjects of such high and ennobling interest as comparatively recent times may furnish. But the most serious obstacle to success in this department, and that which requires the greatest reach of taste as well as genius to surmount, lies not so much in the dramatizing well-known occurrences, as well-known characters.
Besides divers obvious reasons, which at once suggest themselves, why such should be the case, there are one or two which it may, perhaps, be worth while to point out more distinctly. The first of these is, that familiar historical personages are commonly better known to us from the minuter, than the broader traits of their character. All the smaller circumstances of their biography,—their habits, modes of life, sayings, and peculiarities taken together,—constitute their identity in our imagination. Their more elementary qualities,—the passions, and the motions which have actuated them, the real and deep springs of their nature,—all these are less within the scope of our conception. Nay, we find each other often taking the most opposite and discordant views of the substratum of a character, of which the surface is perfectly well known to all of us. It is not so much when the records left us of an individual are too meagre, as when they are too full, that we feel the difficulty of analyzing him in all his proportions. We then fully comprehend how great a problem the human spirit is, and how far, very far, beyond our ken, the mainsprings of action commonly lie. Hence the very great advantage which the novelist possesses over the dramatist, in [p. 139→] treating subjects familiar to our historical recollection. His concern is almost entirely with those superficial traits—that outward envelope—which we have all studied, and as to which we are all agreed. These, the dramatist is forced for the most part to disregard; the greater passions and emotions of humanity being alone within his proper province. We may form some conception of the comparative difficulty of the two modes, by representing to ourselves their respective effects in the delineation of some well-known modern hero—of Napoleon, for example. To introduce him as a figure in a historical novel, would be a matter of the easiest accomplishment to any one possessing tolerable taste and a lively talent for description. To dramatize him would defy the genius of a Shakspeare! Who can feel assured that he has analyzed to his own satisfaction the elements of such a character as Napoleon’s; which is so frequently before his contemplation, and of which the existing world would so constantly remind him? There would inevitably be something unreal,—something abhorrent to the feelings, as disappointing our previous conceptions, in any attempt to do for us what we succeed so imperfectly in doing for ourselves.
Another cause is to be found in the truth to which dramatists are not always sufficiently alive, and which spectators, under the illusion of the theatre, are willingly made to forget,—that the nature of the drama is essentially ideal nature after all. Human passions and human motives are no doubt delineated there; but more unmixed, more rapid in their succession, more engrossing and exclusive, than they are ever found in actual life. It is an absurd mode of accounting, as many critics have thought proper to do, for the breadth and boldness of Shaksperian conceptions,—for love in Romeo and Juliet; the madness of betrayed affection in Othello; malice in Iago; jealousy in Leontes; by saying that these are true representations of nature, under peculiar circumstances; that the passion of the lovers is true to Italian nature; that Othello is a Moor, Iago a Venetian, and so forth. They are all only bold fulfilments of the one true dramatic law—they are genuine human nature, not modified by peculiarities of place or time; but stripped of the thousand conventional folds in which it is involved in the actual world. Its processes are curtailed, its gradual transitions converted into fierce and abrupt change; its grosser parts, as it were, subtilized by dramatic eloquence, and the naked essence alone subjected to the spectator. History does the very reverse of the drama—it presents the man, surrounded by opposing circumstances and petty agencies, his thoughts and purposes moving only by the slow gradations of real life,—and leaves the enquirer to abstract the essential man [p. 140→] within for himself. Who has not joined in the common admiration for what is called the developement of the character of Macbeth,—the dawn of ambition—the passage from innocence to irresolution—from irresolution to the desperate height of guilt? And yet no one’s sense of dramatic truth is troubled by the reflection, that all this skilful transition is accomplished in the course of two brief conversations which hardly last a quarter of an hour! But suppose a dramatist were to deal in the same manner with a historical regicide—with Cromwell, or with Robespierre—should we not feel oppressed by a sense of the unreality of the representation? Such a change does not take place in the actual man,—whether the period of transition, measured in time only, be reckoned by years, or months, or days—without the passing of a thousand and a thousand conflicting thoughts through the mind. History only represents the result of these thoughts in action; the drama has to seize and concentrate the thoughts themselves.
