Browning and the Dramatic Monologue

by S. S. Curry

Take, for example, the lecture she gives after Mr. Caudle has lent an umbrella:

MR. CAUDLE HAS LENT AN ACQUAINTANCE THE FAMILY UMBRELLA

Bah! That’s the third umbrella gone since Christmas. “What were you to do?” Why, let him go home in the rain, to be sure. I’m very certain there was nothing about him that could spoil. Take cold, indeed! He doesn’t look like one of the sort to take cold. Besides, he’d have better taken cold than taken our only umbrella. Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, do you hear the rain? And as I’m alive, if it isn’t St. Swithin’s day! Do you hear it against the windows? Nonsense; you don’t impose upon me. You can’t be asleep with such a shower as that! Do you hear it, I say? Oh, you do hear it! Well, that’s a pretty flood, I think, to last for six weeks; and no stirring all the time out of the house. Pooh! don’t think me a fool, Mr. Caudle. Don’t insult me. He return the umbrella! Anybody would think you were born yesterday. As if anybody ever did return an umbrella! There—do you hear it! Worse and worse! Cats and dogs, and for six weeks, always six weeks. And no umbrella!

I should like to know how the children are to go to school to-morrow? They shan’t go through such weather, I’m determined. No; they shall stop at home and never learn anything—the blessed creatures!—sooner than go and get wet. And when they grow up, I wonder who they’ll have to thank for knowing nothing—who, indeed, but their father? People who can’t feel for their own children ought never to be fathers.

But I know why you lent the umbrella. Oh, yes, I know very well. I was going out to tea at dear mother’s to-morrow—you knew that; and you did it on purpose. Don’t tell me; you hate me to go there, and take every mean advantage to hinder me. But don’t you think it, Mr. Caudle. No, sir; if it comes down in buckets-full, I’ll go all the more. No; and I won’t have a cab. Where do you think the money’s to come from? You’ve got nice high notions at that club of yours. A cab, indeed! Cost me sixteenpence at least—sixteenpence, two-and-eight-pence, for there’s back again. Cabs, indeed! I should like to know who’s to pay for ’em; I can’t pay for ’em, and I’m sure you can’t, if you go on as you do; throwing away your property, and beggaring your children—buying umbrellas!

Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, do you hear it? But I don’t care—I’ll go to mother’s to-morrow; I will; and what’s more, I’ll walk every step of the way,—and you know that will give me my death. Don’t call me a foolish woman, it’s you that’s the foolish man. You know I can’t wear clogs; and with no umbrella, the wet’s sure to give me a cold—it always does. But what do you care for that? Nothing at all. I may be laid up, for what you care, as I daresay I shall—and a pretty doctor’s bill there’ll be. I hope there will! I shouldn’t wonder if I caught my death; yes: and that’s what you lent the umbrella for. Of course!...

Men, indeed!—call themselves lords of the creation!—pretty lords, when they can’t even take care of an umbrella!

I know that walk to-morrow will be the death of me. But that’s what you want—then you may go to your club and do as you like—and then, nicely my poor dear children will be used—but then, sir, you’ll be happy. Oh, don’t tell me! I know you will. Else you’d never have lent the umbrella!...

The children, too! Dear things! They’ll be sopping wet; for they shan’t stop at home—they shan’t lose their learning; it’s all their father will leave ’em, I’m sure. But they shall go to school. Don’t tell me I said they shouldn’t: you are so aggravating, Caudle; you’d spoil the temper of an angel. They shall go to school; mark that. And if they get their deaths of cold, it’s not my fault—I didn’t lend the umbrella.

The peculiar character of Mrs. Caudle must be definitely conceived, and the interpreter must express her feelings and reveal with great emphasis the impressions produced upon her, for these are the very soul of the rendering. The sudden awakening of ideas in her mind, or the way she receives an impression, must be definitely shown, for such manifestations are the chief characteristics of a monologue. Such mental action is the one element that makes the delivery of a monologue differ from that of other forms of literature.