Although not brilliantly successful on the boards, A Blot in the ’Scutcheon made a deep impression upon the more competent part of the audience.  For Browning himself the most definite result was that Macready passed out of his life—­for twenty years they never met—­and that his most effective link with the stage was thus finally severed.  But his more distant and casual relations with it were partly balanced by the much enlarged understanding of dramatic effect which he had by this time won; and A Blot in the ’Scutcheon was followed by a drama which attains a beauty and charm not far below that of Pippa Passes under the conditions of a regular dramatic plot.  The ostensible subject of Colombe’s Birthday is a political crisis on the familiar lines;—­an imperilled throne in the centre of interest, a background of vague oppression and revolt.  But as compared with King Victor or The Druses the dispute is harmless, the tumult of revolution easily overheard.  The diplomatic business is not etherealised into romance, like the ladies’ embassy in Love’s Labour’s Lost; but neither is it allowed to become grave or menacing.  Berthold’s arrival to present his claim to the government of this miniature state affects us somewhat like the appearance of a new and formidable player in some drawing-room diversion; and the “treason” of the courtiers like the “unfairness” of children at play.  Nevertheless, the victory of love over political interest which the motto foreshadows is not accomplished without those subtle fluctuations and surprises which habitually mark the conduct of Browning’s plots.  The alternative issues gain in seriousness and ideality as we proceed, and Browning has nowhere expressed the ideal of sovereignty more finely than it is expressed in this play, by the man for whose sake a sovereign is about to surrender her crown.[20] Colombe herself is one of Browning’s most gracious and winning figures.  She brings the ripe decision of womanhood to bear upon a series of difficult situations without losing the bright glamour of her youth.  Her inborn truth and nature draw her on as by a quiet momentum, and gradually liberate her from the sway of the hollow fictions among which her lot is cast.  Valence, the outward instrument of this liberation, is not the least noble of that line of chivalrous lovers which reaches from Gismond to Caponsacchi.  With great delicacy the steps are marked in this inward and spiritual “flight” of Colombe.  Valence’s “way of love” is to make her realise the glory and privileges of the rulership which places her beyond his reach, at the very moment when she is about to resign it in despair.  She discovers the needs of the woman and the possibilities of power at the same time, and thus is brought, by Valence’s means, to a mood in which Prince Berthold’s offer of his hand and crown together weighs formidably, for a moment, against Valence’s offer of his love alone, until she discovers that Berthold is the very personation, in love and in statecraft alike, of the fictions from which she had escaped.  Then, swiftly recovering herself, she sets foot finally on the firm ground where she had first sought her “true resource.”