Browning, Robert (1812–1889)

English poet. His work is characterized by the accomplished use of dramatic monologue (in which a single imaginary speaker reveals his or her character, thoughts, and situation) and an interest in obscure literary and historical figures. It includes Pippa Passes (1841) (written in dramatic form) and the poems ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ (1842), ‘My Last Duchess’ (1842), ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’ (1845), and ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’ (1864). He was married to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Browning was born in London and was educated privately. He wrote his first poem ‘Pauline’ (1833) under the influence of Shelley; it was followed by Paracelsus (1835). From 1837 Browning achieved moderate success with his play Strafford and several other works, though the narrative poem Sordello (1840) was initially criticized. In the pamphlet series Bells and Pomegranates (1841–46), which contained Pippa Passes, Dramatic Lyrics (1842), and Dramatic Romances (1845), he included the dramas King Victor and King Charles (1842), Return of the Druses (1843), and Colombe's Birthday (1844).

In 1845 he met Elizabeth Barrett; they eloped the following year and went to Italy. There he wrote Christmas Eve and Easter Day (1850) and much of Men and Women (1855), the latter containing some of his finest love poems and dramatic monologues. He published no further collection of verse until Dramatis Personae (1864), which was followed by The Ring and the Book (1868–69), based on an Italian murder story.

After his wife's death in 1861 Browning settled in England and enjoyed an established reputation, although his later works, such as Red-Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873), Dramatic Idylls (1879–80), and Asolando (1889), prompted opposition by their rugged obscurity of style.

Narrators Apart from the monumental The Ring and the Book and the complex Sordello, most of Browning's best work lies in his shorter pieces. Comparatively few of these are, like ‘Memorabilia’, ‘One Word More’, and ‘Prospice’, spoken in his own person. His dramatically individualized speakers include the obsessed monk of ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’, the lunatic of ‘Porphyria's Lover’, the world-weary prelates of ‘The Bishop orders his Tomb’ and ‘Blougram’, the persecuted Jews of ‘Holy Cross Day’, the puzzled Karshish, the happy-go-lucky Fra Lippo Lippi, the listless Andrea del Sarto, and the heroic Childe Roland struggling through a world of nightmare or terrifying myth.

Style Browning's genuine lyricism seldom appears. He more often uses a rough, driving line to develop an argument or trace a narrative forcefully and concisely, or sometimes short, jingling phrases and grotesque rhymes from which he derived much amusement. His reputation for optimism has often led to accusations of a facile and shallow approach to the problems of humanity. Yet he does not ignore evil; in ‘My Last Duchess’, as in The Ring and the Book, he discusses the senseless destruction of beauty and goodness by the envy, incomprehension, and dislike that they arouse in others without offering any solution to the problem.

Browning may be obscure or dull in the self-analysis of his early poems or the moralizing of his late ones, but he is unequalled in the presentation of individual religious perception, intellectual questioning, hatred, or love.