Tennyson did not write for the stage until he was
past sixty; but Browning wrote most of his plays early
in life. "Paracelsus" was a poem and not a drama. As
has often been said, it represented not character in ac-
tion, but action in character. He knew perfectly well
what he was about, for in the original preface ( 1835),
afterwards suppressed, he wrote: "I have endeavoured
to write a poem, not a drama; the canons of the drama
are well known, and I cannot but think that, inasmuch
as they have immediate regard to stage presentation,
the peculiar advantages they hold out are really such
only so long as the purpose for which they were at
first instituted can be kept in view." The great actor,
Macready, read "Paracelsus" with the tears running
down his cheeks, and at a dinner party given that year
at which both old Wordsworth and young Browning
were present, Macready leaned across the table and
asked Browning, "Won't you write a play for me and
save me from going to America?" Of course the
young poet was immensely flattered by this request and
he wrote the play "Strafford," which Macready pro-
duced, but which is very far from being a good play.
Browning continued to write plays of which the most
famous is, perhaps, "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon," but
none of them had any great success on the stage, and

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