R631212A. Poetical Works (1863).
The London Review, 12 December 1863, pp. 625–626.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 397.
In noticing Mr. Browning’s minor poems we claimed for him great dramatic insight, but left his power of conducting a continuous action undetermined. It was evident enough that he possessed the faculty of assuming the form and living the life of men of divers climes and separated centuries; he could take us though a gallery where we might meet in quick succession the thinkers and the actors of many ages; but could he reproduce for us the very form and image of any particular time? Could he transform his gallery into a scene? Had he the power of presenting to our view a group of contemporaries, acting and reacting upon one another, and working out as a resultant of their conjoint life some event of mingled joy and terror? These are the questions which we left unsettled—the questions which must be answered from an examination of the plays and tragedies which form the second volume of Mr. Browning’s works.
The piece which stands first in the volume, “Pippa Passes,” gives no answer to our questions. It is in truth not strictly a play. Though it possesses all the classical unities, which are so easily spared, it lacks the unity which is essential to a true drama. It cannot be said of it that no scene can be taken away without destroying the whole. Beautiful as the scenes are (and “Pippa Passes” is so beautiful that all readers enjoy it) they are like a necklace of pearls, they have no natural relation to one another, and the only connection between them is a slender thread which runs through all. Pippa—Felippa—the Italian factory-girl, has a holiday, which she spends in a walk through Asolo. As she passes, the songs which arise from the joyousness of her heart break into chambers of sin and crime, and the unexpected snatches touch and redeem the dark and scheming hearts within. Four times does this happen, at morning, noon, evening, and night; but it is evident that the idea might have been developed in three or might have been extended to twelve such conversions. We are driven to the next play for a discovery of the limits of Mr. Browning’s dramatic genius.
“King Victor and King Charles” turns upon an event which some readers may remember to have heard of in Mr. Carlyle’s “Frederick,” but which is withal very dim and uncertain to most Englishmen. King Victor, the first King of Sardinia, was described by his cousin, the great Eugene, as “sordid, ambitious, deceitful, implacable, fearing and detesting Louis XIV.; not attached to Leopold (the Emperor of Germany).” He is said to have behaved honourably once, by accident; but he ordinarily adopted the traditional policy of the house of Savoy, and was alternately the treacherous ally of France and Germany. He was hated at home, despised and distrusted abroad, but he converted the Duchy of Savoy into the Kingdom of Sardinia. At the time that the play opens in 1730, Victor is in his sixty-fifth year, his heir apparent is his son Charles, married to a German princess named by Mr. Browning Polyxena, but usually called Christina. An older son, Philip (Victor?), had died suddenly in opening manhood, and Charles, till then neglected, had found himself thrust into the position of successor to the kingdom. Unused to statecraft, he cared little for his father’s schemes, and it seemed to Victor that with himself must perish the Sardinian fortunes. The play opens with a scene between Charles and Polyxena, who have been summoned to the king of Rivoli:—
Polyxena.—. . . . . What’s now a-foot,
I wonder? Not that any more’s to dread
Than every day’s embarrassment,—but guess,
For me, why train so fast succeeded train
On the high-road, each gayer still than each;
I noticed your archbishop’s pursuivant,
The sable cloak and silver cross; such pomp
Bodes … what now, Charles? Can you conceive?
Charles. Not I.
Pol.—A matter of some moment—
Cha. There’s our life!
Which of the group of loiterers that stared
From the lime-avenue divines that I—
About to figure presently, he thinks,
In face of all assembled—am the one
Who knows precisely least about it?
Whilst they thus talk D’Ormea, the faithful minister of Victor’s craft, originally a lawyer’s clerk, joins them; he knows the cause why they are summoned, and from some chance words of Charles hastily concludes not only that the prince is informed of it, but that he is incensed again D’Ormea because he has been hitherto kept out of the king’s schemes. To excuse himself, D’Ormea shows the fruit of these schemes; through over-taxation
Savoy’s become a mass of misery
And wrath which one man has to meet—the King;
whilst Austria and Spain, finding they have been both deceived, have leagued together to destroy Sardinia:—
Here’s Austria, and here’s Spain to fight against,
And what sustains the king but Savoy here,
A miserable people mad with wrongs?
