The subject of the story is an innocent girl, Pompilia, who, under the protection of a noble priest, flees from her brutal husband and seeks the home of her foster parents.  Her husband wrathfully pursues her and kills both her and her parents.  While this is but the barest outline, yet the story in its complete form is very simple.  As is usual with Browning, the chief stress is laid upon the character portrayal.

He adopted the bold and unique plan of having different classes of people in Rome and the various actors in the tragedy tell the story from their own point of view and thus reveal their own bias and characteristics.  Each relation makes the story seem largely new.  Browning shows that all this testimony is necessary to establish a complete circle of evidence in regard to the central truth of the tragedy.  The poem thus becomes a remarkable analytic study of the psychology of human minds.

The four important characters,—­Guido, the husband; Caponsacchi, the priest; Pompilia, the girl-wife; and the Pope,—­stand out in strong relief.  The greatest development of character is seen in Guido, who starts with a defiant spirit of certain victory, but gradually becomes more subdued and abject, when he finds that he is to be killed, and finally shrieks in agony for the help of his victim, Pompilia.  In Caponsacchi there is the inward questioning of the right and the wrong.  He is a strongly-drawn character, full of passion and noble desires.  Pompilia, who has an intuitive knowledge of the right, is one of Browning’s sweetest and purest women.  From descriptions of Mrs. Browning, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne gave, we may conclude that she furnished the suggestion for many of Pompilia’s characteristics.  The Pope, with his calm, wise judgment and his lofty philosophy, is probably the greatest product of Browning’s intellect.

The books containing the monologues of these characters take first place among Browning’s writings and occupy a high position in the century’s work.  They have a striking originality, intensity, vigor, and imaginative richness.  The remaining books are incomparably inferior, and are marked at times by mere acuteness of reason and thoroughness of legal knowledge.

A Dramatic Poet.—­Although Browning’s genius is strongly dramatic, his best work is not found in the field of the drama. Strafford (1837), A Blot in the ’Scutcheon (1843), and Colombe’s Birthday (1844) have been staged successfully, but they cannot be called great acting plays.  The action is slight, the characters are complex, the soliloquies are lengthy, and the climaxes are too often wholly dependent upon emotional intensity rather than upon great or exciting deeds.  The strongest interest of these dramas lies in their psychological subtlety, which is more enjoyable in the study than in the theater.