Robert Browning's "The Laboratory: Ancien Regime" is remarkable if for nothing else than that it is a widely known poem about which almost nothing interpretive has been written. (1) Apparently "The Laboratory" yields its meaning without exegesis--the explicator's worst nightmare. Two writers, however, do recently offer brief interpretive commentary, which invites critical response. Stefan Hawlin sees the speaker of the poem as "a female poisoner striking a blow at the duplicitous civilities of the ancien regime" (78), and Sarah Wood claims that "the laboratory acts like a hidden pocket of inventive resistance" against the Ancien Regime in particular and "tradition in general" ...