rised as well as
impressed: for few, apparently, had realised from perusal the power of
the play as made manifest when acted. The secret of this is that the
drama, when privily read, seems hard if not heavy in its diction, and to
be so inornate, though by no means correspondingly simple, as to render
any comparison between it and the dramatic work of Shakspere out of the
question. But when acted, the artistry of the play is revealed. Its
intense naturalness is due in great part to the stern concision of the
lines, where no word is wasted, where every sentence is fraught with the
utmost it can convey. The outlines which disturbed us by their vagueness
become more clear: in a word, we all see in enactment what only a few of
us can discern in perusal. The play has its faults, but scarcely those
of language, where the diction is noble and rhythmic, because it is, so
to speak, the genuine rind of the fruit it envelops. But there are
dramatic faults--primarily, in the extreme economy of the author in the
presentment of his _dramatis personae_, who are embodied
abstractions--monomaniacs of ideas, as some one has said of Hugo's
personages--rather than men as we are, with manifold complexities in
endless friction or fusion. One cardinal fault is the lack of humour,
which to my mind is the paramount objection to its popular acceptance.
Another, is the misproportionate length of some of the speeches. Once
again, there is, as in the greater portion of Browning's longer poems
and dramas, a baneful equality of emphasis. The conception of Charles I.
is not only obviously weak, but strangely prejudiced adversely for so
keen an analyst of the soul as Browning. For what a fellow-dramatist
calls this "Sunset Shadow of a King," no man or woman could abase every
hope and energy. Shakspere would never have committed the crucial
mistake of making Charles the despicable deformity he is in Browning's
drama. Strafford himself disappears too soon: in the fourth act there is
the vacuum abhorred of dramatic propriety.

When he again comes on the scene, the charm is partly broken. But withal
the play is one of remarkable vigour and beauty. It seems to me that too
much has been written against it on the score of its metrical rudeness.
The lines are beat out by a hammer, but in the process they are wrought
clear of all needless alloy. To urge, as has been lately urged, that it
lacks all human touch and is a mere intellectual fanfaronade, and that
ther