The only conclusion which we deduce from all this is, that the poet who ventures on the bold essay of dramatizing men and events historically familiar, must not strive too eagerly after correctness of portraiture in his dramatis personæ. Too minute attention to their lesser details, will break the unity of his piece, and reduce it to antiquarian Mosaic: too elaborate analysis of their characters, will rarely satisfy the preconceived ideas of the reader. The old rule of—
Sit Medea ferox invictaque, flebilis Ino,
Perfidus Ixion, Io vaga, tristis Orestes,
must be fundamentally observed, no doubt, but not reduced to too special application. He cannot expect to make history, as Shakspeare has done for the reign of the Plantagenets, and Schiller has almost done for the days of Wallenstein: let him, therefore, abstain from counterfeiting history, and present his characters boldly as ideals. He borrows from reality its power of producing emotion by appeals to our highest thoughts and recollections, and this is nearly all he has to do with it. If, therefore, dramatic characters be well and powerfully drawn, we, as critics, should not quarrel with the poet, because we conceived them imaginary. But Mr Browning repudiates any such indulgence. He piques himself not only on the colouring of his picture, but on the fidelity of his likeness. “The portraits,” says he, “are, I think, faithful;” and he refers us for authority to the memoirs of Elliot and Strafford, of Hampden, Pym, and Vane, in the “Cabinet Cyclopædia.” We must confess that we have not yet read the lives here mentioned, and cannot therefore say what [p. 141→] foundation they may have given for Mr Browning’s resemblances. But from such acquaintance as we have with some old, and some new books, on the same well-beaten topics, we think there would be little difficulty in showing how he has emasculated these vigorous characters—how what he affectedly calls “the healthy natures of a great epoch,” have been rendered morbid, eccentric, unnatural; merely in order to produce those coarse effects of overstrained passion and sentiment which are necessary, we suppose, to please the historical taste of pit and gallery.
Strafford, we all know: however differently party politics may lead men to weigh his merits and defects, the general outlines of the character of that bold, heady, and sagacious leader, live as vividly in the imagination as the features of Vandyke’s portraits in the mind’s eye. It was indeed rather a dangerous experiment to burlesque him into a romantic hero. Yet this Mr Browning has done. Will it be believed that he has represented this haughty minister, with his “cold brain and sound judgment” (as Sir P. Warwick describes him), as a sort of monomaniac—one whose every thought and hope are wrapped up in one engrossing feeling,—an infatuated “belle passion” for the King,—not loyalty to the monarch, but a morbid personal attachment to the man? Thwarted at every turn by the King’s treachery and the Queen’s enmity, he goes about all the while hankering with the eagerness of a lover for any little mark of his attention; and raves about the personal and mental qualities of the divinity of his adoration—
The man with the mild voice and mournful eyes,
who treats him with the airs of a coquettish beauty. All the higher traits of his character are obliterated in this brainsick folly. For this, and not from his own ambition or through “Conservative reaction,” he abandoned the popular party. For this, he bears for years with patience the hostility of the Queen, and the vexatious intrigues of the courtiers—for this, he braves his trial, and is content to die! And yet all the while he is perfectly convinced of the King’s bad qualities—despises his weakness, loathes his falsehood, knows himself betrayed by the object of his devotion! This, we must say, independent of its historical unlikelihood, is a poor piece of dramatic painting. The struggles of the mind,
Which doats, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves;
—which hopes against hope, and refuses to be persuaded of the hollowness of that to which it clings for support,—form a noble subject for the artist, whether the passion represented be that of friendship or of love. But where doubt is converted into certainty, and the lover is thoroughly convinced of the unrequited- [p. 142→] ness of his affection and worthlessness of his idol—love, in gentle natures, may waste in consuming regret—in fiercer ones, it may turn to hate; but to represent it as continuing the same intense, jealous, heart-absorbing impulse, is merely to represent it as a species of insanity, too remote from ordinary experience to produce general interest. Yet this is precisely the sort of exaggeration which is popular on the stage; and Strafford, knowing his master to be at once knave and fool, cold-hearted and unprincipled, yet continuing to long for a glance of his eye and a pressure of his hand, is just in a fit state to pour forth that alternate raving and whining which our modern chiefs of the buskin excel in exhibiting.
