The first part of A Soul’s Tragedy is written in poetry and the second in prose.  The first part is dull but the second is very lively and amusing; so gay and clever that we begin to wish that a good deal of Browning’s dramas had been written in prose.  And the prose itself, unlike his more serious prose in his letters and essays, is good, clear, and of an excellent style.  The time of the play is in the sixteenth century; but there is nothing in it which is special to that time:  no scenery, no vivid pictures of street life, no distinct atmosphere of the period.  It might just as well be of the eighteenth or nineteenth century.  The character of Chiappino may be found in any provincial town.  This compound of envy, self-conceit, superficial cleverness and real silliness is one of our universal plagues, and not uncommon among the demagogues of any country.  And he contrasts him with Ogniben, the Pope’s legate, another type, well known in governments, skilled in affairs, half mocking, half tolerant of the “foolish people,” the alluring destroyer of all self-seeking leaders of the people.  He also is as common as Chiappino, as modern as he is ancient.  Both are representative types, and admirably drawn.  They are done at too great length, but Browning could not manage them as well in Drama as he would have done in a short piece such as he placed in Men and Women.  Why this little thing is called A Soul’s Tragedy I cannot quite understand.  That title supposes that Chiappino loses his soul at the end of the play.  But it is plain from his mean and envious talk at the beginning with Eulalia that his soul is already lost.  He is not worse at the end, but perhaps on the way to betterment.  The tragedy is then in the discovery by the people that he who was thought to be a great soul is a fraud.  But that conclusion was not Browning’s intention.  Finally, if this be a tragedy it is clothed with comedy.  Browning’s humour was never more wise, kindly, worldly and biting than in the second act, and Ogniben may well be set beside Bishop Blougram.  It would be a privilege to dine with either of them.

Every one is in love with Pippa Passes, which appeared immediately after Sordello.  It may have been a refreshment to Browning after the complexities and metaphysics of Sordello, to live for a time with the soft simplicity of Pippa, with the clear motives of the separate occurrences at Asolo, with the outside picturesque world, and in a lyric atmosphere.  It certainly is a refreshment to us.  It is a pity so little was done by Browning in this pleasant, graceful, happy way.  The substance of thought in it and its intellectual force are just as strong as in Sordello or Paracelsus, and are concerned, especially in the first two pieces, with serious and weighty matters of human life.  Beyond the pleasure the poem gives, its indirect teaching is full of truth and beauty; and the things treated of belong to many phases of human life, and touch their problems with poetic light and love.  Pippa herself, in her affectionate, natural goodness, illuminates the greater difficulties of life in a single day more than Sordello or Paracelsus could in the whole course of their lives.