The Dramatic Monologue

Abstract

Through the years detailed attention has been given to the lyric, epic, short-story, drama, novel, and other literary forms, but comparatively few references have been made to the dramatic monologue. A beginning towards the understanding of this neglected form was made by Stopford A. Brooke, who devoted one chapter to a discussion of Tennyson's use of the dramatic monologue in his Tennyson, His Art and Relation to Modern Life. S.S. Curry in his Browning and the Dramatic Monologue made a study of three characteristics of the form: speaker, audience, and occasion. He likewise gave a short history of the genre, and analyzed the methods for presenting examples of the form orally. R. H. Fletcher classified Browning's dramatic monologues. Claud Howard traced the development of the type in his pamphlet The Dramatic Monologue: Its Origin and Development. Phelps devoted one chapter to analyzing the content of Browning's dramatic monologues. Bliss Perry defined the type, mentioned the same characteristics Curry had enumerated, and stated that the form is somewhat akin to the lyric. The present writer stressed the necessity for definiteness of each of the aforementioned characteristics and suggested that continuous interplay between speaker and audience be added as a clear-cut, fourth characteristic. Examples in both American and continental literature were grouped as follows: typical, formal, and approximate.