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46-395: Pippa Passes is a verse drama by Robert Browning . It was published in 1841 as the first volume of his Bells and Pomegranates series, in a low-priced two-column edition for sixpence , and republished in his collected Poems of 1849, where it received much more critical attention. It was dedicated "most admiringly" to Thomas Noon Talfourd , the author of Ion . It is best known for

92-469: A "substitute" for playgoing. Thus, playwrights were moved to take on "propagandist aims" against parliament and topics beyond the theatre in their writing, meaning reading such work could be considered a revolutionary act. However, playwrights could write in relative security, protected by the anonymous means of print. Thomas Killigrew is an example of a stage playwright who turned to closet drama when his plays could no longer be produced during this period; he

138-537: A child-angel into the light of a new morning, with the spring-world bathed in the glory and gold of a blessed sunrise, is" The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— All's right with the world! The view of Kingsland and other late-Victorian commentators like Stopford Brooke, who wrote that Pippa "passes like an angel by and touches with her wing events and persons and changes them to good",

184-418: A deed praiseworthy and heroic. But he has erred greatly in leaving the slightest doubt upon such a subject; unless, indeed, our lack of comprehension be alone responsible for the error. But we do not like playing with edged tools. However, Luigi's line "'Tis God's voice calls: how could I stay?" suggests that "what has come to him is the conviction of the necessity of the assassination." Browning sympathized with

230-616: A genre of dramatic writing unconcerned with stage technique. Stageability is only one aspect of closet drama: historically, playwrights might choose the genre of 'closet' dramatic writing to avoid censorship of their works, for example in the case of political tragedies. Closet drama has also been used as a mode of dramatic writing for those without access to the commercial playhouse, and in this context has become closely associated with early modern women's writing. Closet dramas were published in manuscript form, including dramatis personae and elaborate stage directions, allowing readers to imagine

276-447: A host of lesser figures, devoted much time to the closet drama, in a signal that the verse tragedy was already in a state of obsolescence. That is, while poets of the eighteenth century could write so-so poetic dramas, the public taste for new examples was already moving away by the start of the nineteenth century, and there was little commercial appeal in staging them. Instead, opera would take up verse drama, as something to be sung: it

322-661: A longer poetic form, without the connection to practical theater and performance. In the early modern period, women writers who were unable to "use their voice" in public were able to emphasize their opinions using the form of closet drama. This outlet for communication provided a woman the ability to "engage in political discourse without exposing her views to an indiscriminate public," since she could choose to restrict her readership. However, women's writing could be influenced by societal pressures and occurrences. Margaret Lucas Cavendish , author of fourteen folio volumes, explored writing closet dramas during her exile and became one of

368-552: A monk." The blunder was pointed out by H. W. Fay in 1888. In 1899 the Boston Browning Society staged an adapted version by Helen Archibald Clarke (1860–1926). An abridgment of Pippa Passes by Henry Miller was premiered at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway on 12 November 1906. It inspired a silent film adaptation starring Gertrude Robinson (and including Mary Pickford in a minor role) which

414-513: A socio-political force and as a platform for dramaturgies of foreignness." Nigerian Inua Ellams explores his identity that escapes geographical, national, and temporal boundaries. Russian Olga Shilyaeva in her 2018 28 дней. Трагедия менструального цикла ( 28 Days. The tragedy of a menstrual cycle ) uses verse to talk about experience of menstruation . Irish Stefanie Preissner in her Our Father (2011) and Solpadeine Is My Boyfriend (2012) plays with autobiography and her multiple identities "as

460-548: A very long period, verse drama was the dominant form of drama in Europe (and was also important in non-European cultures). Greek tragedy and Racine 's plays are written in verse, as is almost all of William Shakespeare 's, Ben Jonson 's and John Fletcher 's drama, and other works like Goethe 's Faust and Henrik Ibsen 's early plays. In most of Europe, verse drama has remained a prominent art form, while at least popularly, it has been tied almost exclusively to Shakespeare in

506-672: Is a closet drama and many of its actions are told through the characters' speech rather than through stage directions. A consequence of this is that readers have disagreed about the actions of Sebald and Ottima after they hear Pippa's song. Many followed Alexandra Orr, who wrote, "Something in [Pippa's] song strikes [Sebald's] conscience like a thunderbolt, and its reviving force awakens Ottima's also: both are spiritually saved", but J. M. Purcell disagreed, arguing "that Pippa's song has recalled Sebald—but not Ottima, however—to his moral senses; and in his revulsion for his sins of ingratitude, adultery and murder, he kills Ottima and himself." Charmed by

