E20B LECTURE NOTES #12: THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES OF ROBERT
Robert Browning was born 7 May 1812, first child and only son of Robert
Browning and Sarah Wiedemann Browning. Robert was an impulsive, fearless little
boy who was also rather a prodigy, writing poems and reading Homer at a very
young age. He learned many languages and devoured his father's history books. He
also liked to read books that were considered rather shocking and not quite
suitable for children. Robert also had quite a habit of falling for older women,
as his father had done. This first happened when Robert was barely in his teens
and he apparently developed a crush on a woman named Eliza Flower, then in her
At 16, Robert began attending the newly-formed London University, established
for those Nonconformists like Robert who were barred from Oxford and Cambridge.
Robert attended for only just over a year, though thanks to his reading, he was
really quite an educated man. He also was quite arrogant at times. By the time
he was 20, he was convinced that he would be a great poet, if not THE great
poet. His family had enough money to support him in these poetical endeavours, a
good thing as he got off to a very rocky start. His first published work, Pauline,
was considered not very good, but promising; his second, Paracelsus, was
well-received and Robert was always proud of it. He even wrote several stage
plays (between 1836 and 1843) which were also well-received, though quite
forgotten today. It was in 1840 that he really had some problems.
In March of that year, Robert published Sordello, a Poem in Six Books,
at his father's expense. Sordello was an obscure Mantuan poet/warrior of the
early 13th century, and though the poem has many beautifully descriptive
passages, no one really understood it. To make matters even worse, three years
earlier, a woman named Mrs. Busk had published her own poem on Sordello, done in
a lilting, nearly doggerel sort of style. But these problems aside, Robert was
beginning to really hit his poetical stride. Between 1841 and 1846, he published
four books, mainly collections of his shorter poems that would become among his
most famous works.
It was about this time that Robert's correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett
began, when he wrote to thank her for a flattering mention of his work in one of
her poems. Even in this very first letter, he told her that he loved her, which
alarmed Elizabeth immensely. Still, he managed to meet her face to face in May
of 1845 and marry her in September of that year. The happy couple went to
Florence and were enchanted by it, finally settling in the famous Casa Guidi.
They lived like hermits, the normally gregarious Robert content to stay at
home with the usually ill Elizabeth. On 9 March 1849, Robert Wiedemann Barrett
Browning was born, though when Robert's mother Sarah died later that month,
never knowing she had a grandson, Robert was devastated. It was Elizabeth and
her poems that finally pulled him through.
In 1855, Robert's collection of short poems, Men and Women, was
published, an excellent book that received good but not great reviews. But he
was mostly neglecting his poetry in order to be with Elizabeth. Her death on 28
June 1861 was more a relief than a shock, as she had been fading badly for some
time. Robert re-dedicated himself to his poetry and to his son.
By now, Robert was truly famous, finally one of THE great poets, as he had
always wanted. He received two honorary degrees and was much admired, though
generally from a distance, as many considered him to be rather ill-tempered. He
actually proposed to another woman ten years after Elizabeth's death, one Lady
Louisa Ashburton, but she turned him down. Robert really disliked her after
that, even though he told everyone that the proposal was for Pen's sake.
Robert wrote a great deal right up to the end of his life, though he was
plagued by colds and bronchitis; his last book, Asolando, was published
the day of his death, 12 December 1889. Robert had always assumed he would be
buried beside Elizabeth, but as that cemetery had been closed to further
burials, he instead received a grand funeral at Westminster Abbey. (From Thomas,
Donald. Robert Browning: A Life Within Life. New York: Viking Press,
The Dramatic Monologue:
Browning’s poems "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Order his
Tomb," and "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," among others, are
termed dramatic monologues. There are important differences to be noted
between the soliloquy, the dramatic lyric and dramatic
monologue. (Where necessary, do some research to ascertain the differences.)
- The characteristic features of the dramatic monologue:
- a single person, who is patently not the poet and is not meant to be
identified with the poet, utters the entire poem in a specific situation
at a critical moment--the Duke is negotiating with an emissary for a
second wife; the Bishop lies dying; Andrea once more attempts wistfully
to believe his wife’s lies; one should not assume that the poet is to
be identified with the persona (the speaking voice in the poem)
- this person addresses and interacts with one or more other people but
we know of the interlocutor’s presence only from clues in the
discourse of the only speaker
- The main principle controlling the poet’s choice and organisation of
what the speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances
its interest, the speaker’s temperament and character
- The function of Browning’s dramatic monologues: these are
inspired by the point of view expressed by Matthew Arnold in "The
Function of Criticism at the Present Time" that literature and
criticism should together seek to foster in a ‘disinterested’ way the
‘best that is known and thought.’ That is, they are designed accordingly
to offer a social critique less of specific people than types
of people and institutions in contemporary society as well as to satirise
certain timeless foibles of human nature.
