Browning and the Dramatic Monologue

WORKS OF S. S. CURRY, Ph.D., Litt.D.

Of eminent value.—Dr. Lyman Abbott.

Both method and spirit practically without precedent.—J. M. Leveque, Editor Morning World, New Orleans.

PROVINCE OF EXPRESSION. A study of the general problems regarding delivery and the principles underlying its development. $1.50; to teachers, $1.20.

The work of a highly intellectual man who thinks and feels deeply, who is in earnest and whose words are entitled to the most thoughtful consideration.—William Winter.

LESSONS IN VOCAL EXPRESSION. Study of the modulations of the voice as caused by action of the mind.

It is the best book on expression I ever read, far ahead of anything published.—Prof. George A. Vinton, Chicago.

IMAGINATION AND DRAMATIC INSTINCT. Creative action of the mind, insight, sympathy, and assimilation in vocal expression.

The best book ever published on elocution.—A prominent teacher and public reader.

VOCAL AND LITERARY INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE.

Deserves the attention of everyone.—The Scotsman, Edinboro.

Will serve to abolish “hardshell” reading where “hardshell” preaching is no longer tolerated.—Dr. Lyman Abbott.

FOUNDATIONS OF EXPRESSION. Principles and fundamental steps in the training of the mind, body, and voice in speaking.

“By its aid I have accomplished double the usual results.”

BROWNING AND THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE. Introduction to Browning’s poetry and dramatic platform art. Studies of some later phases of dramatic expression. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10 postpaid.

CLASSICS FOR VOCAL EXPRESSION. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10 postpaid.

OTHER BOOKS IN PREPARATION.

Join the Expression League by sending the names of three persons interested, and information will be Sent you regarding all these books. Address

THE EXPRESSION LEAGUE

Room 308, Pierce Building, Copley Sq. Boston, Mass.

BROWNING
AND
THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE

NATURE AND INTERPRETATION OF AN
OVERLOOKED FORM OF LITERATURE

S. S. CURRY, Ph.D., Litt.D.
President of the School of Expression

BOSTON
EXPRESSION COMPANY
Pierce Building, Copley Square

Copyright, 1908
By S. S. Curry

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

PART I

THE MONOLOGUE AS A DRAMATIC FORM

I. A NEW LITERARY FORM

Why were the poems of Robert Browning so long unread? Why was his real message or spirit understood by few forty years after he began to write?

The story is told that Douglas Jerrold, when recovering from a serious illness, opened a copy of “Sordello,” which was among some new books sent to him by a friend. Sentence after sentence brought no consecutive thought, and at last it dawned upon him that perhaps his sickness had wrecked his mental faculties, and he sank back on the sofa, overwhelmed with dismay. Just then his wife and sister entered and, thrusting the book into their hands, he eagerly demanded what they thought of it. He watched them intently, and when at last Mrs. Jerrold exclaimed, “I do not understand what this man means,” Jerrold uttered a cry of relief, “Thank God, I am not an idiot!” Browning, while protesting that he was not obscure, used to tell this story with great enjoyment.

What was the chief cause of the almost universal failure to understand Browning? Many reasons are assigned. His themes were such as had never before been found in poetry, his allusions and illustrations so unfamiliar as to presuppose wide knowledge on the part of the reader; he had a very concise and abrupt way of stating things.

Yet, after all, were these the chief causes? Was he not obscure because he had chosen a new or unusual dramatic form? Nearly every one of his poems is written in the form of a monologue, which, according to Professor Johnson, “may be termed a novelty of invention in Browning.” Hence, to the average man of a generation ago, Browning’s poems were written in almost a new language.

This secret of the difficulty of appreciating Browning is not even yet fully realized. There are many “Introductions” to his poems and some valuable works on his life, yet nowhere can we find an adequate discussion of his dramatic form, its nature, and the influence it has exerted upon modern poetry.

Let us endeavor to take the point of view of the average man who opened one of Browning’s volumes when first published; or let us imagine the feeling of an ordinary reader to-day on first chancing upon such a poem as “The Patriot.”

The average man beginning to read, “It was roses, roses,” fancies he is reading a mere story and waits for the unfolding of events, but very soon becomes confused. Where is he? Nothing happens. Somebody is talking, but about what?

One who looks for mere effects and not for causes, for facts and not for experiences, for a mere sequence of events, and not for the laying bare of the motives and struggles of the human heart, will be apt soon to throw the book down and turn to his daily paper to read the accounts of stocks, fires, or murders, disgusted with the very name of Browning, if not with poetry.

