Robert Browning, (born May 7, 1812, London—died Dec.

12, 1889,

Venice), major English poet of the Victorian age, noted for his mastery

of dramatic monologue and psychological portraiture. His most noted

work was The Ring and the Book (1868–69), the story of a Roman

murder trial in 12 books.

Life.

The son of a clerk in the Bank of England in London, Browning

received only a slight formal education, although his father gave him a

grounding in Greek and Latin. In 1828 he attended classes at the

University of Londonbut left after half a session. Apart from a journey

to St. Petersburg in 1834 with George de Benkhausen, the Russian

consul general, and two short visits to Italy in 1838 and 1844, he lived

with his parents in London until 1846, first at Camberwell and after

1840 at Hatcham. During this period (1832–46) he wrote his early

long poems and most of his plays.

Browning’s first published work, Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession

(1833, anonymous), although formally a dramatic monologue,
embodied many of his own adolescent passions and anxieties.
Although it received some favourable comment, it was attacked by
John Stuart Mill, who condemned the poet’s exposure and
exploitation of his own emotions and his “intense and morbid
self-consciousness.” It was perhaps Mill’s critique that determined
Browning never to confess his own emotions again in his poetry but to
write objectively. In 1835 he published Paracelsus and in 1840
Sordello, both poems dealing with men of great ability striving to
reconcile the demands of their own personalities with those of the
world. Paracelsus was well received, but Sordello, which made
exacting demands on its reader’s knowledge, was almost universally
declared incomprehensible.

Encouraged by the actor Charles Macready, Browning devoted his

main energies for some years to verse drama, a form that he had
already adopted for Strafford(1837). Between 1841 and 1846, in a
series of pamphlets under the general title of Bells and Pomegranates,
he published seven more plays in verse, including Pippa Passes (1841),
A Blot in the ’Scutcheon (produced in 1843), and Luria(1846). These,
and all his earlier works except Strafford, were printed at his family’s
expense. Although Browning enjoyed writing for the stage, he was not
successful in the theatre, since his strength lay in depicting, as he had
himself observed of Strafford, “Action in Character, rather than
Character in Action.”

By 1845 the first phase of Browning’s life was near its end. In that year
he met Elizabeth Barrett. In her Poems (1844) Barrett had included
lines praising Browning, who wrote to thank her (January 1845). In
May they met and soon discovered their love for each other. Barrett
had, however, been for many years an invalid, confined to her room
and thought incurable. Her father, moreover, was a dominant and
selfish man, jealousy fond of his daughter, who in turn had come to
depend on his love. When her doctors ordered her to Italy for her
health and her father refused to allow her to go, the lovers, who had
been corresponding and meeting regularly, were forced to act. They
were married secretly in September 1846; a week later they left for
Pisa.
Throughout their married life, although they spent holidays in France

and England, their home was in Italy, mainly in Florence, where they

had a flat in Casa Guidi. Their income was small, although after the

birth of their son, Robert, in 1849 Mrs. Browning’s cousin John

Kenyon made them an allowance of £100 a year, and on his death in

1856 he left them £11,000.

Browning produced comparatively little poetry during his married life.

Apart from a collected edition in 1849 he published only

Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850), an examination of different

attitudes toward Christianity, perhaps having its immediate origin in

the death of his mother in 1849; an introductory essay (1852) to some

spurious letters of Shelley, Browning’s only considerable work in prose

and his only piece of critical writing; and Men and Women (1855).

This was a collection of 51 poems—dramatic lyrics such as

“Memorabilia,” “Love Among the Ruins,” and “A Toccata of

Galuppi’s”; the great monologues such as “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “How It

Strikes a Contemporary,” and “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”; and a

very few poems in which implicitly (“By the Fireside”) or explicitly

(“One Word More”) he broke his rule and spoke of himself and of his

love for his wife. Men and Women, however, had no great sale, and

many of the reviews were unfavourable and unhelpful. Disappointed

for the first time by the reception of his work, Browning in the

following years wrote little, sketching and modeling in clay by day and

enjoying the society of his friends at night. At last Mrs. Browning’s

health, which had been remarkably restored by her life in Italy, began

to fail. On June 29, 1861, she died in her husband’s arms. In the

autumn he returned slowly to London with his young son.

His first task on his return was to prepare his wife’s Last Poems for the

press. At first he avoided company, but gradually he accepted

invitations more freely and began to move in society. Another

collected edition of his poems was called for in 1863, but Pauline was

not included. When his next book of poems, Dramatis Personae

(1864)—including “Abt Vogler,” “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” “Caliban upon

Setebos,” and “Mr. Sludge, ‘The Medium’ ”—reached two editions, it

was clear that Browning had at last won a measure of popular

recognition.

