Strafford is, naturally, the most immature of the dramas, written while he was still writing Paracelsus, and when he was very young.  It is strange to compare the greater part of its prosaic verse with the rich poetic verse of Paracelsus; and this further illustrates how much a poet suffers when he writes in a form which is not in his genius.  There are only a very few passages in Strafford which resemble poetry until we come to the fifth Act, where Browning passes from the jerky, allusive but rhythmical prose of the previous acts into that talk between Strafford and his children which has poetic charm, clearness and grace.  The change does not last long, and when Hollis, Charles and Lady Carlisle, followed by Pym, come in, the whole Act is in confusion.  Nothing is clear, except absence of the clearness required for a drama.  But the previous Acts are even more obscure; not indeed for their readers, but for hearers in a theatre who—­since they are hurried on at once to new matter—­are forced to take in on the instant what the dramatist means.  It would be impossible to tell at first hearing what the chopped-up sentences, the interrupted phrases, the interjected “nots” and “buts” and “yets” are intended to convey.  The conversation is mangled.  This vice does not prevail in the other dramas to the same extent as in Strafford.  Browning had learnt his lesson, I suppose, when he saw Strafford represented.  But it sorely prevails in Colombe’s Birthday.

Strafford is brought before us as a politician, as the leader of the king’s side in an austere crisis of England’s history.  The first scene puts the great quarrel forward as the ground on which the drama is to be wrought.  An attempt is made to represent the various elements of the popular storm in the characters of Pym, Hampden, the younger Vane and others, and especially in the relations between Pym and Strafford, who are set over, one against the other, with some literary power.  But the lines on which the action is wrought are not simple.  No audience could follow the elaborate network of intrigue which, in Browning’s effort to represent too much of the history, he has made so confused.  Strong characterisation perishes in this effort to write a history rather than a drama.  What we chiefly see of the crisis is a series of political intrigues at the Court carried out by base persons, of whom the queen is the basest, to ruin Strafford; the futility of Strafford’s sentimental love of the king, whom he despises while he loves him; Strafford’s blustering weakness and blindness when he forces his way into the Parliament House, and the contemptible meanness of Charles.  The low intrigues of the Court leave the strongest impression on the mind, not the mighty struggle, not the fate of the Monarchy and its dark supporter.