Note 38 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

An anecdote to which Prof. Dowden has lately called attention (Browning, p. 66) describes Browning in his last years as demurring to the current interpretation of the dénoûment. Some one had remarked that it was "a natural sequence that the guard should be heard coming to take Norbert to his doom." "'Now I don't quite think that,' answered Browning, as if he were following out the play as a spectator. 'The queen has a large and passionate temperament.... She would have died by a knife in her heart. The guard would have come to carry away her dead body.'" The catastrophe here suggested is undoubtedly far finer tragedy. But we cannot believe that this was what Browning originally meant to happen. That Norbert and Constance expect "doom" is obvious, and the queen's parting "glare" leaves the reader in no doubt that they are right. They may, nevertheless, be wrong; but what, then, is meant by the coming of the guard, and the throwing open of the doors? The queen has in any case not died on the stage, for she had left it; and if she died outside, how should they have come "to carry away her dead body"?