Charles misinterprets the apologies, and when D’Ormea leaves them, declares to Polyxena his belief that they have been summoned in order that, instructed as to the difficulties which environ the crown and his unfitness to meet them, he may be stung into resigning his right to the succession. The first act closes with their resolve that this shall be gladly done. But the second act opens with a soliloquy of Victor, from which we learn the truth; he does not seek to deprive Charles of his succession, but to hasten it; encompassed with difficulties, he sees no way out of his position but by the expedient adopted by his successor, Charles Albert, in our own time—abdication in favour of his son. The character of Victor throughout this act is very subtly developed; rascal as he is, we cannot help being influenced by his energy, his wit, his vivacity, and his dexterity; D’Ormea foreseeing danger to himself, counsels Victor against the abdication—in vain; Charles, when the scheme is suddenly revealed to him, resents it as a trap, but is overborne by his father; he and D’Ormea go out to receive the homage of the nobles; D’Ormea returns and is greeted by Victor with “Long live King Charles!”
D’Ormea.—“King Charles!” What then may you be?
Victor. Anything!
A country gentleman that’s cured of bustle,
And beats a quick retreat towards Chambery
To hunt and hawk and leave you noisy folk
To drive your trade without him, I’m Count Remont—
Count Tende—any little place’s count!
D’O.—Then, Victor, captain against Catinat,
At Staffarde, where the French beat you; and duke
At Turin, where you beat the French: king, late
Of Savoy, Piedmont, Montferrat, Sardinia
—Now “any little place’s count.”
Vic. Proceed!
D’O.—Breaker of vows to God, who crowned you first:
Breaker of vows to man, who kept you since;
Most profligate to me, who outraged God
And man to serve you, and am made pay crimes
I was but privy to, by passing thus
To your imbecile son—who, well you know,
Must (when the people here, and nations there,
Clamour for you, the main delinquent, slipt
From king to—count of any little place)
—Surrender me, all left within his reach,—
I, sir, forgive you: for I see the end—
See you on your return—(you will return)—
To him you trust in for the moment....
Vic. How?
Trust in him? merely a prime minister,
This D’Ormea! How trust in him?
D’O. In his fear—
His love,—but pray discover for yourself
What you are weakest, trusting in! [p. 626→]
Vic. Aha,
D’Ormea, not a shrewder scheme than this
In your repertory? You know old Victor—
Vain, choleric, inconstant, rash (I’ve heard
Talkers who little thought the king so close).
Felicitous, now, were’t not, to provoke him
To clean forget, one minute afterwards,
His solemn act, and call the nobles back,
And pray them give again the very power
He has abjured!—for the dear sake of—what?
Vengeance on you! No, D’Ormea: such am I,
Count Tende, or Count anything you please,
—Only, the same that did the things you say,
And, among other things you say not, used
Your finest fibre, meanest muscle,—you
I used, and now, since you will have it so,
Leave to your fate—mere lumber in the midst,
You and your works. Why, what on earth beside
Are you made for, you sort of ministers?
That King Victor within a year did repent and endeavour to regain his crown; that King Charles thereupon shut him up in honourable confinement, in which he soon after died, is the narrative we read in the history books. The second part of the play gives us Mr. Browning’s reading of this transaction. When Charles has brought back contentment at home and had made peace abroad, the desire to undo what he had done arose in Victor; he came from his retreat at Chambery to beg back the crown, but failing of his purpose, and stung by the sarcasms of D’Ormea, he is content with begging Moncalieri instead of Chambery. Thither he goes. This is his honourable confinement. Still he plots to regain the crown, but D’Ormea has spies over him. At length Charles, overwearied with D’Ormea’s intelligence of his father’s plots, gives the minister authority to seize his father and bring him to Turin. But when D’Ormea has gone on his errand doubts arise:—
Charles. We talk—perchance they tear
My father from his bed. The old hands feel
For one who is not, but who should be there—
And he finds D’Ormea! D’Ormea too finds him!
The crowded chamber when the lights go out—
Closed doors—the horrid scuffle in the dark—
The accursed promptings of the minute! My guards!
To horse—and after, with me—and prevent!
Polyxena [seizing his hand].
King Charles! Pause here upon this strip of time
Allotted you out of eternity!
Crowns are from God—in His name you hold yours.
