an's Daughter"; Mr. Longfellow, "a Professor at one of
the U. S. Universities," appears on the scene, and there is a dinner at
which "Mr. and Mrs. N. P. Willis sat next to Longfellow." On a night when
Browning came with some alterations for "Strafford," a stranger called,
"saying he was a Greek, a great lover of the drama; I introduced Browning
to him as a great tragic poet," records Macready, "and the youth wrote
down his name, telling us he was setting off for Athens directly."

The rehearsals of "Strafford" came on, but Macready seems already to have
had misgivings. "In Shakespeare," he writes, "the great poet has only
introduced such events as act on the individuals concerned; but in
Browning's play we have a long scene of passion--upon what? A plan
destroyed, a parliament dissolved...." It is easy to see how Browningesque
this was; for to the poet no events of the objective life were so real and
significant as those of the purely mental drama of thought, feeling, and
purpose. The rehearsals were, however, gratifying to the author, it seems,
for Macready records in his diary (that recurs like the chorus in a Greek
tragedy) that he was happy "with the extreme delight Browning testified at
the rehearsal of my part, which he said to him was a full recompense for
having written the play, as he had seen his utmost hopes of character
perfectly embodied." The play was performed at the Covent Garden Theater
on the night of May 3, 1837.

Both Edmund Gosse and William Sharp deny that Browning's plays failed on
the stage; at all events, with each attempt there were untoward
circumstances which alone would have contributed to or even doomed a play
to a short tenure.

In 1886 "Strafford" was produced in London under the auspices of the
Browning Society, and the real power of the play surprised as well as
deeply impressed the audiences who saw it. But "Pauline," "Paracelsus,"
and "Strafford" all have a peculiar element of reminiscent importance, if
it may be so termed, in that they were the forerunners, the indications of
the great work to come.

There is no dramatic poem of Browning's that has not passages of superb
acting effects, as well as psychological fascinations for the thinker; and
the future years were to touch him with new power to produce work whose
dramatic power lives in imperishable significance. "Strafford" had a run
of only five nights at this first time of its production; Macready
received and accepted an off