In 1868–69 he published his greatest work, The Ring and the Book,

based on the proceedings in a murder trial in Rome in 1698. Grand

alike in plan and execution, it was at once received with enthusiasm,

and Browning was established as one of the most important literary

figures of the day. For the rest of his life he was much in demand in
London society. He spent his summers with friends in France,

Scotland, or Switzerland or, after 1878, in Italy.

The most important works of his last years, when he wrote with great

fluency, were the long narrative or dramatic poems, often dealing with

contemporary themes, such as Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871),

Fifine at the Fair (1872), Red Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873), The

Inn Album (1875), and the two series of Dramatic Idyls (1879 and

1880). He wrote a number of poems on classical subjects, including

Balaustion’s Adventure (1871) and Aristophanes’ Apology(1875). In

addition to many collections of shorter poems—Pacchiarotti and How

He Worked in Distemper (1876), Jocoseria (1883), Ferishtah’s

Fancies (1884), and Asolando: Fancies and Facts (1889)—Browning

published toward the end of his life two books of unusually personal

origin—La Saisiaz (1878), at once an elegy for his friend Anne

Egerton-Smith and a meditation on mortality, and Parleyings with

Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887), in which he

discussed books and ideas that had influenced him since his youth.

While staying in Venice in 1889, Browning caught cold, became

seriously ill, and died on December 12. He was buried in Westminster

Abbey.
Legacy of Robert Browning
Few poets have suffered more than Browning from hostile

incomprehension or misplaced admiration, both arising very often

from a failure to recognize the predominantly dramatic nature of his

work. The bulk of his writing before 1846 was for the theatre;

thereafter his major poems showed his increasing mastery of the

dramatic monologue. This consists essentially of a narrative spoken by

a single character and amplified by his comments on his story and the

circumstances in which he is speaking. From his own knowledge of the

historical or other events described, or else by inference from the

poem itself, the reader is eventually enabled to assess the intelligence

and honesty of the narrator and the value of the views he expresses.

This type of dramatic monologue, since it depends on the unconscious

provision by the speaker of the evidence by which the reader is to

judge him, is eminently suitable for the ironist. Browning’s fondness

for this form has, however, encouraged the two most common

misconceptions of the nature of his poetry—that it is deliberately

obscure and that its basic “message” is a facile optimism. Neither of

these criticisms is groundless; both are incomplete.

Browning is not always difficult. In many poems, especially short

lyrics, he achieves effects of obvious felicity. Nevertheless, his

superficial difficulties, which prevent an easy understanding of the

sense of a passage, are evident enough: his attempts to convey the

broken and irregular rhythms of speech make it almost impossible to

read the verse quickly; his elliptical syntax sometimes disconcerts and

confuses the reader but can be mastered with little effort; certain

poems, such as Sordello or “Old Pictures in Florence,” require a

considerable acquaintance with their subjects in order to be

understood; and his fondness for putting his monologues into the

mouths of charlatans and sophists, such as Mr. Sludge or Napoleon

III, obliges the reader to follow a chain of subtle or paradoxical

arguments. All these characteristics stand in the way of easy reading.

But even when individual problems of style and technique have been

resolved, the poems’ interest is seldom exhausted. First, Browning

often chooses an unexpected point of view, especially in his

monologues, thus forcing the reader to accept an unfamiliar

perspective. Second, he is capable of startling changes of focus within

a poem. For example, he chooses subjects in themselves insignificant,

as in “Fra Lippo Lippi” and “Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,” and treats

through them the eternal themes of poetry. This transition from

particular observation to transcendental truth presents much the same

challenge to the reader as do the metaphysical poets of the 17th

century and much the same excitement. Third, because Browning

seldom presents a speaker without irony, there is a constant demand

on the reader to appreciate exactly the direction of satiric force in the

poem. Even in a melodious poem such as “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” the

valid position must be distinguished from the false at every turn of the

argument, while in the major casuistic monologues, such as “Bishop

Blougram’s Apology,” the shifts of sympathy are subtler still.

