The Full Text of “The Laboratory”
Ancien Régime
1Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
2May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely,
3As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy—
4Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
5He is with her, and they know that I know
6Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
7While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
8Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.
9Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
10Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste!
11Better sit thus and observe thy strange things,
12Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.
13That in the mortar—you call it a gum?
14Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
15And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
16Sure to taste sweetly,—is that poison too?
17Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
18What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
19To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
20A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!
21Soon, at the King’s, a mere lozenge to give
22And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
23But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head
24And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!
25Quick—is it finished? The colour’s too grim!
26Why not soft like the phial’s, enticing and dim?
27Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
28And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!
29What a drop! She’s not little, no minion like me—
30That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free
31The soul from those masculine eyes,—say, “no!”
32To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go.
33For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
34My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
35Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,
36Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!
37Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
38Let death be felt and the proof remain;
39Brand, burn up, bite into its grace—
40He is sure to remember her dying face!
41Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose;
42It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
43The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee—
44If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?
45Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
46You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
47But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
48Ere I know it—next moment I dance at the King’s!
The Full Text of “The Laboratory”
Ancien Régime
1Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
2May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely,
3As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy—
4Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
5He is with her, and they know that I know
6Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
7While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
8Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.
9Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
10Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste!
11Better sit thus and observe thy strange things,
12Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.
13That in the mortar—you call it a gum?
14Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
15And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
16Sure to taste sweetly,—is that poison too?
17Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
18What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
19To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
20A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!
21Soon, at the King’s, a mere lozenge to give
22And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
23But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head
24And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!
25Quick—is it finished? The colour’s too grim!
26Why not soft like the phial’s, enticing and dim?
27Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
28And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!
29What a drop! She’s not little, no minion like me—
30That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free
31The soul from those masculine eyes,—say, “no!”
32To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go.
33For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
34My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
35Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,
36Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!
37Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
38Let death be felt and the proof remain;
39Brand, burn up, bite into its grace—
40He is sure to remember her dying face!
41Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose;
42It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
43The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee—
44If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?
45Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
46You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
47But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
48Ere I know it—next moment I dance at the King’s!
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“The Laboratory” Introduction
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"The Laboratory" is one of English poet Robert Browning's famous dramatic monologues—poems written in the voice of a particular character, as if they were speeches from a play. In this poem, a 17th-century French lady from the court of Louis XIV visits a chemist's laboratory with a dark purpose in mind: tormented by jealousy, she intends to poison her romantic rival. Her sadistic cheerfulness at the prospect suggests that jealousy is itself a poison, able to corrode a person's very soul. The poem was first published in Browning's important 1845 collection Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.
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“The Laboratory” Summary
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Now, as I help to tie your glass goggles on, I have a chance to peer through the pale billows of smoke while you work your dark arts in this demonic workshop—and I ask you, which of these poisons will be the one to kill her, if you please?
My lover is with her now, and they're both well aware that I know what they're up to; they think that I'm weeping, and laugh at me, believing I've run off to the gloomy church to pray. But no: I'm here instead.
So, apothecary, grind up your strange substances, wet them and stir them, pulverize your powders in a mortar; I'm in no hurry. I'd rather sit here and watch your mysterious doings than go where I'm expected: to a ball at the king's palace.
That there in your mortar—it's tree sap, you say? What a wonderful tree it must be, to produce such a valuable fluid! And that little vial over there, the one of that delicate shade of blue, which looks so good you could drink it up—that's also poison?
If only I had your skill and your supplies, what an awful lot of secret fun I'd have! It'd be such a thrill to carry deadly poison around hidden in an earring, a little box, a ring, the handle of a fan, a cute little basket of woven gold!
If I were an apothecary, I'd be at the palace—and I'd only have to give Pauline an innocent candy, and she'd be dead in half an hour! Or I could put a match to an unsuspicious little ball of incense, and Elise, who thinks she's so great with her beautiful profile and figure and hands, would be dead as dirt, too.
