Pippa Passes is a verse drama by Robert Browning. It was published in 1841 as the first volume of his Bells and Pomegranates series, in a low-priced two-column edition for sixpence and next republished in Poems in 1848, which received much more critical attention. It was dedicated to Thomas Noon Talfourd, 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, 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 described the moment of inspiration: This theme followed with great naturalness from Sordello, 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: Despite this, the most famous passage in the poem is charming in its innocence: although the timing of this song renders it deeply ironic.
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 chided Browning for failing to clarify: However, textual evidence points to a confirmation of his purpose, and Browning's republican sympathies may have leaned in that direction. Percy Bysshe Shelley had written verses in praise of Charlotte Corday, and a few lines in the poem "De Gustibus——" are suggestive: The play is a closet drama 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 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 novelWith Harp and Crown, Walter Besant mentioned the poem, singling out The hill-side's dew-pearled! and took the opportunity to deny Browning's future appeal:
"A distressing blunder"
Besides the oft-quoted line "God's in his Heaven/All's right with the world!" above, the poem contains an 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: "Twat" both then and now is vulgar slang for a woman's external genitals, but at the earlier time of the poem, many middle-class readers were not familiar with it, or if they were, did not mention it. It has become a relatively mild epithet in parts of the UK, but vulgar elsewhere. When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary 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.
Adaptations and influences
Theatrical productions and films
In 1899 the Boston Browning Society staged an adapted version by Helen Archibald Clarke. An abridgment of Pippa Passes by Henry Miller was premiered at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway on 12 November 1906. It inspired a silent film adaptation starring Gertrude Robinson 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, 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 reproduces the theme of Pippa Passes with a flutist instead of a singer. Pippa Passes was revived at the Neighborhood Playhouse by Alice Lewisohn on 17 November 1918, and was a great success. In the 1945 British melodrama, They Were Sisters, starring James Mason, the last line in the film is, "God's in His heaven—All's right with the world!"
Other
The town of Pippa Passes, Kentucky, is formally named after the poem thanks to a grant from the Browning Society. In Israeli playwright Nissim Aloni's play Napoleon – dead or alive!, there is a character named Pippa, who acts as the secretary of the VIP department in the afterworld. Aloni also refers to Browning in his play The American Princess. The lines "God's in his Heaven / All's right with the world" are mentioned in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, where they are used as the slogan of the secretive government organization NERV. It also appears in a blurred graffiti in the anime No Guns Life. A slightly altered form appears in Aldous Huxley'sBrave New World: "Ford’s in his flivver," murmured the D.H.C. "All’s well with the world."
