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Page 78
Construct in imagination the scene and the action of the poem. What
has brought the Duke and the envoy together? What things indicate the
Duke's pride? Was his jealousy due to pride or to affection? Does he
prize the picture as a work of art or as a memory of the Duchess? What
faults did he find in her? What character do these criticisms show her
to have had? What did he wish her to he? Note the anti-climax in
lines 25-28: what is the effect? What shows the Duke's difficulty in
breaking his reserve on this matter? What motive has he for so doing?
Where does the poet show skill in condensation, in character drawing,
in vividness, in enlisting the reader's sympathy?
_The Flight of the Duchess_ should be read as a development and
variation of this theme.
THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S. (PAGE 107.)
Ruskin gives this poem high praise: "Robert Browning is unerring in
every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages.... I know no other piece
of modern English prose or poetry in which there is so much told,
as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit--its worldliness,
inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of
luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the
central Renaissance, in thirty pages of _The Stones of Venice_,
put into as many lines; Browning's also being the antecedent work."
It is not, however, for its historical accuracy that a poem is mainly
to be judged. The full and imaginative portrayal of a type, belonging
not to one age only, but to human nature, is a greater achievement.
And this achievement Browning has undoubtedly performed.
5. =Old Gandolf=. Evidently one of the Bishop's colleagues in holy
orders, and like him in holiness.
31. =onion-stone=. See the dictionary for descriptions of this and
other stones named in the poem.
41. =olive-frail=. A crate, made of rushes, for packing olives.
42. =lapis lazuli=. A very beautiful and valuable blue stone.
46. =Frascati=. A town near Rome, celebrated for its villas.
56-62. Such mixture of Christian and Pagan elements was a common
feature in Renaissance art and literature.
58. =tripod=. The triple-footed seat from which the priestesses of
Apollo at Delphi delivered the oracles. =thyrsus=. A staff entwined
with ivy and vines, and borne in the Bacchic processions.
77. =Tully=. Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman orator, statesman, and
philosopher.
79. =Ulpian=. A celebrated Roman jurist of the third century.
99. =Elucescebat=. Late Latin, from =elucesco=. The classical or
Ciceronian form would be =elucebat=, from =eluceo=. Here appears the
Bishop's love of good Latin.
108. =Term=. A pillar, widening toward the top, upon which is placed a
figure or a bust.
Who are grouped about the Bishop's bed? What does he desire? Why? What
tastes does he show? Point out evidences of his crimes, his suspicion,
his sensual ideals, his artistic tastes, his canting hypocrisy, his
confusion of the material and the immaterial, and the persistency of
his passions and feelings. Note the subtlety with which these things
are suggested, especially lines 18-19, 29-30, 33-44, 50-52, 59-62,
80-84, 122-125.
THE LABORATORY. (PAGE 113.)
This is a little masterpiece in its vividness and condensation. The
passions of hate and jealousy have seldom been so well portrayed. The
time and place are probably France and the sixteenth or seventeenth
century. Berdoe has called attention in his _Browning
Cyclop�dia_, to the number of fine antitheses in the second stanza.
Who are present in the scene? Who are to be the victims? Account for
the speaker's _patience_ in stanza iii. Point out the things that
show the intensity of her hate. Does she display any other feeling
than hate and jealousy?
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