between Strafford and his children which has poetic charm, clearness and
grace. The change does not last long, and when Hollis, Charles and Lady
Carlisle, followed by Pym, come in, the whole Act is in confusion.
Nothing is clear, except absence of the clearness required for a drama.
But the previous Acts are even more obscure; not indeed for their
readers, but for hearers in a theatre who--since they are hurried on at
once to new matter--are forced to take in on the instant what the
dramatist means. It would be impossible to tell at first hearing what
the chopped-up sentences, the interrupted phrases, the interjected
"nots" and "buts" and "yets" are intended to convey. The conversation is
mangled. This vice does not prevail in the other dramas to the same
extent as in _Strafford_. Browning had learnt his lesson, I suppose,
when he saw _Strafford_ represented. But it sorely prevails in
_Colombe's Birthday_.

Strafford is brought before us as a politician, as the leader of the
king's side in an austere crisis of England's history. The first scene
puts the great quarrel forward as the ground on which the drama is to be
wrought. An attempt is made to represent the various elements of the
popular storm in the characters of Pym, Hampden, the younger Vane and
others, and especially in the relations between Pym and Strafford, who
are set over, one against the other, with some literary power. But the
lines on which the action is wrought are not simple. No audience could
follow the elaborate network of intrigue which, in Browning's effort to
represent too much of the history, he has made so confused. Strong
characterisation perishes in this effort to write a history rather than
a drama. What we chiefly see of the crisis is a series of political
intrigues at the Court carried out by base persons, of whom the queen is
the basest, to ruin Strafford; the futility of Strafford's sentimental
love of the king, whom he despises while he loves him; Strafford's
blustering weakness and blindness when he forces his way into the
Parliament House, and the contemptible meanness of Charles. The low
intrigues of the Court leave the strongest impression on the mind, not
the mighty struggle, not the fate of the Monarchy and its dark
supporter.

Browning tries--as if he had forgotten that which should have been first
in his mind--to lift the main struggle into importance in the last Act,
but he fails. That which ought to be tragic is merely sentime