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552-516: Is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or sometimes out loud in a large group. The contrast between closet drama and classic "stage" dramas dates back to the late eighteenth century. The literary historian Henry A. Beers considers closet drama "a quite legitimate product of literary art." A closet drama (or closet play) is a play created primarily for reading, rather than production. Closet dramas are traditionally defined in narrower terms as belonging to

598-460: Is a careless audacity in treating of licentiousness, which in our eyes is highly reprehensible, though it may, no doubt, have been exhibited with a moral intention, and though Mr. Browning may plead the authority of Shakespeare, Goethe, and other great men, in his favour. However, the work was described by William Kingsland as "perhaps the most beautiful [of Browning's] dramas", presenting a "charming picture of Pippa […] whose song, as she descends like

644-403: Is particularly relevant for contemporary theatre practice because the dialogical relationship between its rhythmic and lexical levels speaks to the globalized world's pluralistic nature. Lech discusses how artists such as Polish Radosław Rychcik and Spanish-British Teatro Inverso use verse in multilingual contexts "as a performative tool to engage with and reflect on interlingual processes as

690-554: Is still the case that a verse libretto can be successful. Verse drama as such, however, in becoming closet drama, became simply a longer poetic form, without the connection to practical theatre and performance. According to Robertson Davies in A Voice From the Attic , closet drama is "Dreariest of literature, most second hand and fusty of experience!" But indeed a great deal of it was written in Victorian times , and afterwards, to

736-564: Is the crucial factor behind closet dramas: "a play that is not intended for commercial performance can nevertheless cross between private playreading and the public sphere" through this medium. The philosophical dialogues of ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Plato (see Socratic dialogue ) were written in the form of conversations between "characters" and are in this respect similar to closet drama, many of which feature little action but are often rich in philosophical rhetoric. Beginning with Friedrich von Schlegel , many have argued that

782-484: The tragedies of Seneca the Younger in the first century AD were written to be recited at small parties rather than performed. Although that theory has become widely pervasive in the history of theater, there is no evidence to support the contention that Seneca's plays were intended to be read or recited at small gatherings of the wealthy. The emperor Nero , a pupil of Seneca, may have performed in some of them. Some of

828-537: The English tradition. In the English language, verse has continued. In the new millennium, there has been a resurgence in interest in the form of verse drama. Some of them came in blank verse or iambic pentameter and endeavour to be in conversation with Shakespeare's writing styles. King Charles III by Mike Bartlett , written in iambic pentameter, played on the West End and Broadway, as well as being filmed with

874-401: The character of Pippa, Alfred Noyes pronounced Pippa Passes to be Browning's "most perfect achievement", but even the sentimental passages of the work had not been able to win over all Victorian critics. Walter Besant criticised the work in his 1875 novel With Harp and Crown , singling out "The hill-side's dew-pearled!" ("Was there ever such a stuttering collocation of syllables to confound

920-412: The character she performs, as the performer, the writer, and a voice of a young generation of Ireland facing the drastic political, social, and personal changes and desperately looking for predictability." Dramatic verse occurs in a dramatic work, such as a play , composed in poetic form. The tradition of dramatic verse extends at least as far back as ancient Greece . The English Renaissance saw

966-415: The claim that the effect of Pippa on the other characters is "the sudden recovery of moral awareness". Her songs, Korg says, "enable each character to escape the control of passion, deception, or some other compulsion, and to restore his capacity for exercising enlightened free will and moral judgment", whether for good or evil. Pippa's song influences Luigi to leave that night for Vienna, preserving him from

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1012-647: The closet drama. The popularity of closet drama at this time was both a sign of, and a reaction to, the decline of the verse tragedy on the European stage in the 1800s. Popular tastes in theater were shifting toward melodrama and comedy and there was little commercial appeal in staging verse tragedies (though Coleridge , Robert Browning , and others wrote verse dramas that were staged in commercial theaters). Playwrights who wanted to write verse tragedy had to resign themselves to writing for readers, rather than actors and audiences. Nineteenth-century closet drama became