Pym is the true hero of the piece, and is rather better, as a dramatic conception; although not a whit more true to history, as far as our information goes. Here, however, the writer has somewhat less public ground to tread on. Miss Aikin, who has studied the individual portraiture of the chiefs of the Puritan party, in those memorials of them which we possess, with all the zeal of a surviving Roundhead, says truly, that we know less of Pym, as an individual, than of almost any of his eminent contemporaries. Considering the prominent part which he plays in the history of his time, it is rather remarkable how very scanty are the notices left us of his character. Even his birth and family are strangely misreported by the writers of his own time. It is altogether a gratuitous supposition to represent him, as Mr Browning has done, as united by the same bonds of youthful brotherhood which connected Hampden, Eliot, and Wentworth. Welwood’s apocryphal story about the meeting at Greenwich, even were it better authenticated, would prove nothing of the kind. Pym was an older man by some years than any of them, and came into Parliament at a much earlier period; apparently as a friend and adherent of the Russell family, who furnished him also with a good place in the Exchequer. It was his power as a debater, and his skill in Parliamentary tactics, which recommended him as a leader to the country party, in the first and second Parliaments of 1640. Otherwise, he seems to have had little of character or sentiment in common either with the liberal reformers, Hampden, Selden, &c., or with the zealous religionists who formed the main strength of the party. Altogether, he is a personage of whom we may say, as a certain minister is reported to have said of a political adversary, “we respect his talents, but there our respect ends.” He seems to have been an admirable party leader; but we never perceive in his language or conduct those glimpses through the thick atmosphere of party into a purer atmosphere beyond, which so often dignify the political views of his more [p. 143→] high-minded associates. His conduct of the impeachment against Strafford might be a great stroke of policy in the conception; but it was purely malignant and atrocious in the manner. It was a great point for the immediate interests of the Puritan party at that period, that a man could be found at once competent to the task from his ability, and not likely to shrink from its execution through any compunctious visitings. Better men would have made worse advocates on such an occasion. Yet this is the man whom Mr Browning has thought fit to invest with all the attributes of the hero of a political romance,—the most devoted friendship to an unworthy object, yielding at last to a stern conviction of the duty of a patriot. We do not, as we have said, wish to enforce very strict accuracy in adherence to historical character, on writers who are bold enough to adventure on dramatizing the stirring parts of our annals; the want of it is no doubt disappointing to the well-read spectator, but the greater part of a stage audience are not so learned; and Pym is not, like Strafford, a popularly known and familiar personage who will not endure to be travestied. Therefore we would allow Mr Browning, since the need of his tragedy requires it, full license to convert “King Pym” into a kind of combination of Brutus and Pierre; but when he is pleased gratuitously to inform the public that he has kept close to history in his portraits, we are really tempted to compare more closely their affected and distorted likenesses with their originals.
The remaining characters require little notice. Lady Carlisle, the famous court intrigante of the day, figures as a sort of political Viola—nourishing a concealed passion for Strafford, and whimpering about the stage after that hero, as he whimpers after the King. There is little of Queen Henrietta, and that little is a compound of meanness and vulgarity. As for King Charles, he is merely introduced as a foil to the principal characters; and for that purpose he is rendered as utterly contemptible as the poet can make him. Treacherous and cowardly—bullied by his wife—crouching to his courtiers—soundly rated by Strafford—taunted to his face by Denzil Hollis—going on his knees to Pym—if the public taste does not execute justice on Mr Browning for this atrocious caricature, Mr Charles Kemble, as a good and loyal censor, is really bound to interfere, and rescue royalty from such misrepresentation.
The worst peculiarity of Mr Browning’s dramatic diction is one which he has in common with many popular writers of the day; and it may be easily discovered how much it is owing to the circumstance of writing for actors, and in that manner which they conceive best calculated to exhibit their powers. It is a [p. 144→] fashion of breaking up his language into fragments; conveying a meaning, as it were, by starts and jerks; rarely finishing a sentence at all; and, when he does, cutting it short with disagreeable abruptness. Tragic actors, among whom a power of harmonious declamation is very rare, and whose chief talent lies in giving an effect to isolated points, and passages in which half the meaning is suppressed, are naturally fond of this mode of writing par saccades, as the French call it; so much so, that when the poet does not indulge them in this propensity, they are very apt to grind down his verses for themselves by process of oral macadamization. We are the more justified in mentioning this defect, as it appears to us in the style of our author—who, we have little doubt, considers it a beauty—because he does, in fact, show abundant power of doing better, if a deference to false taste permitted. He is able to succeed admirably in the structure of a sustained dialogue; and, what is more difficult still, of sustained declamation. This being the case, we can the less tolerate from him such ragged and prosaic patchwork as the following soliloquy of Strafford—to take one example out of an hundred—
Heartless … but all are heartless here … Go now,
Forsake the people! … I did not forsake
The people … they shall know it … when the King
Will trust me … who trusts all beside at once,
While I … have not spoke Vane and Savile fair,
And am not trusted … have but saved the throne;
Have not picked up the Queen’s glove prettily,
And am not trusted!
