SOURCE: "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics," in Becoming Browning: The Poems and Plays of Robert Browning, 1833-1846, Ohio State University Press, 1983, pp. 201-29.

In the following essay, Ryals maintains that the poems in Browning's 1845 volume, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, are linked by the theme of loyalty, a theme which Ryals argues is often expressed ironically.

Several months after the publication of Colombe's Birthday, Browning wrote to his friend Domett enclosing a copy of his play: "… I feel myself so much stronger, if flattery not deceive, that I shall stop some things that were meant to follow, and begin again" (Domett, p. 106). The things meant to follow seem to have been plays, for although two more were soon to be published, neither was intended for stage production. Beginning again apparently meant returning to shorter pieces of the kind that had appeared in Dramatic Lyrics three years earlier. Yet before he...