Pippa Passes is a dramatic piece, as much play as poetry, by Robert Browning

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

. It was published in 1841 as the first volume of his Bells and Pomegranates series, in a very inexpensive two-column edition for sixpence, and next republished in Poems in 1848, when it received much more critical attention. It was dedicated to Thomas Noon Talfourd

Thomas Noon Talfourd

Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, SL , was an English judge and author.The son of a well-to-do brewer, he was born at Reading, Berkshire ....

, who had recently attained fame as the author of the tragedy Ion.

Origins

The author described the work as "the first of a series of dramatic pieces." A young, blameless silk-winding girl is wandering innocently through the environs of Asolo

Asolo

Asolo is a town and comune in the Veneto Region of Northern Italy. It is known as "The Pearl of the province of Treviso", and also as "The City of a Hundred Horizons" for its mountain settings.-History:...

, in her mind attributing kindness and virtue to the people she passes. She sings as she goes, her song influencing others to act for the good — or, at the least, reminding them of the existence of a moral order. Alexandra Leighton (Mrs Sutherland Orr) described the moment of inspiration:

Mr Browning was walking alone, in a wood near Dulwich

Dulwich

Dulwich is an area of South London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth...

, when the image flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it; and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo, Felippa, or Pippa.

This theme followed with great naturalness from Sordello

Sordello (poem)

Sordello is a narrative poem by the English poet Robert Browning. Worked on for seven years, and largely written between 1836 and 1840, it was published in March 1840...

(1840), in which the role in life of poets was analysed.

The work caused some controversy when it was first published, due to the matter-of-fact portrayals of many of the area's more disreputable characters — notably the adulterous Ottima — and for its frankness on sexual matters. In 1849, a writer in The English Review complained:

We have already referred to the two drawbacks, of which we have to complain in particular: the one is the virtual encouragement of regicide

Regicide

The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a monarch. In a narrower sense, in the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after a trial...

, which we trust to see removed from the next edition, being as unnatural as it is immoral: the other is a careless audacity in treating of licentiousness, which in our eyes is highly reprehensible, though it may, no doubt, have been exhibited with a moral intention, and though Mr. Browning may plead the authority of Shakspeare, Goethe, and other great men, in his favour.

Despite this, the most famous passage in the poem is almost comical in its innocence:

The year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his Heaven—

All's right with the world!

although the timing of this song renders it deeply ironic.

Structure

Introduction

The silk-winding girl Pippa rises on New Year's Day, her only day off for the whole year. Her thoughts concern the people she dubs "Asolo's Four Happiest Ones":

• Ottima, the wife of the rich silk-mill owner Luca Gaddi (and her German paramour Sebald)
• Jules, a French art student, who is today marrying Phene, a beautiful woman he knows only through her fan letters
• Luigi, an Italian patriot who lives with his mother in the turret on the hill
• Monsignor, a cleric

I.—Morning

Pippa passes a shrubhouse on the hillside, where Sebald and Ottima are trying to justify to each other the murder of Ottima's elderly husband, Luca.

A group of art students who are envious of Jules, led by Lutwyche, discuss a cruel practical joke they are hoping to play on him.

II.—Noon

Pippa enters Orcana valley, and passes the house of Jules and Phene, who have been tricked into marriage. (The song they overhear refers to Caterina Cornaro

Catherine Cornaro

Nobil Donna Catherine Cornaro was Queen of Cyprus from 1474 to 1489 and declared a "Daughter of Saint Mark" in order that Venice could claim control of Cyprus after the death of her husband, James II .-Family:She was born in Venice in 1454 and was the daughter of a well-known and powerful family of...

, the Queen of Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

.)

The English vagabond Bluphocks watches Luigi's turret in the company of Austrian policemen. The Austrians' suspicions hinge on whether Luigi stays for the night or leaves.

III.—Evening

Pippa passes the turret on the hill. Luigi and his mother discuss his plan to assassinate an Austrian official. (The song they overhear, A king lived long ago (1835), was originally a separate poem by Browning.)

Four poor girls sit on the steps of the cathedral and chatter. At the behest of Bluphocks, they greet Pippa as she goes by.

IV.—Night

Pippa passes the cathedral and palace. Inside, Monsignor negotiates with the Intendant, an assassin named Uguccio. The conversation turns to Pippa, the niece of the cardinal and true owner of the ecclesiastic's property, and Ugo's offer to remove her from Asolo.

Pippa returns to her room.

