Though Browning is often compared with Shakespeare, the reader will understand that he has very little of Shakespeare’s dramatic talent.  He cannot bring a group of people together and let the actions and words of his characters show us the comedy and tragedy of human life.  Neither can the author be disinterested, satisfied, as Shakespeare was, with life itself, without drawing any moral conclusions.  Browning has always a moral ready, and insists upon giving us his own views of life, which Shakespeare never does.  His dramatic power lies in depicting what he himself calls the history of a soul.  Sometimes, as in Paracelsus, he endeavors to trace the progress of the human spirit.  More often he takes some dramatic moment in life, some crisis in the ceaseless struggle between good and evil, and describes with wonderful insight the hero’s own thoughts and feelings; but he almost invariably tells us how, at such and such a point, the good or the evil in his hero must inevitably have triumphed.  And generally, as in “My Last Duchess,” the speaker adds a word here and there, aside from the story, which unconsciously shows the kind of man he is.  It is this power of revealing the soul from within that causes Browning to fascinate those who study him long enough.  His range is enormous, and brings all sorts and conditions of men under analysis.  The musician in “Abt Vogler,” the artist in “Andrea del Sarto,” the early Christian in “A Death in the Desert,” the Arab horseman in “Muteykeh,” the sailor in “Herve Kiel,” the mediaeval knight in “Childe Roland,” the Hebrew in “Saul,” the Greek in “Balaustion’s Adventure,” the monster in “Caliban,” the immortal dead in “Karshish,”—­all these and a hundred more histories of the soul show Browning’s marvelous versatility.  It is this great range of sympathy with many different types of life that constitutes Browning’s chief likeness to Shakespeare, though otherwise there is no comparison between the two men.

If we separate all these dramatic poems into three main periods,—­the early, from 1833 to 1841; the middle, from 1841 to 1868; and the late, from 1868 to 1889,—­the work of the beginner will be much more easily designated.  Of his early soul studies, Pauline (1833), Paracelsus (1835), and Sordello (1840), little need be said here, except perhaps this:  that if we begin with these works, we shall probably never read anything else by Browning.  And that were a pity.  It is better to leave these obscure works until his better poems have so attracted us to Browning that we will cheerfully endure his worst faults for the sake of his undoubted virtues.  The same criticism applies, though in less degree, to his first drama, Strafford (1837), which belongs to the early period of his work.