Life of Robert Browning [38]
the earnest student for the most part, and, above all, the poet.
His other pleasure, in his happy vagrant days, was to join company
with any tramps, gipsies, or other wayfarers, and in good fellowship
gain much knowledge of life that was useful at a later time.
Rustic entertainments, particularly peripatetic "Theatres Royal",
had a singular fascination for him, as for that matter had rustic oratory,
whether of the alehouse or the pulpit. At one period
he took the keenest interest in sectaries of all kinds:
and often he incurred a gentle reproof from his mother
because of his nomad propensities in search of "PASTORS new".
There was even a time when he seriously deliberated whether
he should not combine literature and religious ministry,
as Faraday combined evangelical fervour with scientific enthusiasm.
"'Twas a girl with eyes like two dreams of night" that saved him from himself,
and defrauded the Church Independent of a stalwart orator.
It was, as already stated, while he strolled through Dulwich Wood one day
that the thought occurred to him which was to find development and expression
in "Pippa Passes". "The image flashed upon him," writes his intimate friend,
Mrs. Sutherland Orr, "of some one walking thus alone through life;
one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage,
yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it;
and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo,
Felippa or Pippa."
It has always seemed to me a radical mistake to include "Pippa Passes"
among Browning's dramas. Not only is it absolutely unactable,
but essentially undramatic in the conventional sense. True dramatic writing
concerns itself fundamentally with the apt conjunction of events,
and the more nearly it approximates to the verity of life the more likely
is it to be of immediate appeal. There is a `vraie verite'
which only the poet, evolving from dramatic concepts rather than attempting
to concentrate these in a quick, moving verisimilitude, can attempt.
The passing hither and thither of Pippa, like a beneficent Fate,
a wandering chorus from a higher amid the discordant medley of a lower world,
changing the circumstances and even the natures of certain more or less
heedless listeners by the wild free lilt of her happy song of innocence,
is of this `vraie verite'. It is so obviously true, spiritually,
that it is unreal in the commonplace of ordinary life.
Its very effectiveness is too apt for the dramatist, who can ill afford
to tamper further with the indifferent banalities of actual existence.
The poet, unhampered by the exigencies of dramatic realism, can safely,
and artistically, achieve an equally exact, even a higher verisimilitude,
by means which are, or should be, beyond adoption by the dramatist proper.
But over and above any `nice discrimination', "Pippa Passes" is simply a poem,
a lyrical masque with interspersed dramatic episodes, and subsidiary
interludes in prose. The suggestion recently made that it should be acted
is a wholly errant one. The finest part of it is unrepresentable.
The rest would consist merely of a series of tableaux,
with conversational accompaniment.
The opening scene, "the large mean airy chamber," where Pippa,
the little silk-winder from the mills at Asolo, springs from bed,
on her New Year's Day `festa', and soliloquises as she dresses, is as true
as it is lovely when viewed through the rainbow glow of the poetic atmosphere:
but how could it succeed on the stage? It is not merely that the monologue
is too long: it is too inapt, in its poetic richness, for its purpose.
It is the poet, not Pippa, who evokes this sweet sunrise-music,
this strain of the "long blue solemn hours serenely flowing."
The dramatic poet may occupy himself with that deeper insight,
and the wider expression of it, which is properly altogether beyond
the scope of the playwright. In a word, he may irradiate his theme
with the light that never was on sea or land, nor will he thereby
sacrifice aught of essential
His other pleasure, in his happy vagrant days, was to join company
with any tramps, gipsies, or other wayfarers, and in good fellowship
gain much knowledge of life that was useful at a later time.
Rustic entertainments, particularly peripatetic "Theatres Royal",
had a singular fascination for him, as for that matter had rustic oratory,
whether of the alehouse or the pulpit. At one period
he took the keenest interest in sectaries of all kinds:
and often he incurred a gentle reproof from his mother
because of his nomad propensities in search of "PASTORS new".
There was even a time when he seriously deliberated whether
he should not combine literature and religious ministry,
as Faraday combined evangelical fervour with scientific enthusiasm.
"'Twas a girl with eyes like two dreams of night" that saved him from himself,
and defrauded the Church Independent of a stalwart orator.
It was, as already stated, while he strolled through Dulwich Wood one day
that the thought occurred to him which was to find development and expression
in "Pippa Passes". "The image flashed upon him," writes his intimate friend,
Mrs. Sutherland Orr, "of some one walking thus alone through life;
one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage,
yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it;
and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo,
Felippa or Pippa."
It has always seemed to me a radical mistake to include "Pippa Passes"
among Browning's dramas. Not only is it absolutely unactable,
but essentially undramatic in the conventional sense. True dramatic writing
concerns itself fundamentally with the apt conjunction of events,
and the more nearly it approximates to the verity of life the more likely
is it to be of immediate appeal. There is a `vraie verite'
which only the poet, evolving from dramatic concepts rather than attempting
to concentrate these in a quick, moving verisimilitude, can attempt.
The passing hither and thither of Pippa, like a beneficent Fate,
a wandering chorus from a higher amid the discordant medley of a lower world,
changing the circumstances and even the natures of certain more or less
heedless listeners by the wild free lilt of her happy song of innocence,
is of this `vraie verite'. It is so obviously true, spiritually,
that it is unreal in the commonplace of ordinary life.
Its very effectiveness is too apt for the dramatist, who can ill afford
to tamper further with the indifferent banalities of actual existence.
The poet, unhampered by the exigencies of dramatic realism, can safely,
and artistically, achieve an equally exact, even a higher verisimilitude,
by means which are, or should be, beyond adoption by the dramatist proper.
But over and above any `nice discrimination', "Pippa Passes" is simply a poem,
a lyrical masque with interspersed dramatic episodes, and subsidiary
interludes in prose. The suggestion recently made that it should be acted
is a wholly errant one. The finest part of it is unrepresentable.
The rest would consist merely of a series of tableaux,
with conversational accompaniment.
The opening scene, "the large mean airy chamber," where Pippa,
the little silk-winder from the mills at Asolo, springs from bed,
on her New Year's Day `festa', and soliloquises as she dresses, is as true
as it is lovely when viewed through the rainbow glow of the poetic atmosphere:
but how could it succeed on the stage? It is not merely that the monologue
is too long: it is too inapt, in its poetic richness, for its purpose.
It is the poet, not Pippa, who evokes this sweet sunrise-music,
this strain of the "long blue solemn hours serenely flowing."
The dramatic poet may occupy himself with that deeper insight,
and the wider expression of it, which is properly altogether beyond
the scope of the playwright. In a word, he may irradiate his theme
with the light that never was on sea or land, nor will he thereby
sacrifice aught of essential