Browning was a student of history, but it was individuals and not society that interested him.

The affairs of England and the affairs of Sardinia serve to throw out the figures of the chief _dramatis persons_; those affairs are not considered for their own sake.
Certain social conditions are studied as they enter into and help to form an individual.

The Bishop who orders his tomb at St Praxed's is in part a product of the Italian Renaissance, but the causes are seen only in their effects upon the character of a representative person.

If the plain, substantial style of _King Victor and King Charles_ is proper to a play with such a hero as Charles and such a heroine as Polyxena, the coloured style, rich in imagery, is no less right in _The Return of the Druses_, where religious and chivalric enthusiasm are blended with the enthusiasm of the passion of love.

But already Browning was ceasing to bear in mind the conditions of the stage.