Elements of
dramatic monologue in Robert Browning’s poetry
An English
poet and playwright, Robert Browning’s (1812-1889) poetic form- the dramatic
monologue- dominated most of his career. His monologues made him rise among the
Victorian poets and his reputation as a poet rests with the same. A dramatic monologue
is the speech of a character encapsulating a scene thereby giving an insight into
the character. Some of his most famous monologues are: The Bishop’s Orders His
Tomb at St. Praxed Church, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, The Ring and the
Book and My Last Duchess. The monologue tradition doesn’t start with
Browning, but it goes back to the Old English period with examples such as The
Wanderer and The Seafarer. In this essay, we will bring out the
elements of dramatic monologue in three of his poems.
Browning’s monologues are distinct
in bringing out the effect it has on the readers. The dramatization of the
scene as well as the characterization is done with such subtlety that it
reveals a lot about the speaker than the subject under discussion. For example,
in My Last Duchess, Duke Alfonso of Ferrara in discussing his wife, inadvertently
reveals his cruelty and apathy towards the Duchess. Displeased with the
Duchess, he says: “She had a heart- how shall I say? - too soon made glad…” The
auditor, the Envoy, remains silent throughout the discourse. The reader, while
reading the frequently anthologized poem in Iambic pentameter is left to assess
the narrator similar to the novels where the points of view are often
experimented to hint at the reliability of the narrator. The poem was first
seen in his 1842 collection Dramatic Lyrics.
The Ring and the Book, a verse novel of 21,000 lines comprises twelve books. The long narrative poem
tells the story of a murder where Count Guido is found guilty of murdering his
wife Pompilia and her parents. Ten of the books are dramatic monologues where Count
Guido speaks twice revealing a different account of the murder. The rest two-
the first and the last are spoken by Browning.
The real account of a
fifteenth-century painter in flesh and blood is portrayed in Fra Lippo Lippi.
The monologue first appeared in the 1855 collection Men and Women. Written in blank
verse, unrhymed Iambic pentameter, the poem addresses the question of whether art
should imitate life or paint the flawless, perfect image of life bordering on
unrealistic. A sub-theme that runs into the poem is how much the Church
should have a say in the depiction of art as Lippi has to redo much of his art
often accused of painting the flesh rather than the soul: “Paint the Soul,
never mind the legs and arms!”
A soliloquy differs from a dramatic monologue where the speaker is revealing his thoughts aloud and alone. It’s not meant to be heard, for example, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To Be or Not to Be.” Dramatic Monologue bloomed in the Victorian period. Perhaps, the philosophical inquiries offering a psychological insight in Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey set a precedent for later works to build upon this poetic form.