1058-484: The drama of the Middle Ages was of the closet-drama type, such as the drama of Hroswitha of Gandersheim and debate poems in quasi-dramatic form. Fulke Greville , Samuel Daniel , Elizabeth Cary , Sir William Alexander , and Mary Sidney wrote closet dramas in the age of Shakespeare and Jonson . Between 1642 and 1660, the English government banned public performance. During this time, playreading became

1104-770: The ears of those that hear them to crack—would have been a thing to rest himself upon for ever, and receive the applause of the world. To the gods it seemed otherwise. Browning, who might have led us like Hamelin the piper, has chosen the worse part. He will be so deeply wise that he cannot express his thought; he will be so full of profundities that he requires a million of lines to express them in; he will leave music and melody to Swinburne; he will leave grace and sweetness to Tennyson; and in fifty years' time, who will read Browning? The play contains an error rooted in Robert Browning's unfamiliarity with vulgar slang. In her closing song, Pippa says: But at night, brother howlet, over

1150-614: The extent that it became a more popular long form at least than the faded epic . Prolific in the form were, for example, Michael Field and Gordon Bottomley . Dramatic poetry is any poetry that uses the discourse of the characters involved to tell a story or portray a situation. The major types of dramatic poetry are those already discussed, to be found in plays written for the theatre, and libretti . There are further dramatic verse forms: these include dramatic monologues , such as those written by Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson and Shakespeare. Closet drama A closet drama

1196-425: The girl "wherein I put, comprize, typify and figure to myself Mankind, the whole poor-devildom one sees cuffed and huffed from morn to midnight" had inspired a resolution in him to "keep my pact in mind, prick up my republicanism". Pippa, a working-class girl from Asolo, not far from Padua, was the result of this pact. The work caused some controversy when it was first published, due to the matter-of-fact portrayals of

1242-540: The height of dramatic verse in the English-speaking world, with playwrights including Ben Jonson , Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare developing new techniques, both for dramatic structure and poetic form. Though a few plays, for example A Midsummer Night's Dream , feature extended passages of rhymed verse, the majority of dramatic verse is composed as blank verse ; there are also passages of prose. Dramatic verse began to decline in popularity in

1288-425: The least, reminding them of the existence of a moral order. Alexandra Orr described the moment of inspiration: Mr. Browning was walking alone, in a wood near Dulwich , when the image flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it; and the image shaped itself into

1334-399: The lines "God's in his heaven— / All's right with the world!" The author described the work as "the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at intervals". A young, blameless silk-winding girl is wandering innocently through the environs of Asolo , attributing kindness and virtue to the people she passes. She sings as she goes, her song influencing others to act for the good—or, at

1380-409: The little silk-winder of Asolo, Felippa, or Pippa. Another source for the work, according to David G. Riede, is that while working on a description of a Paduan peasant girl in book 3 of Sordello (1840), Browning came to the realization "that his art ought not to flatter the pretensions of the great, but to speak for the masses". In a letter to Fanny Haworth, he wrote that the "sad disheveled form" of

1426-470: The more disreputable characters—notably the adulterous Ottima—and for its frankness on sexual matters. In 1849, a writer in The English Review complained: We have already referred to the two drawbacks, of which we have to complain in particular: the one is the virtual encouragement of regicide , which we trust to see removed from the next edition, being as unnatural as it is immoral: the other

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1472-416: The nineteenth century, when the prosaic and conversational styles of playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen became more prevalent, and were adapted in English by George Bernard Shaw . Verse drama did have a role in the development of Irish theatre . An important trend from around 1800 was the closet drama : a verse drama intended to be read from the page, rather than performed. Byron and Shelley , as well as

1518-641: The original cast for the BBC. Likewise, La Bete by David Hirson , which endeavours to recreate Moliere 's farces in rhyming couplets, enjoyed several prominent productions on both sides of the Atlantic. David Ives , known best for his short, absurdist work, has turned to " transladaptation " (his word) in his later years: translating and updating French farces, such as The School for Lies and The Metromaniacs , both of which premiered in New York City. With

1564-467: The poet for his source, and Browning replied "that he got the word from the Royalist rhymes entitled 'Vanity of Vanities,' on Sir Harry Vane's picture" in which Vane is lampooned thus: They talk't of his having a Cardinalls Hat, They'd send him as soon an old Nun's Twat Browning added, "The word struck me as a distinctive part of a nun's attire that might fitly pair off with the cowl appropriated to