Your life’s no least thing, were it fit your life
Should be abjured along with rule; but now,
Keep both! Your duty is to live and rule—
You, who would vulgarly look fine enough
In the world’s eye, deserting your soul’s charge,—
Ay, you would have men’s praise—this Rivoli
Would be illumined! while, as ’tis, no doubt,
Something of stain will ever rest on you:
No one will rightly know why you refused
To abdicate; they’ll talk of deeds you could
Have done, no doubt,—nor do I much expect
Future achievements will blot out the Past,
Envelope it in haze—nor shall we two
Be happy anymore. ’Twill be, I feel,
Only in moments that the duty’s seen
As palpably as now—the months, the years
Of painful indistinctness are to come,
While daily must we tread these palace-rooms
Pregnant with memories of the Past: your eye
May turn to mine and find no comfort there,
Through fancies that beset me, as yourself,
Of other courses, with far other issues,
We might have taken this great night—such bear,
As I will bear! What matters happiness?
Duty! There’s man’s one moment—this is yours!
The end of the tragedy is at hand. D’Ormea arrives, bringing Victor with him, who alone and a prisoner orders his son to render up the crown. The son yields, but it is to a dying father:—
Victor.—I am then king! As I became a king
Despite the nations—kept myself a king—
So I die king, with kingship dying too
Around me! I have lasted Europe’s time!
What wants my story of completion?
* * * * * *
Charles—how to save your story? Mine must go!
Say—say that you refused the crown to me—
Charles, yours shall be my story! You immured
Me, say at Rivoli. A single year
I spend without a sight of you, then die—
That will serve every purpose—tell that tale
The world!
* * * * * *
Ha! Where lurks he?
D’Ormea! Come nearer to your king! Now stand!
[Collecting his strength as D’Ormea approaches.]
But you lied, D’Ormea! I do not repent.
[Dies.
We have analysed this play at length, not merely by way of answer to the questions with which we started, but because we believe it to be the best service we can do the reader. That the tragedy is full of action, even to vehemence, is evident; its idea is slowly evolved, and its conduct marches on continuously from the commencement to the close. As a necessary accompaniment the characters of the dramatis personæ are developed in its progress; the character of Charles in particular appears to grow under the influence of the circumstances to which it is subjected. Polyxena is a high-souled, heroic wife, and we may suppose her to be one of those women of Mr. Browning’s creation who won Margaret Fuller’s emphatic approval.
There are seven more plays in this volume, and did space permit we might carry out our work by giving an analysis of each by way of introduction to their study. Five at least out of the seven we should find exhibit a dramatic power as brilliant and as living as that shown in “King Victor and King Charles,” whilst the canvas is in general crowded with a greater number of figures. In the “Return of the Druses,” for example, we have the Patriarch’s Nuncio, one of the best of Mr. Browning’s ecclesiastics, crafty as Antony in persuading a mob, full of expedients and daring; Loys, the knight-novice, cherishing chivalrous enthusiasm and earnest aspirations; Djabal, the self-deceiving impostor, who has almost persuaded himself of the truth of his own pretensions to be the revivified Founder of the Druse faith—the incarnate Hakeem; Khalil, his faithful trusting follower; and Anael, the sweet maiden, whose soul is torn by the conflicting emotions of doubt, reverence, and love; besides several delicately discriminated subordinate characters. But though we find in the “Return of the Druses,” as in “King Victor and King Charles,” “Colombe’s Birthday,” and “Luria,” an abundant variety of character and an action vivid and continuous from the inception to the close, we learn also somewhat of the reason why these plays are hard reading. The action is almost too vivid and energetic; at the first acquaintance the reader has to labour to keep up with the play of events and development of character; resting-places are wanting, or at least reaches where the stream flows with sufficient calmness to allow us to muse over the course we have passed. The choruses of the Greek drama supplied this want, which in Shakespeare is far more effectively met by the interspersed scenes of humour and by-play. Mr. Browning has nothing of this kind, and the deficiency points to a peculiarity of his genius, with the mention of which we must conclude this notice. Wide as is the range of his characters, taking in as he does saints and sinners, the strong and the weak, the noble and the mean, he rarely perhaps never, shows any appreciation of the comic or humorous side of human life. Once or twice he may be supposed to have attempted its delineation, but the result is generally thin and weak; the most successful effort occurs in the “Flight of the Duchess,”—in the dramas proper there is none to call for remark.
Reviewed:
Poetical Works (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1863.
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