Browning and the Dramatic Monologue

by S. S. Curry

I have chosen this illustration purposely, because, of all monologues, this lays possibly the least emphasis on a listener; yet it cannot be adequately rendered by the voice, or even properly conceived in thought, without a distinct realization of such a person.

In Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” the speaker is an old man. “Grow old along with me!” indicates this, and we feel his age and experience all through the poem. But without the presence of this youth, who must have expressed pity for the loneliness and gloom of age, the old man would never have broken forth so suddenly and so forcibly in the portrayal of his noble philosophy of life. He expands with joy, love for his race, and reverence for Providence. “Grow old along with me!” “Trust God: see all, nor be afraid!” His enthusiasm, his exalted realization of life, are due to his own nobility of character. But his earnestness, his vivid illustrations, his emphasis and action, spring from his efforts to expound the philosophy of life to his youthful listener and to correct the young man’s one-sided views. The characters of both speaker and listener are necessary in order that one may receive an understanding of the argument.

RABBI BEN EZRA

Grow old along with me! the best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand who saith, “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”
Not that, amassing flowers, youth sighed, “Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall!”
Not that, admiring stars, it yearned, “Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!”
Not for such hopes and fears, annulling youth’s brief years,
Do I remonstrate; folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed, were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then as sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?
Rejoice we are allied to That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod; nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.
Then, welcome each rebuff that turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three parts pain! strive and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
For thence—a paradox which comforts while it mocks—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me;
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.

What is he but a brute whose flesh hath soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test—thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
Yet gifts should prove their use: I own the past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole, brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once “How good to live and learn”?
Not once beat “Praise be thine! I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
Perfect I call Thy plan: thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what Thou shalt do!”
For pleasant is this flesh: our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:
Would we some prize might hold to match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!
Let us not always say, “Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!”
As the bird wings and sings, let us cry, “All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!”
Therefore I summon age to grant youth’s heritage,
Life’s struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved a man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.
And I shall thereupon take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new;
Fearless and unperplexed, when I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to indue.
Youth ended, I shall try my gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same, give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
For note, when evening shuts, a certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
A whisper from the west shoots, “Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day.”

So, still within this life, though lifted o’er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
“This rage was right i’ the main, that acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past.”
For more is not reserved to man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day;
Here, work enough to watch the Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool’s true play.
As it was better, youth should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made;
So, better, age, exempt from strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid!
Enough now, if the Right and Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute, subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
Be there, for once and all, severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I the world arraigned, were they my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?
Not on the vulgar mass called “work” must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O’er which, from level stand, the low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
But all, the world’s coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature, all purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount;
Thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be, all men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter’s wheel, that metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound, when the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!”
Fool! All that is at all lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee, that was, is, and shall be:
Time’s wheel runs back or stops; potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee mid this dance of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest
Machinery just meant to give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
What though the earlier grooves which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim, skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
Look thou not down but up! to uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal,
The new wine’s foaming flow, the Master’s lips a-glow!
Thou, Heaven’s consummate cup, what needst thou with earth’s wheel?
But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I—to the wheel of life, with shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst;
So take and use Thy work, amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand! perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Even when the words are the same, the delivery changes according to the peculiarities of the hearer. No one tells a story in the same way to different persons. When it is narrated to a little child, greater emphasis is placed on points; we make longer pauses and more salient, definite pictures; but if it is told to an educated man, the thought is sketched more in outline. To one who is ignorant of the circumstances many details are carefully suggested. Even the figures and illustrations are consciously or unconsciously so chosen by one with the dramatic instinct as to adapt the truth to the listener.

In “The Englishman in Italy,” the story is told to a child. After the quotation, “such trifles,” the Englishman speaking would no doubt laugh. The spirit of the poem is shown by the fact that it is spoken by an Englishman to a little child that is an Italian.

A monologue shows the effect of character upon character, and hence nearly always implies the direct speaking of one person to another. In this it differs from a speech. Still, the principle applies even to the speaker. He cannot present a subject in the same way to an educated and to an uneducated audience, but instinctively chooses words common to him and to his hearers and finds such illustrations as make his meaning obvious to them. All language is imperfect. Truth is not made clear by being made superficial, but by the careful choosing of words and illustrations understood by the hearer. The speaker, accordingly, must feel his audience. The imperfection of ordinary teaching and speaking is thus explained by a form of dramatic art. Browning says at the close of “The Ring and the Book”:

“Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.
How look a brother in the face and say
‘Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind,
Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length,
And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith!’
Say this as silvery as tongue can troll—
The anger of the man may be endured,
The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him
Are not so bad to bear—but here’s the plague,
That all this trouble comes of telling truth,
Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false,
Seems to be just the thing it would supplant,
Nor recognizable by whom it left;
While falsehood would have done the work of truth.
But Art,—wherein man nowise speaks to men,
Only to mankind,—Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.”

In “A Woman’s Last Word,” already explained (p. [6]), the listening husband, his attitude towards his wife, his jealousy and suspicion, all serve to call forth her love and nobility of character. He is the cause of the monologue, and must be as definitely conceived as the speaker. Without a clear conception of his character, her words cannot receive the right interpretation.

In “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” the listener, Mr. Gigadibs, is definitely, though indirectly, portrayed. He is a young man of thirty, impulsive, ideal, but has not yet struggled with the problems of life. His criticisms of Blougram are answered by that worldly-minded ecclesiastic, who can declare most truly the fact that an absolute faith is not possible, and then assume—and thus contradict himself—that to ignorant people he must preach an absolute faith. The character of the Bishop is strongly conceived, and his perception of the highest possibility of life, as well as his failure to carry it out, are portrayed with marvellous complexity and full recognition of the difficulties of reconciling idealism with realism. But the character of his young, enthusiastic, and earnest critic, who lacks his experience and who may be partially silenced, is as important as the apology of Blougram. The poem is a debate between an idealist and a realist, the speech of the realist alone being given. We catch the weakness and the strength of both points of view, and thus enter into the comprehension of a most subtle struggle for self-justification.