Hurry up—are you done? No, that poison looks too menacing! Why can't it look pretty and tempting, like the poison in that vial? I want the poison I use to make my enemy's drink look more appealing: I want it to tempt her to give it a try, picking it out of all the many drinks she could choose.
No, that's not nearly enough, what you're giving me! I need more: my enemy isn't a little thing like I am. That's how she caught my man's attention. The driblet you're giving me couldn't possibly wrench her soul out of her body (and out of my former lover's eyes); it could never stop her healthy heart.
And how do I know that? Because last night, I saw her myself as the two of them whispered together. I gave her the stinkeye so hard that I thought, if I could manage to stare at her for a mere thirty seconds straight, she'd shrivel up and die from the sheer force of my hatred. She didn't. But this should do the trick!
Of course, I don't want you to give her so much poison that she dies instantaneously! Let her suffer; let the marks of her agonizing death appear on her body. Let the poison mark her, burn her, spoil her loveliness; my man will remember the final look on her face then!
Is it done? Untie my goggles! Come now, don't look so glum: this will kill her, and neither of us will have to watch it happen right up close. For just this little drop of poison, I'm paying my entire fortune; but hey, anything that hurts her can only be good for me.
Now, apothecary: take all my jewelry. Glut yourself on my gold. You can kiss me, old man—on the lips, if you want. But brush the poisonous dust from my clothing, in case I get poisoned by mistake. And now, easy as that, off I go to dance at the king's palace!
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“The Laboratory” Themes
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The Terrible Power of Jealousy
“The Laboratory” tells a grim tale of jealousy’s danger and power. This dramatic monologue’s conniving speaker, a 17th-century French lady from the court of King Louis XIV, urges an apothecary (a sort of old-fashioned pharmacist) to hurry up and finish concocting a poison already; she can barely wait to go and use it on the woman who ran off with her lover. The speaker’s sadistic pleasure in the thought of her rival’s death suggests that romantic jealousy can drive a person to crazed acts of revenge—and destroy their own humanity in the process.
The speaker’s jealousy over her straying lover is so intense that it’s driven her right past heartbreak into insane fury. As she sits chatting with the apothecary she’s hired to mix up a poison, she seems to have no fear or doubt about the murder she’s plotting. Instead, she cheerfully watches the poison-maker at work, politely asking, “Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?” and relishing the “exquisite blue” of a chemical on the workbench. Her crazed, heartless pleasure suggests that her jealousy has turned her into a monster.
In fact, jealousy makes this speaker so monstrous that she doesn’t just want her rival to die: she wants her to die horribly. In her chatty instructions to the apothecary, she warns him to be sure that the poison will be strong enough to kill—but not so strong that her rival will drop dead without feeling any pain. “Let death be felt and the proof remain,” she commands, trying to make sure that her rival will suffer both pain and disfigurement: her enemy's body should be left “burn[t] up” and scarred, so that the speaker's treacherous lover will be “sure to remember” the horror of that “dying face.” Whatever humanity the speaker once had, the poem suggests, jealousy has burned it right out of her.
Not only has jealousy turned this speaker into a cruel murderer, it’s also consumed her whole life: she’s willing to give up everything just to see her rival die. It will cost the speaker her “whole fortune” to pay the apothecary—and that might be true in more ways than she knows. At the end of the poem, as the speaker gives the apothecary all her jewels (and a kiss) in exchange for the poison, she shakes the sacrifice off, asking: “If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?” There’s terrible irony in this rhetorical question. In truth, the speaker is irreversibly damaged, having lost not just her wealth, but her humanity.
Through its portrait of a crazed, sadistic murderess, the poem suggests that jealousy has terrible power. A person who surrenders to this emotion is in danger not just of doing dreadful harm to others, but of poisoning their own soul in the process.
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Sexism and Women's Oppression
“The Laboratory” paints a picture not just of a betrayed woman’s fury, but also of her limited options in a sexist world. The poem’s speaker, a lady in 17th-century France, is outraged that her lover has left her for another woman. As she plots her vengeance, her target (the other woman, not her unfaithful lover) and her payment to the poison-brewing apothecary (not just all her jewelry, but her body) suggest that a society in which women’s only power is in their sex appeal both dehumanizes women and turns them against each other.
