The Laboratory

1844 poem by Robert Browning

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The Laboratory (1895), painting by John Collier, inspired by Browning's poem

"The Laboratory" is a poem and dramatic monologue by Robert Browning. The poem was first published in June 1844 in Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany, and later Dramatic Romances and Lyrics in 1845.

This poem, set in seventeenth-century France, is the monologue of a woman speaking to an apothecary as he prepares a poison, which she intends to use to kill her rivals in love. It was inspired by the life of Marie Madeleine Marguerite d'Aubray, marquise de Brinvilliers (1630–1676), who poisoned her father and two brothers and planned to poison her husband, matching the narrator's actions in "The Laboratory".[1]

## Text[edit]

> Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
>  May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely,
>  As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy—
>  Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

>  He is with her, and they know that I know
>  Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
>  While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
>  Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.

>  Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
>  Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste!
>  Better sit thus and observe thy strange things,
>  Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's.

>  That in the mortar—you call it a gum?
>  Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
>  And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
>  Sure to taste sweetly,—is that poison too?

>  Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
>  What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
>  To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
>  A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!

>  Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give
>  And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
>  But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head
>  And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

>  Quick—is it finished? The colour's too grim!
>  Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?
>  Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
>  And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

>  What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me—
>  That's why she ensnared him: this never will free
>  The soul from those masculine eyes,—say, "no!"
>  To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.

>  For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
>  My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
>  Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,
>  Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

>  Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
>  Let death be felt and the proof remain;
>  Brand, burn up, bite into its grace—
>  He is sure to remember her dying face!

>  Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose;
>  It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
>  The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee—
>  If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

>  Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
>  You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
>  But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
>  Ere I know it—next moment I dance at the King's!

## References[edit]

1. ^ English and English Literature Anthology for AQAA

## External links[edit]

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Laboratory

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Robert Browning

Plays|

* Strafford (1837)
* Pippa Passes (1841)
* King Victor and King Charles (1842)
* The Return of the Druses (1843)
* A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (1843)
* Colombe's Birthday (1844)
* Luria (1846)
* A Soul's Tragedy (1846)
* In a Balcony (1855)

Poetry collections
and poems|

* Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833)
* Paracelsus (1835)
* "Porphyria's Lover" (1836)
* "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" (1836)
* Sordello (1840)
* Dramatic Lyrics (1842, "My Last Duchess", "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister", "Count Gismond")
* Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845, "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad", "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix", "Meeting at Night", "The Laboratory", "The Lost Leader")
* Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850)
* Men and Women (1855, "Love Among the Ruins", "Evelyn Hope", "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", "Andrea del Sarto", "Fra Lippo Lippi", "A Toccata of Galuppi's")
* Dramatis Personæ (1864, "Rabbi ben Ezra", "Caliban upon Setebos")
* The Ring and the Book (1868–9)
* Balaustion's Adventure (1871)
* Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society (1871)
* Fifine at the Fair (1872)
* Red Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873)
* Aristophanes' Apology (1875)
* The Inn Album (1875)
* Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper (1876)
* The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1877)
* La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic (1878)
* Dramatic Idyls (1879, 1880)
* Jocoseria (1883)
* Ferishtah's Fancies (1884)
* Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887)
* Asolando (1889)

Related|

* Browning Society
* Armstrong Browning Library, collections and papers
* Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1853 sculpture)
* The Barretts of Wimpole Street
* 1934 film
* 1957 film
* Pied Piper of Hamelin

Family life|

* Elizabeth Barrett Browning (wife)
* Robert Barrett Browning (son)
* Casa Guidi

* v
* t
* e

AQA Anthology (2004)

Poems from
Other Cultures|

| Cluster 1|

* "Limbo" by Edward Kamau Brathwaite
* "Nothing's Changed" by Tatamkhulu Afrika
* "Island Man" by Grace Nichols
* "Blessing" by Imtiaz Dharker
* "Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
* "Night of the Scorpion" by Nissim Ezekiel
* "Vultures" by Chinua Achebe
* "What Were They Like?" by Denise Levertov

|

Cluster 2|

* "Search for My Tongue" by Sujata Bhatt
* "Unrelated Incidents" by Tom Leonard
* "Half Caste" by John Agard
* "Love After Love" by Derek Walcott
* "This Room" by Imtiaz Dharker
* "Not My Business" by Niyi Osundare
* "Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan" by Moniza Alvi
* "Hurricane Hits England" by Grace Nichols

Seamus Heaney|

* "Storm on the Island"
* "Perch"
* "Blackberry-Pickin"
* "Death of a Naturalist"
* "Digging"
* "Mid-Term Break"
* "Follower"
* "At a Potato Digging"

Gillian Clarke|

* "Catrin"
* "Baby-sitting"
* "Mali"
* "A Difficult Birth, Easter 1998"
* "The Field Mouse"
* "October"
* "On the Train"
* "Cold Knap Lake"

Carol Ann Duffy|

* "Havisham"
* "Elvis's Twin Sister"
* "Anne Hathaway"
* "Salome"
* "We Remember Your Childhood Well"
* "Before You Were Mine"
* "Education for Leisure"
* "Stealing"

Simon Armitage|

* "Mother, any distance greater than a single span"
* "My father thought it..."
* "Homecoming"
* "November"
* "Kid"
* "Those bastards in their mansions"
* "I've made out a will; I'm leaving myself"
* "Hitcher"

Pre-1914|

* "On My First Sonne" by Ben Jonson
* "Song of the Old Mother" by William Butler Yeats
* "The Affliction of Margaret" by William Wordsworth
* "The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found" by William Blake
* "Tichborne's Elegy" by Charles Tichborne
* "The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy
* "Patrolling Barnegat" by Walt Whitman
* "Sonnet CXXX" by William Shakespeare
* "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning
* "The Laboratory" by Robert Browning
* "Ulysses" by Alfred Tennyson
* "The Village Schoolmaster" by Oliver Goldsmith
* "The Eagle" by Alfred Tennyson
* "Sonnet" by John Clare

Prose|

* "Flight" by Doris Lessing
* "Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit" by Sylvia Plath
* "Your Shoes" by Michèle Roberts
* "Growing Up" by Joyce Cary
* "The End of Something" by Ernest Hemingway
* "Chemistry" by Graham Swift
* "Snowdrops" by Leslie Norris

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