Lady Carlisle. For the rest, the complexion of the piece, as Browning
describes it, after one of the latest rehearsals, was "perfect gallows."
Great historical personages were presented by actors who strutted or
slouched, who whimpered or drawled. The financial distress at Covent
Garden forbade any splendour or even dignity of scenery or of
costumes.[19] The text was considerably altered--and not always
judiciously--from that of the printed play, which had appeared before
its production on the stage. Yet on the first night _Strafford_ was not
damned, and on the second it was warmly applauded.[20] After the fifth
performance the wretched Pym refused to save his mother England even
once more, and the play was withdrawn. Browning declared to his friends
that never again, as long as he might live, would he write a play.
Whining not being to his taste, he averted his eyes and set himself
resolutely to work upon _Sordello_.

"I sail this morning for Venice," Browning wrote to a friend on Good
Friday, 1838. He voyaged as sole passenger on a merchantman, and soon
was on friendliest terms with the rough kindly captain. For the first
fortnight the sea was stormy and Browning suffered much; as they passed
through the Straits of Gibraltar, Captain Davidson aided him to reach
the deck, and a pulsing of home-pride--not home-sickness--gave their
origin to the patriotic lines beginning, "Nobly, nobly Cape Saint
Vincent to the north-west died away." Under the bulwark of the _Norham
Castle_, off the African coast, when the fancy of a gallop on his Uncle
Reuben's horse suddenly presented itself in pleasant contrast with the
tedium of the hours on shipboard, he wrote in pencil, on the flyleaf of
Bartoli's Simboli, that most spirited of poems which tell of the glory
of motion--_How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix_. The only
adventure of the voyage was the discovery of an Algerine pirate ship
floating keel uppermost; it righted suddenly under the stress of ropes