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
This is exactly what should be done in some cases. Who can declaim as a
speech or as if to an audience "John Anderson, my Jo," or "The Lover's
Appeal," and not feel the situation to be ludicrous?
Some of the tenderest lyric poems should be given as though to an
imaginary auditor somewhat to one side. As the lyric is subjective, the
turning to one side is a help to the subjective sympathetic condition,
especially in cases where the words of the lyric are supposed to be
addressed to some individual character. It is very difficult for readers
to speak to an audience directly and not pass into the oratoric attitude
of mind. A little turn to the side, when simple, suggests the indirect
nature of a poem. It gives power to change attention and suggests degrees
of subjectivity, and thus tends to prevent the true spirit of the poem
from being destroyed by oratorical or declamatory effects.
Perhaps Charles Lamb's famous saying, that recitation perverts a beautiful
poem, would have been qualified had some poem been read to him with full
recognition of its artistic character. The poem is not a speech, but a
work of art, and the speaker must be clearly conceived, his emotion
sympathetically realized, and given, not to an audience, but to an
imaginary listener; thus all the delicacy and tenderness may be truthfully
revealed and declamation and unnaturalness avoided.
In general, every kind of literature can be adequately rendered aloud. The
true spirit of those poems that have been considered unadapted to such
rendering can possibly be shown by the voice if we find the real
situation, and do not try to give the words the directness of an oration
or a lesson, or the objectivity of a play.
When a story or a poem can be made more natural and more effective by
being conceived as spoken by a character of a definite type to a definite
type of hearer, it should usually be regarded as a monologue. Readers who
picture not only the peculiar character speaking, but the person to whom
he speaks, will receive and give a more adequate impression, one more
dramatic, more simple, and far more expressive of character than those who
confuse it with a lyric or a story.
Dramatic art, in fact all art, is indirect, except in some forms of
speaking. The true orator or speaker, however, while having a direct
purpose, never directly commands or dominates his audience. Every true
artist, painter, musician, or even orator, simply awakens the faculties
and powers of others, and leads men to decide for themselves. The true
speaker should appeal to imagination and reason, and not attempt to force
men to accept his ideals and convictions. That would be domination, not
oratory. True art is on the rational basis of kinship of nature. Faculty
awakens faculty, vision quickens vision.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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