There is another popular misconception to which also a word in passing
may as well be devoted. This is the idea that Browning's personality is
apt to get confused with his characters', that his men and women are not
separate creations, projected from his brain into an independent
existence, but mere masks or puppets through whose mouths he speaks.
This fallacy arises from the fact that not a few of his imaginary
persons express themselves in a somewhat similar fashion; or, as people
too rashly say, "talk like Browning." The explanation of this apparent
paradox, so far as it exists, is not far to seek. All art is a
compromise, and all dramatic speech is in fact impossible. No persons in
real life would talk as Shakespeare or any other great dramatist makes
them talk. Nor do the characters of Shakespeare talk like those of any
other great dramatist, except in so far as later playwrights have
consciously imitated Shakespeare. Every dramatic writer has his own
style, and in this style, subject to modification, all his characters
speak. Just as a soul, born out of eternity into time, takes on itself
the impress of earth and the manners of human life, so a dramatic
creation, pure essence in the shaping imagination of the poet, takes on
itself, in its passage into life, something of the impress of its abode.
"The poet, in short, endows his creations with his own attributes; he
enables them to utter their feelings as if they themselves were poets,
thus giving a true voice even to that intensity of passion which in real
life often hinders expression."[8] If this fact is recognised (that
dramatic speech is not real speech, but poetical speech, and poetical
speech infused with the individual style of each individual dramatist,
modulated, indeed, but true to one keynote) then it must be granted that
Browning has as much right to his own style as other dramatists have to
theirs, and as little right as they to be accused on that account of
putting his personality into his work. But as Browning's style is very
pronounced and original, it is more easily recognisable than that of