



Produced by Richard Adicks





DRAMATIC ROMANCES

FROM THE POETIC WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING

By Robert Browning


Introduction and Notes: Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

From the edition of Browning's poems published by Thomas Y. Crowell and
Company, New York, in 1898.


Editing conventions:

Stanza and section numbers have been moved to the left margin, and
periods that follow them have been removed.

Periods have been omitted after Roman numerals in the titles of popes
and nobles.

Quotation marks have been left only at the beginning and end of a
multi-line quotation, and at the beginning of each stanza within the
quotation, instead of at the beginning of every line, as in the printed
text.



CONTENTS

     Introduction
     Incident of the French Camp
     The Patriot
     My Last Duchess
     Count Gismond
     The Boy and the Angel
     Instans Tyrannus
     Mesmerism
     The Glove
     Time's Revenges
     The Italian in England
     The Englishman in Italy
     In a Gondola
     Waring
     The Twins
     A Light Woman
     The Last Ride Together
     The Pied Piper of Hamelin:  A Child's Story
     The Flight of the Duchess
     A Grammarian's Funeral
     The Heretic's Tragedy
     Holy-Cross Day
     Protus
     The Statue and the Bust
     Porphyria's Lover
     "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"




INTRODUCTION

[The Dramatic Romances,...] enriched by some of the poems originally
printed in Men and Women, and a few from Dramatic Lyrics as first
printed, include some of Browning's finest and most characteristic work.
In several of them the poet displays his familiarity with the life and
spirit of the Renaissance--a period portrayed by him with a fidelity
more real than history--for he enters into the feelings that give rise
to action, while the historian is busied only with the results growing
out of the moving force of feeling.

The egotism of the Ferrara husband outraged at the gentle wife because
she is as gracious toward those who rendered her small courtesies,
and seemed as thankful to them as she was to him for his gift of a
nine-hundred-years-old name, opens up for inspection the heart of a
husband at a time when men exercised complete control over their wives,
and could satisfy their jealous, selfish instincts by any cruel methods
they chose to adopt, with no one to say them "nay." The highly developed
artistic sense shown by this husband is not incompatible with his
consummate selfishness and cruelty, as many tales of that time might be
brought forward to illustrate. The husband in "The Statue and the Bust"
belongs to the same type, and the situation there is the inevitable
outcome of a civilization in which women were not consulted as to whom
they would marry, and naturally often fell a prey to love if it should
come to them afterwards. Weakness of will in the case of the lovers in
this poem wrecked their lives; for they were not strong enough to follow
either duty or love. Another glimpse is caught of this period when
husbands and brothers and fathers meted out what they considered justice
to the women in "In a Gondola." "The Grammarian's Funeral" gives also
an aspect of Renaissance life--the fervor for learning characteristic
of the earlier days of the Renaissance when devoted pedants, as Arthur
Symons says in referring to this poem, broke ground in the restoration
to the modern world of the civilization and learning of ancient Greece
and Rome. Again, "The Heretic's Tragedy" and "Holy-Cross Day" picture
most vividly the methods resorted to by the dying church in its attempts
to keep control of the souls of a humanity seething toward religious
tolerance.

With only a small space at command, it is difficult to decide on the
poems to be touched upon, especially where there is not one but would
repay prolonged attention, due no less to the romantic interest of the
stories, the marvellous penetration into human motives, the grasp of
historical atmospheres, than to the originality and perfection of their
artistry.

A word must be said of "The Flight of the Duchess" and "Childe Roland
to the Dark Tower Came," both poems which have been productive of many
commentaries, and both holding their own amid the bray [sic] of critics
as unique and beautiful specimens of poetic art. Certainly no two poems
could be chosen to show wider diversity in the poet's genius than these.

The story told by the huntsman in "The Flight of the Duchess" is
interesting enough simply as a story, but the telling of it is
inimitable. One can see before him the devoted, kindly man,
somewhat clumsy of speech, as indicated by the rough rhymes, and
characteristically drawing his illustrations from the calling he
follows. Keen in his critical observation of the Duke and other members
of the household, he, nevertheless, has a tender appreciation of
the difficulties of the young Duchess in this unloving artificial
environment.

When the Gypsy Queen sings her song through his memory of it, the rhymes
and rhythm take on a befitting harmoniousness and smoothness contrasting
finely with the remainder of the poem.

By means of this song, moreover, the horizon is enlarged beyond the
immediate ken of the huntsman. The race-instinct, which has so strong
a hold upon the Gypsies, is exalted into a wondrous sort of love which
carries everything before it. This loving reality is also set over
against the unloving artificiality of the first part of the poem. The
temptation is too strong for the love-starved little Duchess, and even
the huntsman and Jacinth come under her hypnotic spell.

Very different in effect is "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." The
one, rich in this lay of human emotion, couched in the simple language
of reality