This slight thing is spun out into five acts by Browning's metaphysics of love and friendship.

There is but little action, or pressure of the characters into one another.

The intriguing courtiers are dull, and their talk is not knit together.

The only thing alive in them is their universal meanness.

That meanness, it is true, enhances the magnanimity of Valence and Berthold, but its dead level in so many commonplace persons lowers the dramatic interest of the piece.