Browning and the Dramatic MonologueCurry, S. S. (Samuel Silas)
History
Browning and the Dramatic Monologue
Curry, S. S. (Samuel Silas)
Browning, Robert, 1812-1889 -- Criticism and interpretation; Dramatic monologues -- History and criticism
In Browning's "Clive," the speaker, who "is by no means a Clive,"
according to Professor Dowden, "has to betray something of his own
character and at the same time to set forth the character of the hero of
his tale." Here, of course, both speaker and listener are subordinated to
Clive, the person spoken of. Hence some may be tempted to think that
"Clive" is a mere story. Dowden, Chesterton, and others speak of it as a
story, but it has the movement, the dramatic action, the unity and spirit
of a monologue. The fact that the chief character is the one about whom
the speaker talks makes the poem none the less dramatic. The more "Clive"
is studied, the more will the student feel that its chief theme is the
contact and conflict of characters, and the more, too, will he perceive
that its atmosphere and peculiarities are caused by the sense of a speaker
and a listener, each of a distinct type.
This indirect narration or suggestion is often important, but in every
case it is the speaker who reflects as from a mirror impressions produced
upon him by the characters of those about whom he speaks.
The study of the relations of speaker and hearer requires discrimination
to be made between the soliloquy and the monologue.
Shakespeare's soliloquies may be thought to be unnatural. No man ever
talked to his fellows as Hamlet talks when alone, and Juliet at the window
is made to reveal her deepest feelings. But all love songs express what
the words of the ordinary man can never reveal. All art, and especially
all literature, is a kind of objective embodiment of feeling or the
processes of thinking. While Shakespeare's soliloquies may not seem as
natural as conversation, in one sense they are more natural expressions of
thinking and feeling. The highest poetry may be as natural as prose, or
even more natural; all depends upon the mood or theme. In all art and
literature, naturalness is due not to mere external accidents, but to the
truthfulness of the expression of deeper emotions of the human heart.
Many feel that any representation in words of a mood or feeling is a
lyric; hence they regard most monologues as lyrics. But are not
Shakespeare's soliloquies dramatic? The lyric spirit gives objective form
to feeling, but dramatic poetry does this in a way to show character and
motives as well as moods.
To a certain extent, the lyric spirit and the dramatic can never be
completely separated. There has never been a good play that was not lyric
as well as dramatic. There has never been a true lyric poem that has not
revealed some trait of human character and implied certain relations of
human beings to each other. It is only the predominance of feeling and
mood that makes a poem lyric, or the predominance of relations or
conflicts of human beings that makes a passage dramatic. All the elements
of poetry are inseparably united because they express living aspects of
the human heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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