R530430D. Colombe’s Birthday.
The Examiner, 30 April 1853, p. 278.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 386.
It appears very strange and unreasonable that a writer so intensely dramatic in the spirit of all his writings as Mr Browning undoubtedly is, should have obtained such moderate success on the stage. There can be no question as to the leading characteristic of his poetry. Whether or not he assumes the form, the dramatic spirit is there. If it be a romance, or a lyric, or a play, the same process is going on. Somebody is talking to himself, or exchanging talk with another, or, in collision with a number of persons, eliciting the workings and counterworkings of individual mind or passion. There is the least possible of the descriptive in Mr Browning’s poems. With him, those things are in process of doing, in the heat of vivid creation, in projection as the alchemist would say, which it becomes the task of others to describe. His people never go out of their way to narrate their situation, or their feelings, or to explain to themselves, for the benefit of others, the peculiarities of their position or disposition. All this is only to be inferred from what they say to the matter they have more immediately in hand: and whatever breaks or intervals of explanation may thus be left, the intelligence of the reader must supply.
Here we touch perhaps on the source of the difficulty in the way of Mr Browning’s stage success. He exacts too much both before and behind the curtain. The actor wants intelligence and skill to put the proper meaning into a felicitous word, he cannot supply the look, the gesture, the rich comment of face or voice, which give ease and strength to abrupt transitions of passion. The audience have come to be amused, and have none of their wits disengaged for any harder employment. Little but obscurity therefore,—jerks and jumps of expression, and subtleties lost in the labour of their delivery,—are the result of a stage performance. Of that subtle essence of the poet’s genius to which imagination, fancy, intellect, and passion contribute so largely, and which make the writings of this poet so interesting a study to the most cultivated minds, it is little more than the caput mortuum that remains.
We must thus account for the doubtful success of Colombe’s Birthday produced at the Haymarket Theatre on Monday night, very nicely presented in all scenic respects, and with Miss Helen Faucit for the heroine. We can scarcely wonder at the attempt made, because the outline of the story, though slight, is very pleasing, and has a germ of simplicity and interest which forms a decided contrast to the subtlety and intricacy of passion which prevails in perhaps the majority of Mr Browning’s other writings. We may tell the principal incident in a very few words.
Twelve months before the scene opens, on the anniversary of her birthday, young Colombe of Ravestein has been proclaimed, unexpectedly, Duchess of Juliers and Cleves; but at the opening of the scene, another anniversary of the birthday has brought with it a new and stronger claimant to the duchy in the person of the shrewd, cold, and politic, but not ungenerous or unkindly Prince Berthold. At the same time, too, there arrives in the duchy a poor but enthusiastic advocate of Cleves named Valence—to seek redress from the young sovereign for the wrongs of his native city, and to become the victim, when he sees her, of a passion to all appearance hopeless. This is a beautiful character, if the actor could have developed it in its shades of doubt and progress, as circumstances try its strength, shake it somewhat, but finally prove and establish it. He is called on to confront the claim of Berthold, though it would have given his love some hope: and, when obliged to admit the claim, is made Berthold’s messenger to Colombe to end their rivalry by marriage. Great force and beauty are in these situations, and they were felt even in the theatre. Miss Faucit played throughout with the earnestness inspired by her evident liking for the character of Colombe, and several touches she gave with a peculiar delicacy and truth, which, but for the unhappily intense consciousness of its own merit which her style of acting generally implies, would have proved still more effective. Colombe rejects the hand of Berthold, the vision of state and power fades before the lowlier reality, and she becomes the untitled wife of the poor Advocate of Cleves.
The applause was unmixed at the close of the play, and many passages as it proceeded had excited evident admiration and sympathy. If it remains on the stage longer than we have ventured to anticipate we shall think all the better of the audiences of the Haymarket. Nor, if the great beauty of the contrast between the characters of Berthold and Valence could only have been better exhibited by the actors, should we have entertained so much doubt as we do of the probability of such a result.
Reviewed:
Colombe’s Birthday (RB), performance, London, 25 April 1853.
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