In a sexist society, the poem observes, sexual attractiveness to men is one of the only kinds of power that women can wield. When the speaker goes to the apothecary to get a poison she can use against her romantic rival, she pays him not just with her “jewelry” (a kind of wealth which is itself meant to highlight her beauty), but with her body: she offers to let him to kiss her “on [her] mouth” once he’s brewed the poison, using her physical attractiveness as both a temptation and a payment. Women’s bodies, this moment suggests, become bargaining chips in a world that offers women no other kinds of power.
Not only does this situation leave women in an awful bind, the poem says, it also turns them against each other. Furious that her lover has abandoned her for another woman, the speaker doesn’t get angry at him. Instead, she theorizes that all this has come about because she’s simply not as beautiful as the other woman. She feels like a “minion” (that is, a puny, scrawny person) in comparison to her elegant, full-figured rival (who, she notes, is “not little”). It’s this difference in their physiques that she blames for her lover’s betrayal: “that’s how she ensnared him,” she hisses. It’s no accident, then, that she asks for a poison that won’t just kill her rival, but vengefully “bite into” and ruin her beauty, disfiguring her as she dies.
And the speaker’s hatred of other women’s beauty doesn’t stop at women who’ve done her direct harm! The speaker also fantasizes about how easy it would be to poison “Pauline” and “Elise,” fellow courtiers who’ve done her no apparent injury beyond having a nice “head” or a shapely “arm.” If beauty is one’s only currency, the poem suggests, it’s easy to turn against people who seem to have more beauty-wealth, rather than against the men who hold the real power.
While this poem might at first appear to be a mere cautionary tale about the danger of jealousy (and especially women’s jealousy!), it’s thus also a reflection on some of the many ways a sexist world injures women’s minds and hearts.
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The Power and Danger of Scientific Knowledge
Scientific inquiry and knowledge, “The Laboratory” suggests, can become dangerous weapons in the hands of weak, flawed human beings. As the poem’s jealousy-crazed speaker watches an apothecary brewing up a poison to kill her rival, her questions about the complicated process make it clear that this guy is a real pro, a person with a vast knowledge of chemistry. But the fact that he’s willing to use his skills to help commit a murder suggests that the value of scientific knowledge depends on who’s wielding it—and that human weakness can turn reason into madness.
With his workbench full of mysterious “powder[s]” and “paste[s],” his “phial[s]” (or vials) of dangerous chemicals, and his expert knowledge of which trees drip poisonous “gum,” the apothecary the speaker visits is obviously a skilled chemist. Even the fact that the poem takes place in a “laboratory”—a place dedicated to scientific exploration—suggests that this apothecary is a serious scholar, a person who has dedicated much of his life to figuring out how the world works.
But all this intellectual knowledge, the poem suggests, can easily become a tool for evil in the wrong hands; being smart isn’t the same as being wise or good! This apothecary clearly knows he’s doing something wrong: the “morose” look the speaker observes on his face as he finishes brewing the poison makes that much clear. But his conscience is easily overcome by the temptations of wealth and sex. Offered all the speaker’s “jewels” and a kiss from her youthful lips, this “old man” of science allows all his skill to be used for murderous, malicious purposes. His human failings transform all his learning into literal and figurative poison.
Intellectual brilliance and scientific learning, the poem thus suggests, are very different things from wisdom or goodness. Human weakness, greed, and selfishness can easily turn powerful knowledge into a force of evil.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Laboratory”
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Lines 1-4
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?"The Laboratory" begins with some scene-setting imagery and a moment of pitch-black humor. The poem's speaker, a lady from the court of the 17th-century French king Louis XIV, puts on a protective "glass mask" as she sits in an apothecary's laboratory—that is, a kind of old-fashioned chemistry lab. As she does so, she glances around the room, peering through the "faint smokes" that "curl[] whitely" up from the apothecary's mysterious simmering kettles, and has one question for him:
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
This, then, is a lady with murder on her mind. Over the course of this dramatic monologue, readers will learn exactly what has driven this speaker to plot an act of crazed violence.