It has also been objected that Browning uses his poetry as a vehicle for

his philosophy, which is not of itself profound or interesting, being

limited to an easy optimism. But Browning’s dramatic monologues

must, as he himself insisted, be recognized as the utterances of

fictitious persons drawing their strength from their appropriateness in

characterizing the speaker, and not as expressions of Browning’s own

sentiments. Thus his great gallery of imagined characters is to be

regarded as an exhaustive catalog of human motives, not as a series of

self-portraits. Nevertheless, certain fundamental assumptions are

made so regularly that they may be taken to represent Browning’s

personal beliefs, such as his Christian faith. In matters of human

conduct his sympathies are with those who show loving hearts, honest

natures, and warmth of feeling; certainly these qualities are never

satirized. He is in general on the side of those who commit themselves

wholeheartedly to an ideal, even if they fail. By itself this might suggest

a rather naive system of values, yet he also, sometimes even in the

same poem, shows his understanding of those who have been forced to

lower their standards and accept a compromise. Thus, although

Browning is far from taking a cynical or pessimistic view of man’s

nature or destiny, his hopes for the world are not simple and

unreasoning.

In The Ring and the Book Browning displays all his distinctive

qualities. He allows a dramatic monologue to each character he

portrays—to the man on trial for murder, to his young wife, whom he

has mortally wounded, to her protector, to various Roman citizens, to

the opposing lawyers, and to the pope, who ultimately decides the

accused’s fate. Each monologue deals with substantially the same

occurrences, but each, of course, describes and interprets them

differently. By permitting the true facts to emerge gradually by

inference from these conflicting accounts, Browning reveals with

increasing subtlety the true natures of his characters. As each great

monologue illuminates the moral being of the speaker, it becomes

clear that nothing less than the whole ethical basis of human actions is

in question. For over 20,000 lines Browning explores his theme,

employing an unfaltering blank verse, rising often to passages of

moving poetry, realizing in extraordinary detail the life of 17th-century

Rome, and creating a series of characters as diverse and fully realized

as those in any novel.

During Browning’s lifetime, critical recognition came rapidly after

1864; and, although his books never sold as well as his wife’s or

Tennyson’s, he thereafter acquired a considerable and enthusiastic

public. In the 20th century his reputation, along with those of the

other great Victorians, declined, and his work did not enjoy a wide

reading public, perhaps in part because of increasing skepticism of the

values implied in his poetry. He has, however, influenced many

modern poets, such as Robert Frost and Ezra Pound, partly through

his development of the dramatic monologue, with its emphasis on the

psychology of the individual and his stream of consciousness, but even

more through his success in writing about the variety of modern life in

language that owed nothing to convention. As long as technical

accomplishment, richness of texture, sustained imaginative power,

and a warm interest in humanity are counted virtues, Browning will be

numbered among the great English poets.

The Ring and the Book, more than 20,000-line poem by Robert

Browning, written in blank verse and published in 12 books from 1868

to 1869. The work, considered to be his greatest, was based on the

proceedings of a Roman murder trial in 1698.

Each of the 12 books consists of a dramatic monologue in the voice of a

different character involved in the story. Pompilia, a beautiful young

woman, is so unhappy in her marriage to an older man, the cruel

Count Franceschini, that she prevails upon a young priest to help her

return to her parents’ home. The count finds them, has Pompilia sent

to a convent, and banishes the priest. When Pompilia returns to her

parents, the count arranges for the assassination of Pompilia and her

parents. The count is arrested, tried, and executed.

dramatic monologue, a poem written in the form of a speech of an

individual character; it compresses into a single vivid scene a narrative

sense of the speaker’s history and psychological insight into his

character. Though the form is chiefly associated with Robert

Browning, who raised it to a highly sophisticated level in such poems

as “My Last Duchess,” “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s

Church,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” and “Andrea del Sarto,” it is actually much

older. Many Old English poems are dramatic monologues—for

instance, “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer.” The form is also

common in folk ballads, a tradition that Robert Burns imitated with

broad satiric effect in “Holy Willie’s Prayer.” Browning’s contribution

to the form is one of subtlety of characterization and complexity of the

dramatic situation, which the reader gradually pieces together from

the casual remarks or digressions of the speaker. The subject

discussed is usually far less interesting than what is inadvertently

revealed about the speaker himself. In “My Last Duchess,” in showing

off a painting of his late wife, an Italian aristocrat reveals his cruelty to

her. The form parallels the novelistic experiments with a point of view

in which the reader is left to assess the intelligence and reliability of

the narrator. Later poets who successfully used the form were Ezra

Pound (“The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”), T.S. Eliot (“Love Song

of J. Alfred Prufrock”), and Robert Frost (“The Pauper Witch of

Grafton”).