But he’ll see me now:
And Weston’s dead—and the Queen’s English now—
More English—oh, one earnest word will brush
Those reptiles from … (footsteps within).
The step I know so well!
’Tis Charles!—But now, to tell him—no—to ask him,
What’s in me to distrust?—or, best begin
By proving that this frightful Scots affair
Is just what I foretold: I’ll say, “My liege,” …
And I feel sick, now! and the time is come,
And one false step no way to be repaired.
You were revenged, Pym, could you look on me!
The author of the “Pickwick Papers,” with his usual acuteness, has made this fragmentary mode of speech the attribute of a strolling actor; and we really do not know where we could find a parallel to the language of Strafford so easily as in that of his inimitable Mr Alfred Jingle. “Conquests! thousands, Don Bolaro—grandee—only daughter—Donna Christina—splendid creature—loved me to distraction—jealous father—handsome [p. 145→] daughter—high-souled Englishman—Donna Christina in despair—prussic acid—stomach-pump in my portmanteau—operation performed—old Bolaro in ecstasies—consents to our union—join hands, and floods of tears—romantic story—very.”
We cannot accuse Mr Browning of having run into the youthful extreme of high-wrought extravagance in his diction. On the contrary, he seems to have laboured very hard to render it as low and unornamented as possible. This affected poverty of language is also a fault of theatrical origin. Nature, on the stage, is too often thought to be best imitated by the use of phraseology which is only natural from its familiar and even vulgar effect. Actors are fond of such passages; they afford an opportunity for the deep impressive whisper, which is always regarded as one of their most taking clap-traps. Nor can it be denied that the occasional and abrupt recall from the majestic tone of the drama to the brief homeliness of common language, on some suitable emergency, is a very allowable artifice. But it requires to be sparingly employed. Mr Browning, on the contrary, seems to make it the rule rather than the exception. The best passages in his play are constantly disfigured either by some creeping vulgarity, or some startling piece of affectation.
Pym, on the first solemn meeting with Strafford after his apostasy, addresses him in the following exquisite vein of sarcasm:
Ah! Wentworth, one thing for acquaintance’ sake,
Just to decide a question; have you, now,
Really felt well since you forsook us?
To which Strafford replies with much dignity—
Pym,
You’re insolent!
The dialogues between the King and his Minister are carried on with the same graceful simplicity.
Wentworth. That you should trust me, now,
Oh! not for my sake—but ’tis sad, so sad,
That for distrusting me, you suffer—you,
Whom I would die to save: Sire, do you think
That I would die to save you?
Charles. But rise, Wentworth!
Wentworth. What shall convince you? what does Savile do
To … Ah! one can’t tear out one’s heart—one’s heart,
And show it, how sincere a thing it is!
In the course of this conversation, Charles very reluctantly yields his assent to Strafford’s request of a Parliament—and the latter thus apostrophizes his Sovereign, like a good boy who has just resigned himself to a dose of physic:— [p. 146→]
Wentworth. My King!
But you will not so very much dislike
A Parliament? I’d serve you any way.
Charles. You said just now this was the only way.
Wentworth. Sire, I will serve you!
Charles. Strafford, spare yourself,
You are so sick, they tell me.
To which considerate observation the Earl makes this elegant reply:
Wentworth. ’Tis my soul
That’s well and happy now!
We never thought very amiably of Queen Henrietta; but certainly, if we had been asked to guess her first remark on seeing Strafford again after a long absence, we should hardly have hit upon the following:—
(As Strafford goes out, the Queen enters).
Charles. That man must love me!
Henrietta. Is it over, then!
Why he looks yellower than ever!
We are bound, however, to say, that our author has some justification, in a passage of Madame de Motteville’s Memoirs. According to that lively Frenchwoman, the Queen was continually interrupting her and the other ladies in the royal box in the House of Lords during Strafford’s defence, by calling on them to remark “what white hands he had.”
Charles being obliged to explain to the Queen his concession of a Parliament, thus delivers himself of the awkward announcement:—
We’ve hit on the expedient—he—that is—
I have advised—we have decided on—
The calling—in Ireland—of a Parliament!
