The tragedy was produced at Drury Lane on February nth, 1843, with Phelps, who acted admirably as Tresham, and Helen Faucit as Mildred.  Although it had been ill rehearsed and not a shilling had been spent on scenery or dresses, it was received with applause.  To a call for the author, Browning, seated in his box, declined to make any response.  Thus, not without some soreness of heart, closed his direct connection with the theatre.  He heard with pleasure when in Italy that A Blot in the ’Scutcheon was given by Phelps at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in November 1848, and with unquestionable success.  A rendering of Colombe’s Birthday was projected by Charles Kean in 1844, but the long delays, which were inevitable, could not be endured by Browning, who desired to print his play forthwith among the Bells and Pomegranates.  It was not until nine years later that this play, a veritable “All for love, or the world well lost,” was presented at the Haymarket, Helen Faucit appearing as the Duchess.  Soon after Colombe’s Birthday had been published, Browning sailed once more, in the autumn of 1844, for Italy.[26] As he journeyed northwards and homewards, from Naples (where they were performing an opera named Sordello) and Rome he sought and obtained at Leghorn an interview with Trelawny, the generous-hearted friend of Shelley, by whose grave he had lately stood.[27]

Browning’s work as a playwright, consisting of eight pieces, or nine if we include the later In a Balcony, is sufficiently ample to enable us to form a trustworthy estimate of his genius as seen in drama.  Dramatic, in the sense that he created and studied minds and hearts other than his own, he pre-eminently was; if he desired to set forth or to vindicate his most intimate ideas or impulses, he effected this indirectly, by detaching them from his own personality and giving them a brain and a heart other than his own in which to live and move and have their being.  There is a kind of dramatic art which we may term static, and another kind which we may term dynamic.  The former deals especially with characters in position, the latter with characters in movement.[28] Passion and thought may be exhibited and interpreted by dramatic genius of either type; to represent passion and thought and action—­action incarnating and developing thought and passion—­the dynamic power is required.  And by action we are to understand not merely a visible deed, but also a word, a feeling, an idea which has in it a direct operative force.  The dramatic genius of Browning was in the main of the static kind; it studies with extraordinary skill and subtlety character in position; it attains only an imperfect or a laboured success with character in movement.  The dramatis personae are ready at almost every moment, except the culminating moments of passion, to fall away from action into reflection and self-analysis.  The play of mind upon mind he recognises of course as a matter of profound