Browning and the Dramatic Monologue

by S. S. Curry

The most important words in the study of a monologue are usually the first. As a monologue is a sudden vision of a life, it of course breaks into the continuity of thought or discussion. The first words are nearly always spoken in answer to something previously said or in reference to some event or circumstance which is only suggested, yet which must be definitely imagined. One of the most important questions for the student to settle is the connection of what is printed with what is not printed. When does a character begin to speak, that is, in answer to what,—as a result of what event, act, or word?

For this reason the first words of a monologue must usually be delivered slowly and emphatically, if auditors are to be given a clue to the processes of the thought. The inflections and other modulations of the voice in uttering the first words must always directly suggest the connection with what precedes.

“Rabbi Ben Ezra” begins abruptly: “Grow old along with me!” This poem has already been discussed with reference to the necessity of conceiving the listener, but we must also apprehend the thought which the listener has uttered before we can get the speaker’s point of view. The young man has, no doubt, expressed pity or regret for the old man’s isolation, for the loss of all his friends, and must have remarked something about how gloomy a thing it is to grow old. This is the cause of the older man’s outburst of joyous expostulation amounting almost to a rebuke. Now the reader must realize this, must make it appear in the emphasis which he gives to the first words of the Rabbi: that is, he must so render these words as to bring the ideas of the Rabbi in opposition to those of the young man. The antithesis to what has been said or implied gives the keynote of the poem, whether we are interpreting it to another or endeavoring to understand it for ourselves.

We perceive here a striking contrast between the dramatic monologue and the story. The story may begin, “Once upon a time,” but the monologue as a part of real life must suggest a direct continuity of thought and also of contact with human beings. Even a play may introduce characters, gradually lead up to a collision, and make emphatic an outbreak of passion, but the monologue must, as a rule, break in at once with the specific answer of a definite character in a living situation to a definite thought which has been uttered by another. The reader must receive an impression of the character at the moment, but in relation to a continuous succession of ideas.

Accordingly, the right starting of the monologue is of vital importance. In a story we often wait a long while for it to unfold. But except in the first preliminary reading, one cannot read on in the monologue, hoping that the meaning will gradually become clear. When a reader fully understands the meaning, he must turn and express this at the very beginning. The very first phrase must be colored by the whole.

Frequently the settling of the connection of the thought is the most difficult part in the study of a monologue, yet, on account of the unique difference of this type of literature from a story and other literary forms, the study of the beginning is apt to be overlooked. The reader must first find out where he is. I was once in search of Bishopsgate Street in London, and meeting, in a very narrow part of a narrow street a unique old man, who reminded me of Ralph Nickleby, I asked him to tell me the way. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Where are you now?” I told him I thought I was in Threadneedle Street. “Right,” and then he pointed out the street, which was only a few steps away, but which I had been seeking for some time in vain. He was wise, for unless I knew where I was, he could not direct me.

In the study of a monologue, if we will find exactly where we are, many difficult questions will be settled at once; and the interpreter by pausing and using care can make clear, through the emphatic interpretation of the first sentences, a vast number of points which would otherwise be of great difficulty.

Mr. Macfadyen has well said, “Much of the apparent obscurity of Browning is due to his habit of climbing up a precipice of thought, and then kicking away the ladder by which he climbed.”

The opening of Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” requires a conception of night and a sudden surprise—

“I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks, what’s to blame? you think you see a monk!”