1610-491: The police. But does he give up his plan to assassinate the Austrian Emperor Franz? In 1848, a reviewer for Sharpe's London Magazine chided Browning for failing to clarify: We trust that he may be supposed to have abandoned his execrable design. Indeed, we cannot conceive it possible that an author, animated in general by such Christian feelings as Robert Browning, should recommend regicide, in cold blood, as

1656-441: The reader and utterly destroy a sweet little lyric?") and denying Browning's future appeal: She had taken a scene from Browning's "Pippa passes," a poem which—if its author had only for once been able to wed melodious verse to the sweetest poetical thought; if he had only tried, just for once, to write lines which should not make the cheeks of those that read them to ache, the front teeth of those who declaim them to splinter and fly,

1702-584: The renewed interest in verse drama, theatre companies are looking for "new Shakespeare" plays to produce. In 2017, the American Shakespeare Center founded Shakespeare's New Contemporaries (SNC), which solicits new plays in conversation with Shakespeare's canon. This was partially in response to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival commissioning "modern English" versions of Shakespeare plays. SNC has been on hold since

1748-651: The republican cause in Italy, believing that "once the Italians regained liberty and independence, all of the dormant positive qualities that had made them the foremost Eueropean nation during the Renaissance would reawaken", a view he expressed in the poem 'Old Pictures in Florence' (1855), in which the narrator Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence, How Art may return that departed with her. Pippa Passes

1794-500: The stage. Several closet dramas in verse were written in Europe after 1800; these plays were by and large inspired by classical models. Faust, Part 1 and Faust, Part 2 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , among the most acclaimed pieces in the history of German literature , were written as closet dramas, though both plays have been frequently staged. Lord Byron , Percy Bysshe Shelley , and Alexander Pushkin devoted much time to

1840-626: The start of the COVID-19 pandemic . However, the twenty-first century also saw theatre practitioners using verse and hybrid forms in a much wider selection of dramatic texts and theatrical performances and forms than those inspired by Shakespeare. A transnational researcher, Kasia Lech, showed that contemporary practices reach for verse to test the boundaries of verse drama and its traditions in Western theatre, including English-language theatre but also Polish, Spanish, and Russian. Lech argues that verse

1886-524: The text as if it were being performed. This created an "unusually tight fusion between book and reader as it endeavours to stimulate the theatrical imagination." The playwrights did not have to worry about the pressure to impress an audience due to their audience being whom they chose. Thus, it was considered to be a freeing style of writing. Marta Straznicky describes the form as "part of a larger cultural matrix in which closed spaces, selective interpretive communities, and political dissent are aligned." Print

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1932-577: The theme of Pippa Passes with a flutist instead of a singer. Pippa Passes was revived at the Neighborhood Playhouse by Alice Lewisohn on 17 November 1918, and was a great success. Ada Galsworthy set Pippa Passes to music, together with In The Doorway , published in 1907. The town of Pippa Passes, Kentucky , is formally named after the poem thanks to a grant from the Browning Society . Verse drama For

1978-484: The woods, Toll the world to thy chantry; Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods Full complines with gallantry: Then, owls and bats, Cowls and twats , Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods, Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry! " Twat " was and remains vulgar slang for a woman's external genitalia. But in 1886, Frederick James Furnivall , a contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary , asked

2024-427: Was challenged in the twentieth century. D. C. Wilkinson pointed out that Sebald's reaction to Pippa's song is to express scorn and revulsion of Ottima, "a grand shifting of responsibility" for his own crime; Dale Kramer argued that Pippa's songs "influence people during moments of crisis into performing deeds which seem to abnegate self, but which are on the whole egoistic"; and Jacob Korg synthesized these criticisms into

2070-543: Was in exile from England during the English Civil War . Following the Restoration in 1660, some authors, such as Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne , continued to favour closet drama, proving that the form "served a cultural function distinct from that of commercial drama." John Milton 's play Samson Agonistes , written in 1671, is an example of early modern drama never intended for

2116-517: Was made in 1909. The film omitted the scenes involving Luigi and the Monsignor, and included a new episode involving a repentant drunkard. It was directed by D. W. Griffith (with cinematography by Arthur Marvin ), whose experiments with naturalistic lighting were deemed a great success; he later named it as his greatest film. An adaptation of A Blot in the 'Scutcheon was to follow in 1912, and another Griffith film, The Wanderer (1913) reproduces

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