Other Literary Forms
Robert Browning is better known as a major Victorian poet and, in particular, as one who perfected the influential verse form called dramatic monologue. His achievement in poetry, for which he forsook the theater altogether in 1846, was unquestionably much greater than what he accomplished as a writer of stage plays, yet it is difficult and unwise to distinguish the subject matter and techniques of Browning’s “failed” dramas from those of his successful poems. Although he was by nature and inclination a dramatic writer, it became apparent that his peculiar interests and talent in that line were more suited to the finer medium of poetry than to the practical exigencies of stagecraft. The verse confirms his acknowledged preoccupation with interior drama (“Action in character, not character in action”). Browning’s verse masterpieces in this mode include “Porphyria’s Lover,” “My Last Duchess,” “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church,” “Andrea del Sarto,” “Love Among the Ruins,” “The Last Ride Together,” and The Ring and the Book (1868-1869). A dramatic monologue by Browning typically features an incandescent moment of crisis or of self-realization in the mental life of some unusual, often morally or psychologically flawed, character. Rather like a soliloquy except in being addressed to a present but silent listener, this type of poem enabled Browning to let his speakers’ personalities, motives, obsessions, and delusions be revealed—inadvertently or otherwise—in speech and implied gesture. This preoccupation with inward, psychological drama—with the springs of action rather than with action itself—is the origin of Browning’s greatness as a poet and of his limitations as a stageworthy playwright.
Achievements
In nineteenth and early twentieth century criticism, Browning was widely considered to be the best English writer of dramatic literature (though not of stageable plays) since the Renaissance. That judgment was probably accurate enough, if only because of the remarkable dearth of fine drama during the two hundred years in question. Even today, especially if Browning’s splendid dramatic monologues are included in the estimate, there can be little doubt that his achievement was, under the circumstances, extraordinary. Nevertheless, any evaluation of his plays must begin by conceding that, despite his hopes, practical theatrical craft in the ordinary sense was never in Browning’s vein of genius. He was a first-rate dramatic poet, not a good technical playwright. Indeed, the very themes and methods that mark the plays’ literary value are the source of their unsuitability for successful performance.
One historical explanation of this “failure” is the Romantic concept of acted and unacted drama. Browning has been associated with a widespread and consciously antitheatrical attitude among authors that resulted in plays composed with indifference to performative—as opposed to literary or expressive—criteria. If Browning did believe on principle that actual staging is not necessary to serious drama, it is less surprising that his own plays are satisfactory chiefly as reading texts. On the other hand, Browning did press persistently to see some of his work on the boards.
In any case, Browning’s plays have never been popular and, with the exception of Pippa Passes, are not usually numbered among his most important contributions to the history of English dramatic writing. Their lasting excellence, then, is in their objective poetry and prose. As in the verse collections to which he gave titles such as Dramatic Lyrics (1842; in Bells and Pomegranates, 1841-1846), Dramatis Personae (1864), Dramatic Idyls (1879, 1880), and Men and Women (1855), Browning’s mastery of inward action is demonstrated in the plays’ delineation of moral and psychological crises and in their vivid intellectual and emotional energy. Understood as searching...
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critiques of modern life, the psychological and moral bearings of some of these dramas—and their subversive frankness (about eroticism, for example, or respectability)—were original and significantly ahead of their time. Formal innovations in the reading plays (Pippa Passes and A Soul’s Tragedy) and Browning’s special gift for creating memorable female characters have also been praised.
Other literary forms
Robert Browning wrote letters copiously. Published volumes of his correspondence include The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845-1846 (1926, 2 volumes; Robert B. Browning, editor), as well as volumes of correspondence between Browning and Alfred Domett, Isa Blagden, and George Barrett. Baylor University holds extensive manuscript and document collections concerning Browning from which Intimate Glimpses from Browning’s Letter File: Selected from Letters in the Baylor University Browning Collection was published in 1934. An additional collection of about four hundred New Letters of Robert Browning has also been published (1950; W. C. DeVane and Kenneth L. Knickerbocker, editors).
For a short time, Browning also attempted to write plays. Unfortunately, the impracticality of performing his particular dramas on stage doomed them to failure. The majority of these works can be found in the Bells and Pomegranates series, published between 1841 and 1846.
Achievements
Robert Browning is, with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, one of the two leading Victorian poets. Although Browning did not invent the dramatic monologue, he expanded its possibilities for serious psychological and philosophical expression, and he will always be considered a master of the dramatic poem. Browning’s best poetry appears in three volumes: Men and Women, Dramatis Personae, and The Ring and the Book. Browning typically writes as if the poem were an utterance of a dramatic character, either a creation of his own imagination or his re-creation of some historical personage. He speaks through a mask, or dramatic persona, so that his poems must be read as little plays, or as scenes or fragments of larger dramas. The dramatic mask allowed him to create in his audience a conflict between sympathy and judgment: As the reader often judges the dramatic speaker to be evil, he nevertheless sympathizes with his predicament. The dramatic monologue allows the author to explore the thoughts and feelings of deviant psychology to an extent seldom practiced before. On the other hand, when the author always speaks through a character, taking on the limitations and prejudices of a dramatic figure, he conceals his own feelings and ideas from his reader. His critics charge that he evaded the writer’s most important duty by failing to pass judgment on his characters, and by presenting murderers, villains, and whores without a word of moral reprobation. He is accused of valuing passion for its own sake, failing to construct his own framework of values that would allow the reader to evaluate and judge the ethical position of his characters. Nevertheless, Browning deserves to be read as a serious innovator in poetic form; his conception of dramatic character influenced modern fiction as well as poetry.
Discussion Topics
What did Robert Browning learn from his study of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry?
In regard to Browning, what do you understand the phrase “indulgent Romantic angst” to mean?
How does the monologue form of Browning’s dramatic poems differentiate them from plays?
To what extent might the tones and emphases used in reading of “My Last Justice” aloud affect its interpretation?
Should we understand the duke in “My Last Duchess” as “shrewd” or “witless” in his obvious revelation of himself to his visitor?
How does one explain Browning’s fondness for rhymed couplets when he so often seems to be undermining their effect with enjambments and rhythmical variations?
What seems to be the best way of understanding the motivation of the bishop in “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church”?
