e looms up the
obstruction of a King so imbued with the defunct ideal of the divine
right of Kings that he is blind to the tendencies of the age. What
wonder, then, if the swirling waters of discontent should rise higher
and higher until he became engulfed in their fury.

The history of the reign of Charles I. is one full of involved details,
yet the broader aspects of it, the great events which chiseled into
shape the future of England stand out in bold relief in front of a
background of interminable bickerings. There was constant quarreling
between the factions within the English church, and between the
Protestants and the Catholics, complicated by the discontent of the
people and at times the nobles because of the autocratic, vacillating
policy of the King.

Among these epoch-bringing events were the emergence of the Puritans
from the chaos of internecine church squabbles, the determined raising
of the voice of the people in the Long Parliament, where King and people
finally came to an open clash in the impeachment of the King's most
devoted minister, Wentworth, Earl Strafford, by Pym, the great leader in
the House of Commons, ending in Strafford's execution; the Grand
Remonstrance, which sounded in no uncertain tones the tocsin of the
coming revolution; and finally the King's impeachment of Pym, Hampden,
Holles, Hazelrigg and Strode, one of the many ill-advised moves of this
Monarch which at once precipitated the Revolution.

These cataclysms at home were further intensified by the Scottish
Invasion and the Irish Rebellion.

[Illustration: Charles I in Scene of Impeachment]

It is not surprising that Browning should have been attracted to this
period of English history, when he contemplated the writing of a play on
an English subject. His liberty-loving mind would naturally find
congenial occupation in depicting this great English struggle for
liberty. Yet the hero of the play is not Pym, the leader of the people,
but Strafford, the supporter of the King. The dramatic reasons are
sufficient to account for this. Strafford's career was picturesque and
tragic and his personality so striking that more than one interpretation
of his remarkable life is possible.

The interpretation will differ according to whether one is partisan in
hatred or admiration of his character and policy, or possesses the
larger quality of sympathetic appreciation of the man and the problems
with which he had to deal. Any one coming to ju