that I cannot but believe my statement (combining as it does what appears correct in Voltaire and plausible in Condorcet) more true to person and thing than any it has hitherto been my fortune to meet with, no doubt my word will be taken, and my evidence spared as readily.”

The episode recorded in the play is the abdication of Victor in favour of his son Charles, and his subsequent attempt to return to the throne.  The only point in which Browning has departed from history is that the very effective death on the stage replaces the old king’s real death in captivity a year later.  As a piece of literature, this is the least interesting and valuable of Browning’s plays, the thinnest in structure, the dryest in substance.

The interest of the play is, even more than that of Strafford, political.  The intrigue turns on questions of government, complicated with questions of relationship and duty.  The conflict is one between ruler and ruler, who are also father and son; and the true tragedy of the situation seems to be this:  shall Charles obey the instincts of a son, and cede to his father’s wish to resume the government he has abdicated, or is there a higher duty which he is bound to follow, the duty of a king to his people?  The motive is a fine one, but it is scarcely handled with Browning’s accustomed skill and subtlety.  King Victor, of whose “fiery and audacious temper, unscrupulous selfishness, profound dissimulation, and singular fertility in resources,” Browning speaks in his preface, is an impressive study of “the old age of crafty men,” the futile wiliness of decrepit and persevering craft, though we are scarcely made to feel the once potent personality of the man, or to understand the influence which his mere word or presence still has upon his son.  D’Ormea, who checkmates all the schemes of his old master, is a curious and subtle study of one who “serves God at the devil’s bidding,” as he himself confesses in the cynical frankness of his continual ironical self-criticism.  After twenty years of unsuccessful intrigue, he has learnt by experience that honesty is the best policy.  But at every step his evil reputation clogs and impedes his honest action, and the very men whom he is now most sincere in helping are the most mistrustful of his sincerity.  Charles, whose good intentions and vacillating will are the precise opposites of his father’s strong will and selfish purposes, is really the central figure of the play.  He is one of those men whom we at once despise and respect.  Gifted with many good qualities, he seems to lack the one thing needful to bind them together.  Polyxena, his wife, possesses just that resolution in which he is wanting.  She is a fine, firm, clear character, herself admirable, and admirably drawn.  Her “noble and right woman’s manliness” (to use Browning’s phrase) is prompt to sweep away the cobwebs that entangle her husband’s path or obscure his vision of things.  From first to last she sees through Charles, Victor and D’Ormea, who neither understand one another nor perhaps themselves; from first to last she is the same clear-headed, decisive, consistent woman, loyal always to love, but always yet more loyal toward truth.