These beauties are all culled from the first Act. But similar gems abound. Lord Holland, having been hooted away from the gallery of the Commons during a speech of Pym, thus describes the event:—
So in the twinkling of an eye, before
I settled in my mind what ugly brute
Was likest Pym just then, they yelled us out,
Locked the doors after us, and here are we!
The Queen, afraid lest Strafford on his trial should let out some awkward secrets, thus expresses her feelings to Lady Carlisle:— [p. 147→]
One may well suppose
He’ll say some overwhelming fact, Carlisle!
Rudyard, one of the popular party, interceding with Pym for Strafford’s life, beseeches him in this insinuating manner—
Pym, you would look so great!
The King, congratulating himself on Strafford’s dexterous defence and expected acquittal, thus nobly soliloquizes—
Strafford, you are a prince! Not to reward you
—Nothing does that—but only for a whim!
Hollis, being affected with poor King Lear’s hysterica passio, describes it somewhat literally:
Tell him all—
I know my throat would thicken thus.
Strafford, in the very last scene, breaks through all the interest which he has excited in a really touching speech about his affairs and his children, by these two unlucky lines—
These tedious cares! Your Majesty could spare them;
But ’tis so awkward, dying in a hurry.
In the general phraseology of the play,—even in the manner in which the rough old Puritans address each other,—there is a sort of affected, fondling tone, which perfectly disconcerts us. As for poor Lady Carlisle, seeing that she is desperately in love with Strafford from the beginning of the play, we can perhaps excuse his calling her “girl,” and “Lucy,” in every line; but really we do not think there was any thing in the character of the lady to justify him in supposing that Denzil Hollis would have taken the liberty of addressing her as “girl” too.
All these, we must once more repeat it, are, chiefly, defects of taste. They are peculiarities belonging to that which (by the leave of Mr Landor) we must still take the liberty of calling, for want of a better name, the “Cockney school” of dramatic authorship. And we have not been thus severe in our observations on the bad taste and affectation with which this play abounds, from any malice of criticism. But the author is a young man, and this essay exhibits powers which we can ill afford to see thrown away in the pursuit of false reputation. Had it been otherwise, we should not have taken the trouble to examine his claims to the distinction which he has earned. His defects are fostered by a corrupt taste in theatrical matters; and those defects in turn, meeting with applause instead of correction, tend to in- [p. 148→] crease and perpetuate the evil. For the rest, his success is a proof that his work affords striking situations and dramatic interest. He has developed his matter with breadth and simplicity of purpose, instead of breaking it up into highly-wrought details and insulated scenes; and this is the first great requisite in order to produce effect on miscellaneous readers and spectators. Even his style, of which we have thought it our duty to present a few singular specimens, is, on other occasions, wanting neither in power nor richness. When he lays aside affectation, and condescends to employ continuous dramatic dialogue, there is an energy about him not unworthy of the scenes and epochs which he has chosen to represent. ’Bating a little fantastic language, and the historical absurdity of making Vane intercede with Pym and Hampden for Strafford, we cannot give a fairer specimen than the following, from the fourth Act. The chiefs of the Puritans, foiled by Strafford’s ready defence against the articles of impeachment, are in deliberation about changing their course of proceeding for a bill of attainder.
Rudyard. Till now all hearts were with you. I withdrew
For one! Too horrible! O, we mistake
Your purpose, Pym; you cannot snatch away
The last spar from the drowning man.
Fiennes (to the rest). You’ll join us? mind, we own he merits death:
But this new course is monstrous! Vane, take heart:
This bill of his attainder shall not have
One true man’s hand to it!
Vane. But hear me, Pym!
Confront your bill—your own bill—what is it?
You cannot catch the Earl on any charge:
No man will say the law has hold on him
On any charge: and therefore you resolve
To take the general sense on his desert,
As though no law existed, and we met
To found one! You refer to every man
To speak his thought upon this hideous mass
Of half-borne-out assertions—dubious hints
Hereafter to be cleared—distortions—ay,
And wild inventions. Every man is saved
The task of fixing any single charge
On Strafford: he has but to see in him
The enemy of England!
Pym. A right scruple:
I have heard some called England’s enemy
With less consideration.
Vane. Pity me!
Me—brought so low—who hoped to do so much [p. 149→]
For England—her true servant. Pym your friend—
Indeed you made me think I was your friend!
But I have murdered Strafford! I have been
The instrument of this! who shall remove
That memory from me?
Pym. I absolve you, Vane:
Take you no care for aught that you have done.
Vane. Dear Hampden, not this bill! Reject this bill!
