) 1853.

The five-act tragedy of "STRAFFORD" turns on the impeachment and
condemnation of the man whose name it bears. Its keynote is Strafford's
devotion to the King, which Mr. Browning has represented as the
constant motive of his life, and also the cause of his death. When the
action opens, England is without a Parliament. The question of
ship-money is "burning." The Scotch Parliament has just been dissolved,
and Charles is determined to subdue the Scots by force. Wentworth has
been summoned from Ireland to assist in doing so. He is worn and weary,
but the King needs him, and he comes.

He accepts the Scotch war against his better judgment: and next finds
himself entrapped by the King's duplicity and selfishness, not only into
the command of the expedition to Scotland, but into the appearance of
having advised it. Pym has vainly tried to win him back to the popular
cause. Lady Carlisle vainly warns him of his danger in subserving the
King's designs. No danger can shake his allegiance. He leads the army to
the north; is beaten; discovers that the popular party is in league with
the Scotch; returns home to impeach it, and finds himself impeached. A
Bill of Attainder is passed against him; and Charles, who might prove by
one word his innocence of the charges conveyed in it, promises to do so,
evades his promise, and finally signs the warrant for Strafford's death.
Pym, who loved him best, who trusted him longest, is he who demands the
signature.

Lady Carlisle forms a plan for Strafford's escape from the Tower; but it
fails at the last moment, and we see him led away to execution. True to
the end, he has no thought but for the master who has betrayed
him--whose terrible weakness must betray himself--whose fate he sees
foreshadowed in his own. He kneels to Pym for the King's life; and,
seeing him inexorable, _thanks God that he dies first_. Pym's last
speech is a tender farewell to the friend whom he has sacrificed to his
country's cause, but whom he trusts soon to meet in the better land,
where they will walk together as of old, all sin and all error purged
away.

We are told in the preface to the first edition of Strafford that the
portraits are, so the author thinks, faithful: his "Carlisle," only,
being imaginary; and we may add that he regards his conception of her
as, in the main, confirmed by a very recent historian of the reign of
Charles I. The tragedy was performed in 1837, at Covent Garden Theatre,
unde