In these first lines, though, the poem keeps things mysterious. Readers new to the poem won't know anything much about the speaker as she begins this speech: there's much more detail about the setting than the characters in this first stanza.
But that setting is revealing in its own right—and so is the speaker's voice. The speaker sees the apothecary's lab as a kind of "devil's-smithy": that is, a workshop from Hell itself, a place for manufacturing sinister tools. But that doesn't seem to disturb her; in fact, it only piques her interest. Listen to the sounds and language of lines 3-4 again:
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy—
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?Those popping alliterative /p/ sounds feel rather prim—especially alongside the speaker's dainty little "prithee" (an old-fashioned, polite tag for a question, rather like "if you please"). For that matter, rhyming the grim "devil's-smithy" with the mannerly "prithee" sets up a darkly funny contrast between nefarious deeds and civilized language.
The poem's form similarly compresses madness into an orderly shape. The poem's regular quatrains (or four-line stanzas) are broken into neat little rhymed couplets. And the meter sticks to tetrameter (that is, four strong stresses per line), like this:
Which is the | poison to | poison her, | prithee?
But there's madness in this order. This line, like much of the poem, is written mostly in dactyls, metrical feet with a DUM-da-da rhythm (though the last foot here is a trochee, with a DUM-da rhythm). That means a whole lot of syllables get compressed into one four-beat line!
All these formal choices mean that the quick-talking speaker sounds at once controlled and manic, refined and crazed.
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Lines 5-8
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. -
Lines 9-12
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. -
Lines 13-16
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? -
Lines 17-20
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! -
Lines 21-24
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! -
Lines 25-28
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! -
Lines 29-32
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. -
Lines 33-36
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! -
Lines 37-40
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! -
Lines 41-44
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? -
Lines 45-48
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!
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“The Laboratory” Symbols
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Poison
The poem's poison symbolizes the corrosive power of jealousy.
When the speaker decides she's going to do away with her romantic rival, she doesn't seem to suspect that this murder will cost her more than her "fortune." The poison she demands—which, she specifies, should cause agonizing pain and disfigurement before it kills—sounds a lot like her own poisonous jealousy, which is so strong it makes her into a murderer! Her thirst for vengeance ironically poisons her, mutilating not her body, but her soul.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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“The Laboratory” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
The poem's imagery paints a picture of sinister, deceptive beauty.
In the first stanza, the speaker's description of the laboratory sounds like something from an old engraving (or a black-and-white horror movie, ahead of its time):
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely,Those "faint smokes" suggest a room full of mysteriously steaming kettles and beakers; the apothecary's workshop already feels secretive, half-hidden in white mists. The image of the speaker herself putting the apothecary's "glass mask" on similarly hints at secrecy and danger. Behind that mask, she herself sounds rather like vial of poison.
As the speaker peers through the smoke, she's able to observe a number of the laboratory's dangerous beauties. When she delights in a "soft phial" (or gentle-looking vial) of an "exquisite blue" color, readers might reflect that this poison is in some sense rather like the person describing it: a pretty, harmless-looking little thing with the power to kill. (And the phial's delicacy might reflect the speaker in more ways than one. She describes herself as a "minion"—a puny little figure—as compared to her big, curvaceous rival.)
Later on, the speaker objects to the poison the apothecary has cooked up for her, complaining that "the colour's too grim" and unappealing as compared to that cute little phial's; she knows better than anyone the importance of concealing murderous intentions behind a sweet face!
