Soon after _Colombe's Birthday_ had been published, Browning sailed once more, in the autumn of 1844, for Italy.[26] As he journeyed northwards and homewards, from Naples (where they were performing an opera named _Sordello_) and Rome he sought and obtained at Leghorn an interview with Trelawny, the generous-hearted friend of Shelley, by whose grave he had lately stood.[27] Browning's work as a playwright, consisting of eight pieces, or nine if we include the later _In a Balcony_, is sufficiently ample to enable us to form a trustworthy estimate of his genius as seen in drama.

Dramatic, in the sense that he created and studied minds and hearts other than his own, he pre-eminently was; if he desired to set forth or to vindicate his most intimate ideas or impulses, he effected this indirectly, by detaching them from his own personality and giving them a brain and a heart other than his own in which to live and move and have their being.
There is a kind of dramatic art which we may term static, and another kind which we may term dynamic.

The former deals especially with characters in position, the latter with characters in movement.[28] Passion and thought may be exhibited and interpreted by dramatic genius of either type; to represent passion and thought and action--action incarnating and developing thought and passion--the dynamic power is required.

And by action we are to understand not merely a visible deed, but also a word, a feeling, an idea which has in it a direct operative force.

The dramatic genius of Browning was in the main of the static kind; it studies with extraordinary skill and subtlety character in position; it attains only an imperfect or a laboured success with character in movement.