A Survey of Robert Browning's Poetry Quiz

Answer: The dramatic monologue

A dramatic monologue is a type of poetry that is written as a speech delivered by a single character who is not the poet. Through the monologue, the speaker reveals his character and temperament. Such monologues can also be used in fiction and are often employed to tell stories.

The use of this form peaked during the Victorian period, having been used by Lord Tennyson in works such as "Ulysses" and Matthew Arnold in "Dover Beach". Examples of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues include "Fra Lippo Lippi", "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister", and "Porphyria's Lover".

Answer: Sordello

Having achieved some success with his lengthy poems "Pauline" and "Paracelsus", Robert Browning spent nearly four years writing "Sordello", which he published in March of 1840. The poem features the 13th-century troubadour from Canto VI of Dante Alighieri's "Purgatorio", Sordello da Goito. Today, it is considered to be among the most difficult poems of the English language. William Sharp, in "The Life of Robert Browning", quotes Lord Tennyson as having said of the poem, "There were only two lines in it that I understood." After that, Browning began to move away from the style of writing expressed in "Sordello".

The poem would later come to be praised, however, by the likes of Ezra Pound.

Answer: The Ring and the Book

This long dramatic poem, or verse novel, was published in four volumes between 1868 and 1869 and recounts a 1698 murder trial in Rome. The trial features Count Guido Franceschini, a poor nobleman who is found guilty of murdering his wife and her parents and who then appeals to the Pope.

Answer: Sonnets from the Portuguese

Robert Browning's "Men and Women" was published in 1855, "Dramatic Lyrics" in 1862, and "Dramatis Personae" in 1864.

"Sonnets from the Portuguese" was written by Robert Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Though she was initially hesitant to publish the poems, Robert urged her to do so. Publishing them as if they were translations of foreign sonnets was a ruse to give the couple some privacy. Originally, they were titled "Sonnets translated from the Bosnian", but her husband suggested she call them instead "from the Portuguese." His nickname for his wife was "my little Portuguese" because of her dark complexion and hair.

Answer: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

Act 3, scene 4 of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" contains the lines:

"Child Rowland to the dark tower came.
His word was still 'Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.'"

Written in January of 1852, Browning's 34-stanza poem explores Roland's journey to the Dark Tower. ("Childe" is a term meaning an untested knight.) Ultimately, the poem does not reveal what Roland discovers inside the tower when he finally reaches it. The poem inspired Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series of eight books which feature the quest of Roland Deschain, the last surviving member of the knightly order of gunslingers.

Answer: My Last Duchess

"My Last Duchess", first published in 1842 in Browning's "Dramatic Lyrics" collection, is one of his most anthologized poems. In the poem, the Duke is giving a tour of his art works to an emissary of the family from which his new wife will come. He shows the listener the painting of his last duchess.

The poem implies it is possible the Duchess cheated on the Duke and so he gave an order to have her killed. The Duke tells his guest, "Sir, 'twas not /
Her husband's presence only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchess' cheek." Rather, she had a "heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad, / Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er / She looked on, and her looks went everywhere." So eventually, the Duke "gave commands; then all smiles stopped together."

Answer: Porphyria's Lover

"Porphyria" was first published in January of 1836 in the "Monthly Repository" and was later republished as "Porphyria's Lover" in Browning's 1842 collection "Dramatic Lyrics". The poem is told from the perspective of Prophyria's lover, who kills her in order to preserve her pure and all to himself:

"That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her."

Answer: The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Based on a legend from the town of Hamelin, Browning's poem tells the story of a town overrun by rats. A piper agrees to rid the town of rats in exchange for 50,000 guilders, and so he does. But when the mayor doesn't pay up, the piper leads the town's children away:

"Once more he stept into the street;
And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
Never gave th'enraptured air)
There was a rustling, that seem'd like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running."

Answer: Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

First published in Browning's 1842 collection "Dramatic Lyrics", this poem is told from the voice of a nameless Spanish monk. The irony of the poem is that, while the speaker is noting all the minor ways Brother Lawrence fails at Christianity, he himself is indulging in a murderous hatred. His thoughts are interrupted when the bell rings for vespers:

"Or, there's Satan!--one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine...
'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r--you swine!"

Answer: The Laboratory

The poem is set in 17th century France and the speaker wants to use the potion to kill women who are rivals for the affections of man:

"What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me-
That's why she ensnared him: this never will free
The soul from those masculine eyes,-say, 'no!'
To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go."

The poem was likely inspired by a French aristocrat, Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, who was convicted of poisoning her brothers and father.

Answer: Blank verse

"Fra Lippo Lippi" was published in Browning's 1855 collection "Men and Women" and, through the 15th-century painter Filippo Lippi, explores whether art should be realistic or depict an idealized image. The poem does not rhyme but was instead written in blank verse, which uses non-rhyming iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter uses five metrical feet consisting of a short (unstressed) syllable followed by a long (stressed) syllable. The poem begins:

"I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!"

Free verse, unlike blank verse, does not employ a set meter. Couplets are two lines, usually in the same meter, joined by rhyme. Browning has been known to write in rhyming couplets, as is the case with "My Last Duchess." Ballad form uses stanzas of four lines each, with the rhyme scheme ABCB or ABAB.

Answer: An unreliable narrator

Unreliable narrators typically drop hints that enable the reader to piece together the true story, as in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" or Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell Tale Heart".

"Count Gismond" is another example of a poem in which Browning employs an unreliable narrator. One could read the poem as a story of the vindication of innocence by a woman who was falsely accused of being lovers with Count Gauthier, but hints scattered throughout the poem suggest she may not be telling the truth.

Answer: How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix

"How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" was published in Browning's 1845 collection "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics". While at a public meeting, Browning tried to recite the poem into a phonograph, but he forgot the words. The recording still survives today.

Answer: William Wordsworth

Lord Tennyson was a Victorian poet and Alexander Pope was a neo-classical poet. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a romantic poet but did not write "The Prelude". In later life, Wordsworth gave up his revolutionary dreams and settled down into a more reclusive conservatism.

Browning's poem begins:

"Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat-
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!"

Answer: England

"Home Thoughts, from Abroad" is a sentimental poem written by Robert Browning while he was visiting northern Italy. It begins:

"Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!"

The poem was published in Browning's 1845 collection "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics".