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Browning's Political Skepticism: Sordello and the Plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Lawrence Poston III
Lawrence Poston III*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
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Abstract

Where they touch on political themes, Browning's early works—particularly Sordello and the plays—are reflective less of the kind of liberalism he derived from Shelley than of a growing skepticism as to the value of partisan commitments and a distrust of merely “political” solutions. In Strafford, Sordello, Pippa Passes, The Return of the Druses, Luria, and A Soul's Tragedy, Browning explores the relationship between a character or group of characters and a culture in turmoil. Virtually all the characters, in their limitations—whether imposed by blind idealism, indecision, or charlatanism—are unequipped to assume a truly heroic role, and they are frequently poised between two equally unacceptable political alternatives. The rare, truly heroic figures of Browning's poetry are those who transcend the political obsessions of their culture and decisively assert their own best selves. In his distrust of institutional machinery and his emphasis on personal salvation, Browning belongs with Victorians like Dickens and Carlyle; in the major monologues, most of which followed this formative period, he views religion, art, and human love, rather than political action, as the motivating forces in human relationships.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 2 , March 1973 , pp. 260 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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Footnotes

*

Work on this essay was facilitated by assistance from the University of Nebraska Research Council.

References

1 William Clyde DeVane, A Browning Handbook (New York: Appleton, 1955), pp. 14–15.

This view has, however, been intelligently qualified by James McNally in a recent article, “Browning's Political Thought,” Queen's Quarterly, 11 (1970), 578–90.

2 A contemporary reviewer suggested that Paracelsus was modeled on Taylor's drama, although he also reported that Browning denied it (Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, NS 2, Nov. 1835, 765). John Heraud reviewed both plays together and preferred Browning's (Fraser's Magazine, 13, March 1836, 362–74).

3 Philip van Artevelde, 2 vols. (London: E. Moxon, 1834), i, 12–13.

4 v.873. All quotations from Browning are taken from the text of the centennial edition, The Works of Robert Browning, ed. Sir F. G. Kenyon, 10 vols. (London: Smith Elder, 1912).

5 Entry of 19 March 1837, in The Diaries of William Charles Macready, ed. William Toynbee (London: Chapman and Hall, 1912), i, 380.

6 Browning's description of song is close in spirit to Wordsworth's preface. Song is

The fullest effluence of the finest mind,

All in degree, no way diverse in kind

From minds about it, minds which, more or less,

Lofty or low, move seeking to impress

Themselves on somewhat. . .

(v.561–65)

7 James Patton McCormick, “Robert Browning and the Experimental Drama,” PMLA, 68 (1953), 988.

8 In The Dialectical Temper: The Rhetorical Art of Robert Browning (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1968), W. David Shaw also admits that Luigi shows “the idealist's characteristic pride,” but apparently Shaw accepts Luigi's “conversion” at face value (pp. 50–51).

9 Donald Smalley clearly establishes DjabaFs place in the gallery of the poet's special pleaders in Browning's Essay on Chatterton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1948), pp. 57–65.

10 A. E. DuBois, “Robert Browning, Dramatist,” SP, 33 (1936), 642.

11 Browning makes much the same point in Pt. n of Pippa Passes when the artist Jules decides not to avenge himself: “Now, to kill Lutwyche, what would that do?—save / A wretched dauber, men will hoot to death / Without me, from their hooting” (ii.301–03).

12 H. B. Charlton, “Browning as a Dramatist,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 33 (1939), 45, 67.