The monologue, as Browning has exemplified it, is one end of a conversation. A definite speaker is conceived in a definite, dramatic situation. Usually we find also a well-defined listener, though his character is understood entirely from the impression he produces upon the speaker. We feel that this listener has said something and that his presence and character influence the speaker's thought, words, and manner. The conversation does not consist of abstract remarks, but takes place in a definite situation as a part of human life. We must realize the situation, the speaker, the hearer, before the meaning can become clear; and it is the failure to do this which has caused many to find Browning obscure. For example, observe Browning's "Confessions." CONFESSIONS What is he buzzing in my ears? "Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?" Ah, reverend sir, not I! What I viewed there once, what I view again Where the physic bottles stand On the table's edge,--is a suburb lane, With a wall to my bedside hand. That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue Or green to a healthy eye? To mine, it serves for the old June weather Blue above lane and wall; And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether" Is the house o'er-topping all. At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper, There watched for me, one June, A girl: I know, sir, it's improper, My poor mind's out of tune. Only, there was a way ... you crept Close by the side, to dodge Eyes in the house, two eyes except: They styled their house "The Lodge." What right had a lounger up their lane? But, by creeping very close, With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to Oes, Yet never catch her and me together, As she left the attic, there, By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether," And stole from stair to stair, And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, We loved, sir--used to meet: How sad and bad and mad it was-- But then, how it was sweet! Here, evidently, the speaker, who has "come to die," has been aroused by some "reverend sir," who has been expostulating with him and uttering conventional phrases about the vanity of human life. Such superficial pessimism awakens protest, and the dying man remonstrates in the words of the poem. The speaker is apparently in bed and hardly believes himself fully possessed of his senses. He even asks if the curtain is "green or blue to a healthy eye," as if he feared to trust his judgment, lest it be perverted by disease. An abrupt beginning is very characteristic of a monologue, and when given properly, the first words arrest attention and suggest the situation.