R530430H. Colombe’s Birthday.
The Spectator, 30 April 1853, p. 414.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 389.
Although Mr. Browning’s dramatic poem of Colombe’s Birthday was received at the Haymarket with all those outward marks of success which the theatrical world—credulous today, sceptical tomorrow—accept as symbols of prosperity, we believe that those who take the trouble to talk about such matters think that there has been a mistake somewhere,—that there is not that relation between play and public which the learned in attire denominate a “fit.” Doubtless, issue will be joined as to where the mistake lies. One party asks why the coat is brought home so little adapted to the shape of the wearer; another thinks that the wearer is highly reprehensible for not being fitted with so good a coat. Something of the same sort occurred when an European Royalist and an European Republican paid a visit to the United States of America, and both returned highly dissatisfied. “A glorious constitution spoiled by an unworthy people!” exclaimed the Republican: “A noble people damaged by a detestable constitution,” echoed (Hibernicè) the Royalist. Both were united in this, that something was wrong, somewhere, somehow.
As far as concerns ourselves, we have no great difficulty in fixing our party. Unless a case of decided deformity were proved, we should, when the question lay between the coat and the shoulders, decide in favour of the latter; notwithstanding the dictum of honest Crambe in Martinus Scriblerus, who declared that his clothes were the substance and he the accident, because his clothes could do better without him than he without his clothes,—or rather, perhaps, if we drop our simile of the wardrobe, because of Crambe’s reasoning, since the public can do better without the play than the play without the public. Now, in the case of Colombe’s Birthday, we have a dainty dramatic poem, in which a very pretty story is recounted of a duchess—a most amiable creature—who prefers the delights of “love in a cottage” to the troubles of a duchy; to which, be it confessed, she has no legal title. The personages in whose hands this delicate story is placed are nice amiable personages, whom nothing in the world can stimulate into any unseemly outbreak of passion, and who discuss each other’s several positions with a temper highly worthy of imitation. Mr. Browning’s poem is doubtless a very edifying essay on the situation of a young lady, who, placed in authority, desires to do all sorts of good, but finds herself surrounded by all sorts of evil, until she slips out of her troubles and takes refuge in the felicities of a domestic life. A very edifying essay indeed; and it would be more edifying still if the language were a trifle more lucid, for it must be avowed that the teachings sometimes come through a foggy medium. But never in the course of a not very short theatrical experience has it been our lot to witness a work so utterly unfitted for the purposes of stage-representation—so completely destitute of those opportunities which enable the actor to throw in an additional colour, and fill up that outline which is all that a mere reading can afford. Mr. Browning’s poem is essentially made for private study—pretty hard study too; and is utterly devoid of passion or dramatic situation. Hence, when it is put on the stage, where words should be caught up in an instant—where the mind should have a leading idea sharply presented to it, and be able to afford every now and then to miss details—it loses everything and gains no compensation. The auditor has not that opportunity of studying the language which was accorded to the reader; and there is no place where the actor can introduce those realities of passion which are beyond the reach of the imaginative student. Miss Helen Faucit, who plays the principal character, speaks her lines impressively; but it is impossible for her, or for any one else, to make a great stage-part of the young and amiable but undramatic Duchess of Juliers.
Reviewed:
Colombe’s Birthday (RB), performance, London, 25 April 1853.
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