Ambiguities

Pippa's song influences Luigi to leave that night for Vienna, preserving him from the police. But does he give up his plan to assassinate the Austrian official? In 1848, a reviewer for Sharpe's London Magazine chid Browning for failing to clarify:

We trust that he may be supposed to have abandoned his execrable design. Indeed, we cannot conceive it possible that an author, animated in general by such Christian feelings as Robert Browning, should recommend regicide, in cold blood, as a deed praiseworthy and heroic. But he has erred greatly in leaving the slightest doubt upon such a subject; unless, indeed, our lack of comprehension be alone responsible for the error. But we do not like playing with edged tools.

However, textual evidence points to a confirmation of his purpose, and Browning's republican sympathies may have leaned in that direction. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

 had written verses in praise of Charlotte Corday

Charlotte Corday

Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont , known to history as Charlotte Corday, was a figure of the French Revolution. In 1793, she was executed under the guillotine for the assassination of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat, who was in part responsible, through his role as a politician and...

 (a figure who was also admired by other Early Romantics, even Jean Paul

Jean Paul

Jean Paul , born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories.-Life and work:...

), and a few lines in the poem "De Gustibus——" (1855) are suggestive:

A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles

Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,

And says there's news to-day—the king

Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,

Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:

—She hopes they have not caught the felons.

Italy, my Italy!

The play is a closet drama

Closet drama

A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. A related form, the "closet screenplay," developed during the 20th century.-Form:...

 and many of its actions are told through the characters' speech rather than through stage directions. One consequence of this is the actions of Sebald and Ottima after they hear Pippa's song has been the subject of disagreement. Most critics have seen it simply as a parting on hostile terms, but others have given their last lines a more sinister interpretation.

Who will read Browning?

Charmed by the character of Pippa, Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes was an English poet, best known for his ballads, "The Highwayman" and "The Barrel-Organ".-Early years:...

 pronounced Pippa Passes to be Browning's best, but even the sentimental passages of the work had not been able to win over all Victorian critics. In Chapter XVII of the novel With Harp and Crown (1875), Walter Besant

Walter Besant

Sir Walter Besant , was a novelist and historian who lived largely in London.His sister-in-law was Annie Besant.-Biography:...

 mentioned the poem, singling out The hill-side's dew-pearled! ("Was there ever such a stuttering collocation of syllables to confound the reader and utterly destroy a sweet little lyric?") and took the opportunity to deny Browning's future appeal:

She had taken a scene from Browning's "Pippa passes," a poem which—if its author had only for once been able to wed melodious verse to the sweetest poetical thought; if he had only tried, just for once, to write lines which should not make the cheeks of those that read them to ache, the front teeth of those who declaim them to splinter and fly, the ears of those that hear them to crack—would have been a thing to rest himself upon for ever, and receive the applause of the world. To the gods it seemed otherwise. Browning, who might have led us like Hamelin the piper, has chosen the worse part. He will be so deeply wise that he cannot express his thought; he will be so full of profundities that he requires a million of lines to express them in; he will leave music and melody to Swinburne; he will leave grace and sweetness to Tennyson; and in fifty years' time, who will read Browning?

"A distressing blunder"

Besides the oft-quoted line "God's in his Heaven/All's right with the world!" above, the poem contains an amusing error rooted in Robert Browning's unfamiliarity with vulgar slang. Right at the end of the poem, in her closing song, Pippa calls out the following:

But at night, brother Howlet, far over the woods,

Toll the world to thy chantry;

Sing to the bats’ sleek sisterhoods

Full complines with gallantry:

Then, owls and bats, cowls and twats,

Monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods,

Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!

"Twat

Twat

The word twat has various functions. It is a vulgar synonym for the human vulva, but is more widely used as a derogatory epithet, especially in British English...

" both then and now is vulgar slang for a woman's external genitals. It has become a relatively mild epithet in parts of the UK, but vulgar elsewhere. When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

 enquired decades later where Browning had picked up the word, he directed them to a rhyme from 1660 that went thus: "They talk’t of his having a Cardinall’s Hat/They’d send him as soon an Old Nun’s Twat." Browning apparently missed the vulgar joke and took "twat" to mean part of a nun's habit, pairing it in his poem with a priest's cowl. The mistake was pointed out by H. W. Fay in 1888.

Theatrical productions and films

In 1899 the Boston Browning Society staged an adapted version by Helen Archibald Clarke (1860-1926).

An abridgment of Pippa Passes by Henry Miller

Henry Miller (actor)

Henry Miller was an English-born American actor, director, theatrical producer and manager.Born as John Pegge in London, Miller's parents immigrated to Canada where he started acting as a juvenile. He became the leading man in Charles Frohman's stock company in New York City's Empire Theatre in 1893...

 was premiered at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 on 12 November 1906. It inspired a silent film adaptation starring Gertrude Robinson

Gertrude Robinson

Gertrude Robinson was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 164 films between 1908 and 1925...