If he look more closely, he will find a subtitle, “An Old Story,” but this confuses him still more. “Story” is evidently used in some peculiar sense, and “old” may be used in the sense of ancient, familiar, or oft-repeated; it may imply that certain results always follow certain conditions. If a careful

THE PATRIOT

AN OLD STORY

It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.
The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels—
But give me your sun from yonder skies!”
They had answered “And afterward, what else?”
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
To give it my loving friends to keep!
Naught man could do, have I left undone:
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.
There’s nobody on the house-tops now—
Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
At the Shambles’ Gate—or, better yet,
By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.
I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.
Thus I entered, and thus I go!
In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
“Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
Me?”—God might question; now instead,
’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

student glance through the poem, he will find that the Patriot is one who entered the city a year before, and who during this time has done his best to secure reforms, but at the end of the year is led forth to the scaffold. The poem pictures to us the thoughts that stir his mind on the way to his death. He recognizes the same street, he remembers the roses, the myrtle, the house-roofs so crowded that they seem to heave and sway, the flags on the church spires, the bells, the willingness of the multitude to give him even the sun; but he it is who aimed at the impossible—to give his friends the sun. Having done all he could, now comes his reward. There is nobody on the house-tops, and only a few too old to go to the scaffold have crept to the windows. The great crowd is at the gate or at the scaffold’s foot. He goes in the rain, his hands tied behind him, his forehead bleeding from the stones that are hurled at him. The closing thought, so abruptly expressed, the most difficult one in the poem, is a mere hint of what might have happened had he triumphed in the world’s sense of the word. He might have fallen dead,—dead in a deeper sense than the loss of life; his soul might have become dead to truth, to noble ideals, and to aspiration. Had he done what men wanted him to do, he would have been paid by the world. He has certainly not done the world’s bidding, and in a few short words he reveals his resignation, his heroism, and his sublime triumph.

“Now instead,
’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.”

The first line of the last stanza in the first edition of the poem contained the word “Brescia,” suggesting a reference to the reformer Arnold. But Browning later omitted “Brescia,” because the poem was not meant to be in any sense historical, but rather to represent the reformer of every age whose ideals are misunderstood and whose noblest work is rewarded by death. “History,” said Aristotle, “tells what Alcibiades did, poetry what he ought to have done.” “The Patriot” is not a matter-of-fact narrative, but a revelation of human experience.

The reader must approach such a poem as a work of art. Sympathetic and contemplative attention must be given to it as an entirety. Then point after point, idea after idea, will become clear and vivid, and at last the whole will be intensely realized.

For another example of Browning’s short poems take “A Woman’s Last Word.”

Suppose one tries to read this as if it were an ordinary lyric. One is sure to be greatly confused as to its meaning. What is it all about? The words are simple enough, and while the ordinary man recognizes this, he is all the more perplexed. Perceiving certain merits, he exclaims, “If a man can write such beautiful individual lines, why does he not make his whole story clear and simple?”

If, however, one will meditate over the whole, take hints here and there and put them together, a distinct picture is slowly formed in the mind. A wife, whose husband demands that she explain to him something in her past life, is speaking. She has perhaps loved some one before him, and his curiosity or jealousy is aroused. The poem really constitutes her appeal to his higher nature and her insistence upon the sacredness of their present relation, which she fears words may profane. She does not even fully understand the past herself. To explain would be false to him, hence with love and tenderness she pleads for delay. Yet she promises to speak his “speech,” but “to-morrow, not to-night.” Perhaps she hopes that his mood will change; possibly she feels that he is not now in the right attitude of mind to understand or sympathize with her experiences.

A WOMAN’S LAST WORD

Let’s contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
—Only sleep!
What so wild as words are?
I and thou
In debate, as birds are,
Hawk on bough!
See the creature stalking
While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
Cheek on cheek.
What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent’s tooth is,
Shun the tree—
Where the apple reddens,
Never pry—
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.
Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!
Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought—
Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands.
That shall be to-morrow,
Not to-night:
I must bury sorrow
Out of sight:
—Must a little weep, Love,
(Foolish me!)
And so fall asleep, Love,
Loved by thee.

In this poem a most delicate relation between two human beings is interpreted. Short though it is, it yet goes deeper into motives, concentrates attention more energetically upon one point of view, and is possibly more impressive than if the theme had been unfolded in a play or novel. It turns the listener or reader within himself, and he feels in his own breast the response to her words.

All great art discharges its function by evoking imagination and feeling, but it is not always the intellectual meaning which first appears.

However far apart these two poems may be in spirit or subject, there are certain characteristics common to them; they are both monologues.

The monologue, as Browning has exemplified it, is one end of a conversation. A definite speaker is conceived in a definite, dramatic situation. Usually we find also a well-defined listener, though his character is understood entirely from the impression he produces upon the speaker. We feel that this listener has said something and that his presence and character influence the speaker’s thought, words, and manner. The conversation does not consist of abstract remarks, but takes place in a definite situation as a part of human life.

We must realize the situation, the speaker, the hearer, before the meaning can become clear; and it is the failure to do this which has caused many to find Browning obscure.

For example, observe Browning’s “Confessions.”

CONFESSIONS

What is he buzzing in my ears?
“Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”
Ah, reverend sir, not I!
What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table’s edge,—is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry
O’er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?
To mine, it serves for the old June weather
Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labelled “Ether”
Is the house o’er-topping all.
At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
There watched for me, one June,
A girl: I know, sir, it’s improper,
My poor mind’s out of tune.
Only, there was a way ... you crept
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
They styled their house “The Lodge.”
What right had a lounger up their lane?
But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall’s help,—their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to Oes,
Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled “Ether,”
And stole from stair to stair,
And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
We loved, sir—used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was—
But then, how it was sweet!

