The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dramatic Romances, by Robert Browning

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Title: Dramatic Romances

Author: Robert Browning

Commentator: Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

Release Date: July, 2003 [EBook #4253]
Posting Date: December 10, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DRAMATIC ROMANCES ***

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 actio