He staggers through the ordeal—let him go,
Strew no fresh fire before him.....
Rudyard. Hampden, plead
For us! When Strafford spoke, your eyes were thick
With tears!—Save him, dear Hampden!
Hampden. England speaks
Louder than Strafford. Who are we, to play
The generous pardoner at her expense—
Magnanimously waive advantages—
And if he conquer us—applaud his skill?
Vane (to Pym). He was your friend…
Pym. I have heard that before.
Fiennes. But England trusts you…
Hampden. Shame be his, who turns
The opportunity of serving her
She trusts him with, to his own mean account—
Who would look nobly frank at her expense!
Fiennes. I never thought it could have come to this.
Pym (turning from St John). But I have made myself familiar, Fiennes,
With that one thought—have walked, and sat, and slept,
That thought before me! I have done such things,
Being the chosen man that should destroy
This Strafford! You have taken up that thought
To play with—for a gentle stimulant—
To give a dignity to idler life
By the dim prospect of this deed to come—
But ever with the softening, sure belief
That all would come some strange way right at last.
Fiennes. Had we made out some weightier charge....
Pym. You say
That these are petty charges! Can we come
To the real charge at all? There he is safe,
In tyranny’s stronghold. Apostasy
Is not a crime—Treachery not a crime—
The cheek burns, the blood tingles, when you name
Their names, but where’s the power to take revenge
Upon them? We must make occasion serve:
The oversight pay for the giant sin
That mocks us! [p. 150→]
Rudyard. But this unexampled course!
This Bill.....
Pym. By this, we roll the clouds away
Of precedent and custom, and at once
Bid the great light which God has set in all—
The conscience of each bosom—shine upon
The guilt of Strafford: each shall lay his hand
Upon his breast, and say if this one man
Deserve to die, or no, by those he sought
First to undo.
Fiennes. You—Vane—you answer him.
Vane. Pym, you see furthest! I can only see
Strafford—I’d not pass over that pale corse
For all beyond!*
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*Act IV. Scene II.
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We would willingly add to this quotation, did our limits permit us, the whole of the first Scene of the fifth Act, which in our judgment displays the author’s talent in a still more favourable light. But we should only injure its effect by making partial extracts; and must therefore conclude with an earnest request to Mr Browning, to try his own work by comparison with better standards than those which he appears to have proposed to himself, and to remember that without correctness of taste no writing can be permanently popular. He has sacrificed far too much to the seductions of theatrical clap-trap: a better and a manlier tone might win him fewer plaudits from green-room critics, but it would in the end secure him more solid triumphs. Let him remember Dryden’s apologies for his own desertion of the standard of good taste to accommodate himself to the perverted relish of the town. “I remember some verses of my Maximin,” says he in the preface to the “Spanish Fryar,” “which cry vengeance upon me for their extravagance. All I can say for those passages, which are, I hope, not many, is, that I knew they were bad when I wrote them. But I repent of them amongst my sins; and, if any of their fellows intrude by chance into my present writings, I draw a stroke over all those Dalilahs of the theatre, and am resolved I will settle myself no reputation by the applause of fools. ’Tis not that I am mortified to all ambition; but I scorn as much to take it from half-witted judges, as I should to raise an estate by cheating of bubbles.” Dryden should have divided a little more fairly the sin and the scandal between his “half-witted judges,” and such authors as himself, who pampered and pan- [p. 151→] dered to their perverse inclinations. It would be most erroneous to suppose, that the mixed audience of a theatre is unsusceptible of more refined and purer perceptions. On the contrary, although the less critical multitude is generally slow in acquiring correctness of taste, it is also the last to abandon the cause of good taste, when once acquired, and to follow the more mercurial leaders of the fashion into corrupt extravagance. The plays of the severely classical Alfieri afford at this day, if we may believe M. de Sismondi, the favourite amusement of the Tuscan peasantry, of whom but few can read or write. Racine and Voltaire still continue to be, or were until very lately, the delight of the French populace, though the “intellectual classes” had gone wandering after the idolatries of the romantic school. The highest of all rewards, therefore, awaits those who may succeed in improving the theatrical spirit of their age, in the prospect of a permanency of fashion and fame. Those, on the contrary, who contribute to depreciate it, or who merely copy the bad models which it holds out to them for imitation, will soon see their own evanescent popularity eclipsed by that of successors as unworthy as themselves.
[John Herman Merivale]
Reviewed:
Strafford (RB), London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, 1837.
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