effect, for his part in the play is to draw Chiappino out, and
to confound him with his own weapons: "I help men," as he says, "to
carry out their own principles; if they please to say two and two make
five, I assent, so they will but go on and say, four and four make ten."
His shrewd Socratic prose is delightfully wise and witty. This prose,
the only dramatic prose written by Browning, with the exception of that
in _Pippa Passes_, is, in its way, almost as good as the poetry: keen,
vivacious, full-thoughted, picturesque, and singularly original. For
instance, Chiappino is expressing his longing for a woman who could
understand, as he says, the whole of him, to whom he could reveal alike
his strength and weakness.

"Ah, my friend," rejoins Ogniben, "wish for nothing so
foolish! Worship your love, give her the best of you to see;
be to her like the western lands (they bring us such strange
news of) to the Spanish Court; send her only your lumps of
gold, fans of feathers, your spirit-like birds, and fruits
and gems. So shall you, what is unseen of you, be supposed
altogether a paradise by her,--as these western lands by
Spain: though I warrant there is filth, red baboons, ugly
reptiles and squalor enough, which they bring Spain as few
samples of as possible."

There is in all this prose, lengthy as it is, the true dramatic note, a
recognisable tone of talk. But _A Soul's Tragedy_ is for the study, not
the stage.

13. LURIA: A Tragedy in Five Acts.

[Published in 1846 (with _A Soul's Tragedy_) as No. VIII of
_Bells and Pomegranates_ (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. VI.
pp. 205-289). The action takes place from morning to night of
one day].

The action and interest in _Luria_ are somewhat less internalised than
in _A Soul's Tragedy_, but the drama is in form a still nearer approach
to monologue. Many of the speeches are so long as to be almost
monologues in themselves; and the whole play is manifestly written
(unlike the other plays, except its immediate predecessor, or rather its
contemporary) with no thought of the stage. The poet is retreating
farther and farther from the glare of the footlights; he is writing
after his own fancy, and not as his audience or his manager would wish
him to write. None of Browning's plays is so full of large heroic
speech, of deep philosophy, of choice illustration; seldom has he
written nobler poetry. There is not the intense and