THE GREAT Robert POETS Browning POETRY Read by David Timson and Patience Tomlinson NA192212D 1 How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix 3:49 2 Life in a Love 1:11 3 A Light Woman 3:42 4 The Statue and the Bust 15:16 5 My Last Duchess 3:53 6 The Confessional 4:59 7 A Grammarian’s Funeral 8:09 8 The Pied Piper of Hamelin 7:24 9 ‘You should have heard the Hamelin people…’ 8:22 10 The Lost Leader 2:24 11 Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister 3:55 12 The Laboratory 3:40 13 Porphyria’s Lover 3:47 14 Evelyn Hope 3:49 15 Home Thoughts from Abroad 1:19 16 Pippa’s Song 0:32 Total time: 76:20 = David Timson = Patience Tomlinson 2 Robert Browning (1812–1889) Robert Browning was a romantic poet in great effect when disclosing a macabre or every sense of the word. He was an ardent evil narrative, as in The Laboratory, or The lover who wooed the poet Elizabeth Confessional or Porphyria’s Lover. Barrett despite fierce opposition from Sometimes Browning uses this matter- her tyrannical father, while as a poet – of-fact approach to reduce a momentous inheriting the mantle of Wordsworth, occasion to the colloquial – in The Keats and Shelley – he sought to show, Grammarian’s Funeral, for instance, in in the Romantic tradition, man’s struggle which a scholar has spent his life pursuing with his own nature and the will of God. knowledge at the expense of actually But Browning was no mere imitator of enjoying life itself. As his body is taken to a style of poetry that had been flourishing its last resting place high on a mountain for the first 50 years of the 19th century. side, one of the pall-bearers, a former He was seeking to push back the student of the scholar, reflects on his boundaries of poetic expression, and in master’s achievements: some of his poems he seems to anticipate the poetic styles of the 20th century. He ‘That low man seeks a little thing to do, strives, for instance, for a conversational Sees it and does it; tone that at times seems quite modern, This high man, with a great thing to using words that are appropriate to the pursue, meaning of the poem, irrespective of the Dies ere he knows it.’ accepted poetic style of his day. To him, the idea mattered more than the form. He The scholar’s failure to succeed in life uses this technique of plain-speaking to is set against his effort to achieve his 3 vision. Striving to do one’s best, throwing undisguised bitterness in The Lost Leader. caution aside and aiming high whatever Unlike the early Romantic poets, the consequences might be, meets with Browning sought not to be identified Browning’s approval here – though not in his poems as the narrator or moral without a sense of irony – and is a constant voice. Wordsworth was autobiographical theme of his poems. In The Statue and in his poems, showing the effects of the Bust, for instance, Browning pulls no the world, both natural and human, punches in criticising the Duke and his on his development as a poet, whereas reluctant lover for neglecting the effort Browning wanted to be objective rather necessary to gain ‘the prize’ – love – which than subjective, biographical rather than ultimately passes the couple by: auto-biographical, and chose as a medium for his thoughts, characters who speak for ‘The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost themselves in a dramatic context. They Was the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin’ express their own thoughts unreservedly and we can learn from them about their Browning practised what he preached: past, their weaknesses and strengths, after winning the love of Elizabeth Barrett without the necessity of comment from he defied her father and secretly eloped the poet. with her to Italy in 1846. An example of this is Dramatic In his choice of simple, everyday words Lyrics, Browning’s first collection of short Browning goes beyond Wordsworth’s poems (1842), which he describes in desire to write poetry using the language the preface as being: ‘For the most part of the people and is not afraid sometimes lyric in expression, always dramatic in to be vulgar. Wordsworth, though, would principle, and so many utterances of so have scorned his choice of words as un- many imaginary persons, not mine.’ Note poetic. But Browning had long since lost his final statement there: ‘not mine’. He faith with Wordsworth for his betrayal of maintained all his life that the thoughts the poetic vision, which he expresses with expressed in his dramatic poems belonged 4 to the characters and did not represent his Browning creates a truthful character and own views. For example, Song from Pippa leaves the reader to make a judgement on Passes is a lyric from a play that has often him, without any prompting from the poet. been taken out of context and given as He presents the characters objectively – an example of Browning’s unbounded simply as Men and Women (as he called optimism. It shows the danger of viewing his 1855 collection of poems). his work as a reflection of his life and views. In A Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister In the play the words are used ironically to a bitter monk reveals his own arid show the naïve trust of the innocent Pippa and godless soul while musing on the in the corrupt world of Ancient Rome. popularity and success of a fellow monk, The monologues are amongst Browning’s Brother Lawrence. In trying to insinuate most important work and are powerful that his rival is a bore, lecherous, irreligious dramatic expressions, which begs the and sycophantic, he in fact makes it clear question as to why Browning’s plays, (A that Lawrence is blameless while he is Blot on the Scutcheon etc) are so weak himself drawn to the supposed traits – and consigned to oblivion. The answer he is a hypocrite hiding his vice behind a is that though his sense of character and façade of piety. dramatic utterance was powerful, his Browning creates a character at once sense of dramatic construction was not. entertaining and petty, corrupted by his His plays lack drive and tension. environment, while criticising the crippling But such poems as My Last Duchess, effect a dull and monotonous monastic Porphyria’s Lover, The Laboratory and existence can have, in time, on a man’s The Confessional are poetic and dramatic faith. masterpieces. They succeed because of The power of religion on people’s lives the tension created in the reader between is the theme also of The Confessional in the attractiveness of the speaker and the which a young girl’s emotional innocence simultaneous desire to make a moral is corrupted by an unscrupulous priest and judgement. Like a good playwright, degraded from passionate love for her 5 man to passionate hate for the Church. already impressive collection of paintings The Laboratory also portrays a woman’s and bronzes. Chillingly, he tells the story love corrupted by the decadence and of ‘his last Duchess’ to the envoy from his cynicism of the Ancien Regime. Potential next bride, so that she may be prepared to pleasure, attendance at a ball, is twisted behave in the manner he expects from his into bitter hate for her rival in love. The Duchess. style of the poem is melodramatic and Browning is often accused of being a grotesque. Browning was fascinated with difficult poet to understand, and despite the grotesque, and Porphyria’s Lover, in his frequent use of colloquial words he which a young man muses on murdering does often express complicated thoughts his mistress after achieving a moment in an obscure way. He was much criticised of happiness with her, is quite Gothic in in his own day for this tendency, and tone. The poem’s original title, Madhouse was accused of using ‘verbal freaks’, Cells, abandoned by Browning, would ‘archaisms’, and compound words of his have reinforced this connection. own invention. In My Last Duchess the patrician Duke It’s true that Browning makes demands of Ferrara is a cold-hearted pragmatist who on his readers, sometimes generating places money, honour and a 900-year-old the need to reach for a dictionary. But name above everything, even the love of Browning assumes the reader is as learned an open-hearted young girl he once made as he; that he or she has a knowledge of his Duchess. We see her only through the Italian history for instance, which is the Duke’s eyes, but her ingenuous charm is background to so many of his poems. apparent throughout the poem, while his But conversely he also wrote a number of bigotry, isolation and asceticism have made very accessible poems that still appear in him blind to her virtues. It is inferred that anthologies, testifying to their enduring he had her secretly murdered; whilst her popularity. They include How They Brought painted image, as the years pass, becomes the Good News from Ghent to Aix – a just another work of art to add to his popular, patriotic tale from history with an 6 infectious galloping rhythm, and The Pied ‘We do not believe that Browning’s Piper of Hamelin – written for children and works will survive except as a curiosity and based on a classic legend. These poems a puzzle’, wrote the Edinburgh Review in are uncomplicated in structure and theme, 1864, and to some, this well describes using simple language and abundant Browning’s place in English Literature.