Dramatic Romances

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dramatic Romances, by Robert
Browning (#3 in our series by Robert Browning)
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Title: Dramatic Romances
Author: Robert Browning
Release Date: July, 2003 [EBook #4253]
[Most recently updated:
May 21, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DRAMATIC

ROMANCES ***
Scanned and edited by Richard Adicks
FROM THE POETIC WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING
DRAMATIC ROMANCES
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:
The digraphs have been silently rendered as
"ae" or "oe."
indicates u-grave, a-grave, and a-circumflex.
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 action, while the historian is busied only with the results
growing out of the moving force of feeling.
The egotism of the Ferrara husband outraged at the gentle wife because
she is as gracious toward those who rendered her small courtesies, and
seemed as thankful to them as she was to him for his gift of a
nine-hundred-years-old name, opens up for inspection the heart of a
husband at a time when men exercised complete control over their
wives, and could satisfy their jealous, selfish instincts by any cruel
methods they chose to adopt, with no one to say them "nay." The
highly developed artistic sense shown by this husband is not
incompatible with his consummate selfishness and cruelty, as many
tales of that time might be brought forward to illustrate. The husband in
"The Statue and the Bust" belongs to the same type, and the situation
there is the inevitable outcome of a civilization in which women were
not consulted as to whom they would marry, and naturally often fell a
prey to love if it should come to them afterwards. Weakness of will in
the case of the lovers in this poem wrecked their lives; for they were
not strong enough to follow either duty or love. Another glimpse is
caught of this period when husbands and brothers and fathers meted out
what they considered justice to the women in "In a Gondola." "The
Grammarian's Funeral" gives also an aspect of Renaissance life--the
fervor for learning characteristic of the earlier days of the Renaissance
when devoted pedants, as Arthur Symons says in referring to this poem,
broke ground in the restoration to the modern world of the civilization
and learning of ancient Greece and Rome." Again, "The Heretic's
Tragedy" and "Holy-Cross Day" picture most vividly the methods

resorted to by the dying church in its attempts to keep control of the
souls of a humanity seething toward religious tolerance.
With only a small space at command, it is difficult to decide on the
poems to be touched upon, especially where there is not