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Allusion
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Parallelism
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Irony
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Caesura
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Assonance
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Alliteration
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"The Laboratory" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Thy, Thou, Thee
- Thro'
- As thou pliest thy trade
- Devil's-smithy
- Prithee
- Drear
- The King's
- Mortar
- Gum
- The brave tree whence such gold oozings come
- Yonder soft phial
- A casket, a signet, a fan-mount, a filigree-basket
- Lozenge
- Pastile
- Ere she fix and prefer
- Minion
- Ensnared
- Brand
- Nay, be not morose
- Gorge
- Lest
- Ere
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These are all old-fashioned ways of saying "you" (thou, thee) or "yours" (thy). While they sound fancy to a modern ear, "thee" and "thy" are actually informal and familiar, like "tu" in Spanish and French; perhaps the speaker is being a little bit condescending to the apothecary!
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Laboratory”
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Form
"The Laboratory" is a dramatic monologue—a poem spoken in the voice of a particular character, like a speech in a play. This was Robert Browning's signature form, and he often used it to explore the darker corners of the human psyche. This poem's speaker, a vengeful noblewoman driven mad by jealousy, has plenty of villainous company.
The speaker lays out her murderous plans in twelve four-line stanzas (or quatrains), with an insistent couplet rhyme scheme and a galloping, energetic meter. The poem's orderly, formal shape reflects the speaker's personality. Her own outer refinement—for instance, all the polite questions she asks the apothecary who's mixing up a poison for her—barely conceals a mind swept away by fantasies of vengeance, violence, and power.
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Meter
"The Laboratory" uses an urgent but unpredictable meter. While there are always four strong stresses per line—meaning the poem is written in tetrameter—those stresses turn up in all sorts of different rhythms, making the speaker's voice sound rather shifty and slippery.
The dominant meter here, though, is dactylic. A dactyl is a metrical foot with a rumbling DUM-da-da rhythm. Here's an example from the first stanza:
Which is the | poison to | poison her, | prithee?
The first three feet here are dactyls; the last is a trochee, a foot with a DUM-da rhythm (often used to end dactylic lines). All these front-loaded stresses and scurrying unstressed syllables make the speaker sound insistent, pressured, and more than a little crazed.
Sometimes, though, this up-front pattern reverses. Listen to what happens in lines 23-24, for instance:
But to light | a pastile, | and Elise, | with her head
And her breast | and her arms | and her hands, | should drop dead!For the most part, these lines use steady, driven anapests—the opposite foot to a dactyl, with a da-da-DUM rhythm. That makes a lot of sense:
- Here, the speaker has turned from questioning the apothecary to enjoying a private fantasy about how easily she could murder every lady in sight if only she were a master of poisons.
- By moving these lines' stresses to the backs of the feet, the poem makes the speaker's mutterings sound more inward; she's withdrawing into her own murderous imagination for a moment.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Laboratory" is written in rhymed couplets. That means that each of its four-line stanzas uses this rhyme scheme:
AABB
This pattern gives the speaker's voice a manic edge: all those rhymes following close on each other's heels suggest her single-minded commitment to murderous vengeance.
But there's also something darkly funny about using such a simple, singsong rhyme scheme to tell this grim tale. Waiting for the next rhyme to fall can feel like waiting for the punchline of a joke. Listen to lines 3-4 again, for instance:
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy—
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?Matching the ominous picture of a "devil's-smithy" (that is, a hellish workshop) with the polite, formal "prithee," this rhyme sets up a comical moment of shock: this dainty, genteel speaker is not the first person one would suspect of murder!
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“The Laboratory” Speaker
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This poem's speaker is a 17th-century French courtier—a lady in the court of Louis XIV, the long-reigning monarch often known as the Sun King. Mad with jealousy after her lover leaves her for another woman, the speaker is persuaded that only murderous vengeance can relieve her pain.
Like many of the speakers in Browning's dramatic monologues, this lady reveals a lot more about herself than she might intend to. She's so obsessed with getting her revenge that she can't see the ways her jealousy is destroying her; by the end of the poem, readers get the sense that her soul has become as twisted and disfigured as she hopes her rival's body will be.
The poem's portrait of this crazed noblewoman is as grotesquely funny as it is chilling. The speaker's power-hungry dreams of carrying "death" in an "earring," a "fan-mount," or a dainty "filigree basket" and her droll, polite questions for the apothecary who mixes her poison paint an incongruous picture of a refined lady in pink silk with nothing but murder on her mind.