- note Browning’s use of irony (when the ostensible meaning of
an utterance is, given the context in which it is uttered, contradicted
by its implicit meaning) in this regard: because of its indirectness,
irony is a much more efficient tool of social critique
- just as the assumption of a persona allows Browning to shelter behind
a mask, so too does irony (coupled with humour) allow him to render his
criticisms of historical and contemporary persons and institutions in a
more palatable way
- The fragmentation of perspective in lyric poetry:
- lyric poetry is no longer assumed to be self-expressive or
autobiographical as a result of which the reader can no longer be sure
of the lyric as certain means of access to the creative consciousness
seeking to express itself in the poem (Eliot after the turn of the
century will come up with what he calls an ‘impersonal’ theory of
- there is, thus, no longer any question of viewing Browning as the
voice of his epoch as some might argue Milton was of an earlier era. As
the Twentieth century approaches, poets become increasingly conscious of
their own uncertainty about all things (this corresponds to the
so-called ‘angst’ of the modern age) and try to express not a single
vision of society or the point of view of one person but, rather,
multiple perspectives (this corresponds to what some philosophers and
critics terms the ‘fragmented’ [rather than unified] nature of
- The influence of Browning’s use of the dramatic monologue on
modern poets such as T.S. Eliot (e.g. in :The Love Song of J. Alfred
- Comparisons and contrasts between Coleridge’s so-called ‘Conversation’
poems and Browning’s Dramatic Monologue.
- Coleridge invented the form which he called the "conversation
poem" or "poems of friendship." He applied the term
"conversation poem" only to "The Nightingale."
Critics such as G. M. Harper have come to use it in a wider sense to
refer to the poems that M. H. Abrams calls "the Greater Romantic
- Where Browning’s dramatic monologues purport to be speeches spoken
by an imaginary character (ostensibly not Browning himself) and
are largely devoted to the revelation of character in a manner akin to
the novel (this was, you might recall, the golden age of the novel),
Coleridge’s conversation poems focus on expressing the thoughts,
feelings, memories, observations, etc. of the persona (the ‘I’). The
former lend themselves to social critique and satire, the latter to
self-exploration and autobiography.
Coleridge - ‘Conversation’ poems
Browning - Dramatic Monologues
The identity of the speaker is unambivalent - Coleridge
There is a single speaker who is not the poet
Written in the style of intimate talk to an understanding
auditor, and in most cases we know who the imagined addressee is. The
feeling on the part of the reader is that of being spoken to directly by
(Sometimes) a speaker addresses and interacts with one or
more other people but we know of the auditors’ presence, words and
actions only from clues in the words of the single speaker. The reader
overhears, as it were, a conversation taking place between a speaker and a
listener within the poem.
The cadence is a conversational one.
The cadence is also a conversational one.
A generous, loving spirit is often felt in these poems.
An ironic/satirical treatment is prevalent in these poems
where the speaker damns himself by his very own words.
We know the precise biographical context because we are
explicitly told or it can easily be inferred. The poems are usually about
Coleridge in a particular state of mind, at a particular time.
The principle controlling the selection and organization
of what the speaker says is the unintentional revelation of his
temperament and character.
We have a precise specification of space and time.
Coleridge carefully delineates the time of day, the atmosphere and his
exact surroundings so that the setting is easily visualized. The setting
stimulates the meditation that occurs and influences the direction the
thought takes. Coleridge considered his poetic aim to involve
"infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is
the object of his contemplation" and reconciling "what is nature
with that which is exclusively human."
The poem occurs in a specific situation at a critical
The movement of thought spirals or circles around a given
theme or image, while recording some progress in insight or in the release
of emotional pressure. Usually the solution is to come full circle,
recycling the opening imagery with added significance or subtle variation.
Most frequently, a linear or progressive unfolding of
character takes place.
- Bloom, Harold, et al., eds. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Robert
- Bristow, Joseph Robert Browning
- Gibson, Mary Ellis, ed. Critical Essays on Robert Browning
- King, Roma A. "Ecclesiastical Vision in Stone: ‘The Bishop Orders
His Tomb" (in Watson)
- Karlin, David Browning’s Hatreds
- Karlin, David, et al. Robert Browning
- Langbaum, Robert The Poetry of Experience: the Dramatic Monologue in
Modern Literary Tradition
- Langbaum, Robert "The Dramatic Monologue: Sympathy versus
Judgment" (in Watson)
- Miller, J. Hillis "From The Disappearance of God" (in
- Shaw, David The Dialectical Temper: the Rhetorical Art of Robert
- Slinn, Warwick Browning and the Fictions of Identity
- Watson, J. R., ed. Men and Women and Other Poems (Casebook Series)