An Introduction to the Study of Browning

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, February 11, 1843 (Mildred, Miss Helen Faucit; Lord Tresham, Mr. Phelps). Revived by Mr. Phelps at Sadler's Wells, No

5, 1888, by the Browning Society; and by the Independent Theatre at the

gedy of the sin, and that of the misunderstanding, the last and final tragedy, which hangs on a word, spoken only when too late to save three lives. This irony of circumstance, while it is the source of what is saddest in human discords, is also the motive of what has come to be the only satisfying harmony in dramatic art. It takes the place, in our modern world, of the Necessity of the Greeks; and is not less impressive because it arises from the impulse and unreasoning wilfulness of man rather than from the implacable insistency of God. It is with perfect justice, both moral and artistic, that the fatal crisis, though mediately the result of accident, of error, is shown to be the consequence and the punishment of wrong. A tragedy resulting from the mistakes of the wholly innocent would jar on our sense of right, and could never produce a legitimate work of a

d against than sinning," is exquisitely and t

and tend

st and its wom

assionate, how

joyous, how re

where fri

ht from her heart to ours. "I know nothing that is so affecting," wrote Dickens in a letter to Forster, "nothing in any book I have ever read, as Mildred's recurrence to that 'I was so young

t hero of the play, is a much less prominent and masterly figure than Tresham, not so much from any lack of skill in his delineation, as from the essential ineffectualness of his nature. Guendolen Tresham, the Beatrice of the play (her lover Austin is certainly no Benedick) is one of the most pleasantly humorous characters in Browning. Her gay, lig

ginning, "There's a woman like a dew-drop." This is the first of the love-songs in lo

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the audience. The gallery (and this, of course, was very gratifying, because not to be expected at a play of Browning) took all the points quite as quickly as the pit, and ent

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of Dickens, v