range of the _Comédie Humaine_, Browning planned "a series of
monodramatic epics, narratives of the life of typical souls--a gigantic
scheme at which a Victor Hugo or a Lope de Vega would start back
aghast."

Already he had set himself to the analysis of the human soul in its
manifold aspects, already he had recognised that for him at least there
was no other study worthy of a lifelong devotion. In a sense he has
fulfilled this early dream: at any rate we have a unique series of
monodramatic poems, illustrative of typical souls. In another sense, the
major portion of Browning's life-work is, collectively, one monodramatic
"epic." He is himself a type of the subtle, restless, curious, searching
modern age of which he is the profoundest interpreter. Through a
multitude of masks he, the typical soul, speaks, and delivers himself of
a message which could not be presented emphatically enough as the
utterance of a single individual. He is a true dramatic poet, though not
in the sense in which Shakspere is. Shakspere and his kindred project
themselves into the lives of their imaginary personages: Browning pays
little heed to external life, or to the exigencies of action, and
projects himself into the minds of his characters.

In a word, Shakspere's method is to depict a human soul in action, with
all the pertinent play of circumstance, while Browning's is to portray
the processes of its mental and spiritual development: as he said in his
dedicatory preface to "Sordello," "little else is worth study." The one
electrifies us with the outer and dominant actualities; the other
flashes upon our mental vision the inner, complex, shaping
potentialities. The one deals with life dynamically, the other with life
as Thought. Both methods are compassed by art. Browning, who is above
all modern writers the poet of dramatic situations, is surpassed by many