Browning and the Dramatic Monologue

by S. S. Curry

As the play always implies dramatic action, as the mind must picture a real scene and the characters must move and speak as animated beings before there can be the least appreciation of its nature as a play, so the monologue also implies and suggests a real scene or moment of human life.

The monologue is an artistic whole, and must be understood as a whole. Each part must be felt to be like the limb of a tree, a part of an organism. As each leaf on the tree quivers with the life hidden in trunk and root, so each word of the monologue must vibrate with the thought and feeling of the whole.

Hence, the interpreter of the monologue must command all the natural, expressive modulations of voice and body. He must have imagination and insight into human motives, and his voice and body must respond to this insight and understanding. He must know the language of pause, of touch, of change of pitch, of inflection, of the modulation of resonance, of changes in movement. He must realize, consciously or subconsciously, the importance of a look, of a turn of the head, of a smile, of a transition of the body, of a motion of the hand; in brief, throughout all the complex parts constituting the bodily organism he should be master of natural action, which appeals directly to the eye and precedes all speech.

Every inflection must be natural; every variation of pitch must be spontaneous; every emotion must modulate the color of the voice; every attitude of the interpreter must be simple and sustained. He must have what is known as the “mercurial temperament” to assume every point of view and assimilate every feeling.

The first great law of art is consistency, hence all the parts of a higher work of art must inhere, as do all parts of a plant or flower; but this unity and consistency should not be mechanical or artificial. Delivery can never be built; it must grow. True expression must be spontaneous and free. One must enjoy a monologue; one must live it. Every act or inflection must suggest a dozen others that might be given. The fulness of the life within, in thinking and feeling, must be delicately suggested. The most important point to be considered is a suggestion of the reality of life and the intensity of feeling. The interpreter must study nature. He must speak as the bird sings, not mechanically, but out of a full heart, yet not chaotically or from random impulses. All his movements must come, like the blooming of the rose, from within outward; but this can only result from meditation and command of mind, body, and voice. “Everything in nature,” said Carlyle, “has an index finger pointing to something beyond it”; so every phrase, every word, action, or pause, every voice modulation, must have a relation to every other modulation.

In the art of interpreting the monologue, which is a different art from the writing of one, all must be as much like nature as possible. Yet this likeness is secured, not by imitation or by reproducing external experiences, but by sympathetic identification and imaginative realization.

Every art has a technique. The modulations of the voice and the actions of the body must be directly studied, or there can be no naturalness. Meaningless movements and modulations lead to mannerisms. The reader must know the value of every action of voice or body, and so master them that he can bring them all into a kind of subconscious unity for the expression of the living realization of a thought or situation.

The interpreter must use no artificial methods, but must study the fundamental principles of the expressive modulations of voice and body and supplement these by a sympathetic observation of nature.

The questions to be settled by the reader have been shown by the analysis of the structure of the monologue. He must first consider the character which he is to impersonate, and his conception of it must be definite and clear as that of any actor in a play. In one sense, conception of character is more important in the monologue than in the play, on account of the fact that the speaker stands alone, and the monologue is only one end of a conversation. In a play the actor is always associated with others; has some peculiarity of dress; has freedom of movement, and his character is shown by others. He is only one of many persons in a moving scene, and often fills a subordinate place. But in the monologue, the interpreter is never subordinate, and has few accessories, or none. He must not only reveal the character that is speaking, but also indicate the character of the supposed listener. He must suggest by simple sounds and movements, not by make-up or artificial properties. Thus the interpretation of a monologue is more difficult than that of a play. The actor has long periods of listening when another is speaking, so that he has better opportunities to show the impression produced upon him by each idea. The interpreter of a monologue must often show that he, too, is listening, and express the impression received from another.

To illustrate the necessity of the vocal rendering of a monologue and the peculiar character of the interpretation needed, take one of the simplest examples, a humorous monologue of Douglas Jerrold’s, one of “Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures.”