"_Verso la sera, Di Primavera_"--in the
terrible scene where Strafford learns his doom, is only to be paralleled
by the song of Mariana in "Measure for Measure," wherein, likewise, is
abduced in one thrilling poignant strain the quintessential part of the
tense life of the whole play.

So much has been written concerning the dramas of Robert
Browning--though indeed there is still room for a volume of careful
criticism, dealing solely with this theme--that I have the less regret
in having so inadequately to pass in review works of such poetic
magnitude as those enumerated above.

But it would be impossible, in so small a book as this, to examine them
in detail without incurring a just charge of misproportion. The
greatness and the shortcomings of the dramas and dramatic poems must be
noted as succinctly as practicable; and I have dwelt more liberally upon
"Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Strafford," partly because (certainly
without more than one exception, "Sordello") these are the three least
read of Browning's poems, partly because they indicate the sweep and
reach of his first orient eagle-flight through new morning-skies, and
mainly because in them we already find Browning at his best and at his
weakest, because in them we hear not only the rush of his sunlit
pinions, but also the low earthward surge of dullard wings.

Browning is foreshadowed in his earliest writings, as perhaps no other
poet has been to like extent. In the "Venus and Adonis," and the "Rape
of Lucrece," we have but the dimmest foreview of the author of "Hamlet,"
"Othello," and "Macbeth"; had Shakspere died prematurely none could
have predicted, from the exquisite blossoms of his adolescence, the
immortal fruit of his maturity. But, in Browning's three earliest works,
we clearly discern him, as the sculptor of Melos provisioned his Venus
in the rough-hewn block.

Thenceforth, to change the imagery, he developed rapidly upon the same
lines, or doubled upon himself in intricate revolutions; but already his
line of life, his poetic parallel, was definitely established.

In the consideration of Browning's dramas it is needful to be sure of
one's vantage for judgment. The first step towards this assurance is the
ablation of the chronic Shaksperian comparison. Primarily, the shaping
spirit of the time wrought Shakspere and Browning to radically divergent
methods of expression, but each to a method in profound harmony with the
dominant sentiment of the a