 (and including Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

 in a minor role) which was made in 1909. The film omitted the scenes involving Luigi and the Monsignor, and included a new episode involving a repentant drunkard. It was directed by D. W. Griffith

D. W. Griffith

David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...

 (with cinematography by Arthur Marvin

Arthur Marvin

Arthur Marvin , was an American cinematographer who worked for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in which his brother Henry Marvin was one of the four founders .He shot 418 films between 1897 and 1911, including The Adventures of Dollie , the...

), whose experiments with naturalistic lighting were deemed a great success; he later named it as his greatest film. An adaptation of A Blot in the 'Scutcheon was to follow in 1912, and another Griffith film, The Wanderer (1913) reproduces the theme of Pippa Passes with a flutist instead of a singer.

Pippa Passes was revived at the Neighborhood Playhouse

Neighborhood Playhouse

The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre is an actor training school at 340 East 54th Street in New York City, generally associated with the Meisner technique of Sanford Meisner.-History:...

 by Alice Lewisohn

Alice Lewisohn

Alice Lewisohn was the founder of the Neighborhood Playhouse with her sister Irene Lewisohn. Alice was also an actress.-Biography:...

 on 17 November 1918, and was a great success.

Other

A bronze sculpture of Pippa (1957) by Waldine Tauch

Waldine Tauch

Waldine Amanda Tauch, was an American sculptor born in Schulenburg, Texas to William and Elizabeth Heimann Tauch....

 stands in front of the Armstrong Browning Library

Armstrong Browning Library

The Armstrong Browning Library is located on the campus of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, USA and is the home of the largest collections of English poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Additionally it is thought to house the largest collection of secular stained glass in the...

 at Baylor University

Baylor University

Baylor University is a private, Christian university located in Waco, Texas. Founded in 1845, Baylor is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.-History:...

.

The town of Pippa Passes, Kentucky

Pippa Passes, Kentucky

In the census of 2000, there were 297 people, 48 households, and 30 families in the city. The population density was 557.3 per square mile . There were 50 housing units at an average density of 93.8 per square mile...

 is named for the poem.

A line in the book Brave New World

Brave New World

Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...

, of Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...

, Say´s "Ford's in his flivver,(...)All's well with the world.", refers to the poem.

In Connie Willis

Connie Willis

Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for Blackout/All Clear...

's Bellwether

Bellwether (novel)

Bellwether, a 1996 novel by Connie Willis, is a book that can fall into many genres, such as comedy, fairy tale, romance, and science fiction. The novel is broadly based on the unsettling concepts of human culture. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1997.- Plot introduction...

, explicit mention is made to Browning's work, and the plot of the book hinges on a character named Flip (short for Phillipa, i.e., Pippa) whose interference with everyone throws all the other characters together.

In the Neon Genesis Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion

, commonly referred to as Evangelion, is a commercially and critically successful Japanese anime series that began airing in October 1995. The series was highly influential, and launched the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise. It garnered several major animation awards...

 series franchise, the fictional organization NERV has the lines "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world" as part of its logo, to symbolize humanity's alienation from God.

In episode 18 of the anime Black Lagoon

Black Lagoon

is a manga series written and illustrated by Rei Hiroe, and published in Shogakukan's Sunday GX since 2002. An animated television series based on the manga aired in Japan from April 8, 2006, to June 24, 2006, totaling twelve episodes. A second season, subtitled "The Second Barrage", ran for twelve...

, the character of Eda quotes "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world".

In episode 12.5 of the anime Durarara!!

Durarara!!

, often romanized as DRRR!! in Japan, is a Japanese light novel series written by Ryohgo Narita, with illustrations by Suzuhito Yasuda, that has also been adapted in to a Japanese anime series. As of February 2011, nine volumes have been published by ASCII Media Works under their Dengeki Bunko...

, the narrator says, "And the story ends with a line from a poem: God's in his heaven, all's right with the world."

In episode 9 of the anime Kamisama Dolls

Kamisama Dolls

is a manga by Hajime Yamamura. An anime adaptation started airing on July 6, 2011.-Plot:Kyōhei, after moving away to Tokyo from his old village to get away from the events that happened, is on a group date with his friends, including his old neighbor, Hibino. After drinking for a whole night, he...

, the character Kōshirō Hyūga quotes the line, "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world."

If King of Fighters XIII players can beat the game using Ash Crimson

Ash Crimson

is a video game character in The King of Fighters fighting game series developed by SNK Playmore. His first appearance was in The King of Fighters 2003 as the leader of its Hero Team. Ash is a teenager participating in the series' titular fighting tournaments employing pyrokinetic powers as part of...

and dealing the final blow with Ash, then an ending featuring Browning's poem will ensue. This will also ensue if players beat the console story version of the game no matter what characters they use as well.