Some critics speculate that the speaker might be based on one notorious killer in particular: Madame de Brinvilliers, a French noblewoman who vengefully poisoned several of her own family members.
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“The Laboratory” Setting
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This poem is set during the Ancien Régime—that is, in France, sometime in the era before the French Revolution toppled the country's monarchy in 1789. The poem's "King" is likely to be Louis XIV, a 17th-century monarch known as the Sun King for the sheer splendor of his long reign. Louis's glittering court was notorious for treachery (and for poisonings in particular).
Readers can thus imagine the poem's vengeful speaker in a rich, gilded, status-obsessed world, in which pretty ladies decked out in delicate "earring[s]," "fan[s]," and "filigree baskets" secretly plot each other's downfall. In such a world, romantic betrayal might not be just a matter of broken hearts, but of broken alliances: the right marriage could carry a person a long way in the time of the Sun King!
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Laboratory”
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Literary Context
The English poet Robert Browning (1812-1889) was most famous in his time for not sounding much like a poet. His contemporaries were confused by his most distinctive works: dramatic monologues like this one, in which Browning inhabited a character like an actor playing a part. Even Oscar Wilde, a big Browning fan, famously said that "[George] Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning." The Victorian literary world was much more at ease with the melancholy lyricism of Tennyson or the elegance of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Browning's wife, and the much more famous member of the couple at the time) than with the novelistic storytelling of Browning's work.
But it's on his earthy, vibrant dramatic monologues that Browning's continued reputation rests. His most famous poems are a veritable gallery of stinkers, from this poem's nefarious poisoner to murderous Italian dukes to equally murderous lovers. By letting these hideous figures speak for themselves, Browning explored the darkest corners of human nature—and took a particular interest in the ways that people justify their terrible deeds. Villains, Browning's monologues warn, don't tend to think that they're villains.
Browning's poetry wasn't all theatrical murder and greed, though; he also wrote tenderly about humility and heroism, homesickness, and heartbreak.
"The Laboratory" first appeared in Browning's important 1845 collection Dramatic Romances and Lyrics—a collection that would deeply influence 20th-century Modernist poets like Ezra Pound. And Browning still moves readers to this day: his life and work inspired contemporary writer A.S. Byatt to write her acclaimed novel Possession.
Historical Context
This poem is likely set in the late 1600s during the reign of Louis XIV of France, a long-lived ruler also known as the Sun King; the poem's speaker is a lady of his court. Louis was known for his self-indulgence, his love of beauty, and his belief in his divine right to absolute power. Perhaps the most famous legacy of his kingship is Versailles, a vast and magnificent palace that he built to show off French wealth and style. It still astonishes visitors today.
Louis's reign might have produced astonishing architecture, but it also planted the seeds of the French monarchy's undoing. Louis's autocratic rule and lack of concern for his struggling citizens helped to set off the chain of events that would lead to the 1789 French Revolution, during which the monarchy would be ousted and Louis XIV's great-grandson Louis XVI would be publicly beheaded. (The French Republic quickly became rather tyrannical itself, alas, but that's another story.)
The duplicitous, murderous speaker of this poem is a fitting representative for this era: her commitment to getting ahead at whatever cost makes her a woman of her time and place.
The Victorian Robert Browning, writing some 200 years after Louis XIV's reign, was nevertheless no stranger to this time period. He often set his dramatic monologues in the 16th and 17th centuries, exploring the political uproar and dastardly deeds of the Renaissance and early Enlightenment periods.
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More “The Laboratory” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a dramatic reading of the poem.
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Browing at the Victorian Web — Find a wealth of resources on Browning's life and work at the Victorian Web research site.
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A Brief Biography — Learn about Browning's life and times via the Poetry Foundation.
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The Poem Illustrated — See Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painted interpretation of the poem.
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The Poem's Inspiration — Learn about the Marquise de Brinvilliers, one of the real-life poisoners upon whom this poem was based.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Browning
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