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A 'dramatic monologue' is a piece of spoken verse that offers great insight into the
feelings of the speaker.
Not to be confused with a soliloquy in a play (which the character speaking speaks to
themselves), dramatic monologues suggest an auditor or auditors. They were favored by
many poets in the Victorian period, in which a character in fiction or in history delivers a
speech explaining his or her feelings, actions, or motives.
The monologue is usually directed toward a silent audience, with the speaker's words
influenced by a critical situation. An example of a dramatic monologue exists in My Last
Duchess by Robert Browning, when a duke speaks to an emissary of his way,
In a general way, the dramatic tradition as a whole may have influenced the style of the
monologue. Indeed, the style of the dramatic monologue, which attempts to evoke an
entire story through representing part of it, may be called an endeavor to turn into poetry
many of the distinctive features of drama.
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3. The main principle controlling the poet's choice and formulation of what the lyric speaker
says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker's
temperament and character.[1]
Types of monologues
One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue are
the Romantic poets. The long, personal lyrics typical of the Romantic period are not
dramatic monologues, in the sense that they do not, for the most part, imply a
concentrated narrative. However, poems such as William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey
and Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mont Blanc, to name two famous examples, offered a model
of close psychological observation described in a specific setting.
The novel, and plays have also been important influences on the dramatic monologue,
particularly as a means of characterisation.
Dramatic monologues are a way of expressing the views of a character and offering
the audience greater insight into that character's feelings.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses, published in 1842, has been called the first true
dramatic monologue. After Ulysses, Tennyson's most famous efforts in this vein
are Tithonus, The Lotus Eaters, and St. Simon Stylites, all from the 1842 Poems;
later monologues appear in other volumes, notably Idylls of the King.
Robert Browning is usually credited with perfecting the form; certainly, Browning
is the poet who, above all, produced his finest and most famous work in this form.
While My Last Duchess is the most famous of his monologues, the form
dominated his writing career. Fra Lippo Lippi, Caliban upon Setebos, Soliloquy
of the Spanish Cloister and Porphyria's Lover, as well as the other poems in Men
and Women are just a handful of Browning's monologues.
Other Victorian poets also used the form. Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote several, including
Jenny and The Blessed Damozel; Christina Rossetti wrote a number, including The
Convent Threshold. Algernon Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine has been called a
dramatic monologue vaguely reminiscent of Browning's work.
One powerful example of the interplay between a dramatic monologue and the
perception of the audience is "Night, Death, Mississippi," by Robert Hayden. In the
poem, Hayden adopts the shocking persona of an aging Klan member, listening
longingly to the sounds of a lynching outside, but too feeble to join. He says to himself:
Christ, it was better
than hunting bear
which dont know why
you want him dead.
The effect of reading the casual violence of the poem is more devastating than any
commentary the poet could have provided. Hayden wrote many other dramatic
monologue poems, including several dramatizing African American historical figures
such as Phillis Wheatley and Nat Turner, as well as inventive characters such as the
alien voice reporting his observations in "American Journal."
Though not written in the first person, James Dickey's long poem "Falling" is inspired
by a true story, and offers the impossible narrative of a stewardess who is accidentally
blown from a plane and falls helplessly to the ground. The poem is voiced by an
omniscient speaker who seems to fly invisibly beside her, observing her calm descent,
her twists and tumbles, listening as she imagines herself as a goddess looking for water
to dive into, and then finally watching as she removes her clothes, unsnapping her bra
and sliding out of her girdle, before finally coming to rest in a Kansas field. Dickey
transforms this terrifying reality into sensual transcendence, as he writes: "Her last
superhuman act the last slow careful passing of her hands / All over her unharmed body
desired by every sleeper in his dream."