Life of Robert Browning [45]
first and twelfth are respectively introductory and appendical)
are monologues. "The Ring and the Book", in a word,
consists, besides the two extraneous parts, of ten monodramas,
which are as ten huge facets to a poetic Koh-i-Noor.
The square little Italian volume, in its yellow parchment
and with its heavy type, which has now found a haven in Oxford,
was picked up by Browning for a `lira' (about eightpence),
on a second-hand bookstall in the Piazza San Lorenzo at Florence,
one June day, 1865. Therein is set forth, in full detail, all the particulars
of the murder of his wife Pompilia, for her supposed adultery,
by a certain Count Guido Franceschini; and of that noble's trial,
sentence, and doom. It is much the same subject matter
as underlies the dramas of Webster, Ford, and other Elizabethan poets,
but subtlety of insight rather than intensity of emotion and situation
distinguishes the Victorian dramatist from his predecessors.
The story fascinated Browning, who, having in this book and elsewhere mastered
all the details, conceived the idea of writing the history of the crime
in a series of monodramatic revelations on the part of the individuals
more or less directly concerned. The more he considered the plan
the more it shaped itself to a great accomplishment, and early in 1866
he began the most ambitious work of his life.
An enthusiastic admirer has spoken of the poem as "one of the most
extraordinary feats of which we have any record in literature."
But poetry is not mental gymnastics. All this insistence upon
"extraordinary feats" is to be deprecated: it presents the poet as Hercules,
not as Apollo: in a word, it is not criticism. The story is one
of vulgar fraud and crime, romantic to us only because the incidents
occurred in Italy, in the picturesque Rome and Arezzo of two centuries ago.
The old bourgeois couple, Pietro and Violante Comparini,
manage to wed their thirteen-year-old putative daughter
to a middle-aged noble of Arezzo. They expect the exquisite repute
of an aristocratic connection, and other tangible advantages.
He, impoverished as he is, looks for a splendid dowry.
No one thinks of the child-wife, Pompilia. She becomes the scapegoat,
when the gross selfishness of the contracting parties stands revealed.
Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny. Pompilia suffers.
When she is about to become a mother she determines to leave her husband,
whom she now dreads as well as dislikes. Since the child is to be
the inheritor of her parents' wealth, she will not leave it
to the tender mercies of Count Guido. A young priest, a canon of Arezzo,
Giuseppe Caponsacchi, helps her to escape. In due course she gives birth
to a son. She has scarce time to learn the full sweetness of her maternity
ere she is done to death like a trampled flower. Guido, who has held himself
thrall to an imperative patience, till his hold upon the child's dowry
should be secure, hires four assassins, and in the darkness of night
betakes himself to Rome. He and his accomplices enter the house
of Pietro Comparini and his wife, and, not content with slaying them,
also murders Pompilia. But they are discovered, and Guido
is caught red-handed. Pompilia's evidence alone is damnatory,
for she was not slain outright, and lingers long enough to tell her story.
Franceschini is not foiled yet, however. His plea is that he simply avenged
the wrong done to him by his wife's adulterous connection
with the priest Caponsacchi. But even in the Rome of that evil day
justice was not extinct. Guido's motive is proved to be false;
he himself is condemned to death. An appeal to the Pope is futile.
Finally, the wretched man pays the too merciful penalty of his villainy.
There is nothing grand, nothing noble here: at most only a tragic pathos
in the fate of the innocent child-wife Pompilia. It is clear, therefore,
that the greatness of "The Ring and the Book" must depend even less
upon its subject, its motive, than upon its being "an extraordinary feat"
in the gymnastics
are monologues. "The Ring and the Book", in a word,
consists, besides the two extraneous parts, of ten monodramas,
which are as ten huge facets to a poetic Koh-i-Noor.
The square little Italian volume, in its yellow parchment
and with its heavy type, which has now found a haven in Oxford,
was picked up by Browning for a `lira' (about eightpence),
on a second-hand bookstall in the Piazza San Lorenzo at Florence,
one June day, 1865. Therein is set forth, in full detail, all the particulars
of the murder of his wife Pompilia, for her supposed adultery,
by a certain Count Guido Franceschini; and of that noble's trial,
sentence, and doom. It is much the same subject matter
as underlies the dramas of Webster, Ford, and other Elizabethan poets,
but subtlety of insight rather than intensity of emotion and situation
distinguishes the Victorian dramatist from his predecessors.
The story fascinated Browning, who, having in this book and elsewhere mastered
all the details, conceived the idea of writing the history of the crime
in a series of monodramatic revelations on the part of the individuals
more or less directly concerned. The more he considered the plan
the more it shaped itself to a great accomplishment, and early in 1866
he began the most ambitious work of his life.
An enthusiastic admirer has spoken of the poem as "one of the most
extraordinary feats of which we have any record in literature."
But poetry is not mental gymnastics. All this insistence upon
"extraordinary feats" is to be deprecated: it presents the poet as Hercules,
not as Apollo: in a word, it is not criticism. The story is one
of vulgar fraud and crime, romantic to us only because the incidents
occurred in Italy, in the picturesque Rome and Arezzo of two centuries ago.
The old bourgeois couple, Pietro and Violante Comparini,
manage to wed their thirteen-year-old putative daughter
to a middle-aged noble of Arezzo. They expect the exquisite repute
of an aristocratic connection, and other tangible advantages.
He, impoverished as he is, looks for a splendid dowry.
No one thinks of the child-wife, Pompilia. She becomes the scapegoat,
when the gross selfishness of the contracting parties stands revealed.
Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny. Pompilia suffers.
When she is about to become a mother she determines to leave her husband,
whom she now dreads as well as dislikes. Since the child is to be
the inheritor of her parents' wealth, she will not leave it
to the tender mercies of Count Guido. A young priest, a canon of Arezzo,
Giuseppe Caponsacchi, helps her to escape. In due course she gives birth
to a son. She has scarce time to learn the full sweetness of her maternity
ere she is done to death like a trampled flower. Guido, who has held himself
thrall to an imperative patience, till his hold upon the child's dowry
should be secure, hires four assassins, and in the darkness of night
betakes himself to Rome. He and his accomplices enter the house
of Pietro Comparini and his wife, and, not content with slaying them,
also murders Pompilia. But they are discovered, and Guido
is caught red-handed. Pompilia's evidence alone is damnatory,
for she was not slain outright, and lingers long enough to tell her story.
Franceschini is not foiled yet, however. His plea is that he simply avenged
the wrong done to him by his wife's adulterous connection
with the priest Caponsacchi. But even in the Rome of that evil day
justice was not extinct. Guido's motive is proved to be false;
he himself is condemned to death. An appeal to the Pope is futile.
Finally, the wretched man pays the too merciful penalty of his villainy.
There is nothing grand, nothing noble here: at most only a tragic pathos
in the fate of the innocent child-wife Pompilia. It is clear, therefore,
that the greatness of "The Ring and the Book" must depend even less
upon its subject, its motive, than upon its being "an extraordinary feat"
in the gymnastics