Here, evidently, the speaker, who has “come to die,” has been aroused by some “reverend sir,” who has been expostulating with him and uttering conventional phrases about the vanity of human life. Such superficial pessimism awakens protest, and the dying man remonstrates in the words of the poem.

The speaker is apparently in bed and hardly believes himself fully possessed of his senses. He even asks if the curtain is “green or blue to a healthy eye,” as if he feared to trust his judgment, lest it be perverted by disease.

An abrupt beginning is very characteristic of a monologue, and when given properly, the first words arrest attention and suggest the situation.

After the speaker’s bewildered repetition of the visitor’s words and his blunt answer “not I,” which says such views are not his own, he talks of his “bedside hand,” turns a row of bottles into a street, and tells of the sweetest experience of his life. He refuses to say that it was not sweet; he will not allow an abnormal condition such as his sickness to determine his views of life. The result is an introspection of the deeper hope found in the heart of man.

The poem is not an essay or a sermon, it is not the lyric expression of a mood; it portrays the conflict of individual with individual and reveals the deepest motives of a character. It is not a dialogue, but only one end of a conversation, and for this reason it more intensely and definitely focuses attention. We see deeper into the speaker’s spirit and view of life, while we recognize the superficiality of the creed of his visitor. The monologue thus is dramatic. It interprets human experience and character.

No one who intelligently reads Browning can fail to realize that he was a dramatic poet; in fact he was the first, if not the only, English dramatic poet of the nineteenth century. With his deep insight into the life of his age, as well as his grasp of character, he was the one master whose writing was needed for the drama of that century; yet he early came into conflict with the modern stage and ceased to write plays before he had mastered the play as a work of art.

He was, however, by nature so dramatic in his point of view that he could never be anything else than a dramatic poet. Hence, he was led to invent, or adopt, a dramatic form different from the play. From the midst of the conflict between poet and stage, between writer and stage artist, the monologue was evolved, or at least recognized and completed as an objective dramatic form.

Any study of the monologue must thus centre attention upon Browning. As Shakespeare reigns the supreme master of the play, so Browning has no peer in the monologue. Others have followed him in its use, but his monologues remain the most numerous, varied, and expressive.

The development of the monologue, in some sense, is connected with the struggles of the modern stage to express the conditions of modern life. A great change has taken place in human experience. In modern civilization the conflicts and complex struggles of human character are usually hidden. Men and women now conceal their emotions. Self-control and repression form a part of the civilized ideal. Men no longer shed tears in public as did Homer’s heroes. In our day, a man who is injured does not avenge himself, or if he does he rarely retains the sympathy of his fellow-men. On the contrary, the person wronged now turns over his wronger to the law; conflicts of man with man are fought out in the courts, and a well-ordered government inflicts punishment and rights wrongs.

All modern life and experience have become more subjective; hence, it is natural that dramatic art should change its form. Let no one suppose, however, that this change marks the death of dramatic representation. Dramatic art in some shape is necessary as a means of expression in every age. It has become more subtle and suggestive, but it is none the less dramatic.

An important phase of the changes in the character of dramatic art is the recognition of the monologue. The adoption of this form shows the tendency of dramatic art to adapt itself to modern times.

The dramatic monologue, however, did not arise in opposition to the play, but as a new and parallel aspect of dramatic art. It has not the same theme as the play, does not deal with the expression of human life in movement or the complex struggles of human beings with each other, but it reveals the struggle in the depths of the soul. It exhibits the dramatic attitude of mind or the point of view. It is more subjective, more intense, and also more suggestive than the play. It reveals motives and character by a flash to an awakened imagination.

However this new dramatic form may be explained, whatever may be its character, there is hardly a book of poetry that has appeared in recent years that does not contain examples. Many popular writers, it may be unconsciously, employ this form almost to the exclusion of all others. The name itself occurs rarely in English books; but the name is nothing,—the monologue is there.

The presence of the form of the monologue before its full recognition is a proof that it is natural and important. Forms of art are not invented; they are rather discovered. They are direct languages; each expresses something no other can say. If the monologue is a distinct literary form, then it possesses certain possibilities in expressing the human spirit which are peculiar to itself. It must say something that nothing else can say so well. Its use by Browning, and the greater and greater frequency of its adoption among recent writers, seems to prove the necessity of a careful study of its peculiarities, possibilities, and rendition.

II. THE SPEAKER

What is there peculiar about the monologue? Can its nature or structure be so explained that a seemingly difficult poem, such as a monologue by Browning, may be made clear and forcible?

In the first place, one should note that the monologue gets its unity from the character of the speaker. It is not merely an impersonal thought, but the expression of one individual to another. It was Hegel, I think, who said that all art implies the expression of a truth, of a thought or feeling, to a person.

In nature we find everywhere a spontaneous unfolding, as in the blooming of a flower. There is no direct presentation of a truth to the apprehension of some particular mind; no modification of it by the character, the prejudice, or the feeling of the speaker. The lily unfolds its loveliness, but does not adapt the time or the direction of its blooming to dominate the attention of some indifferent observer, or express its message so definitely and pointedly as to be more easily understood.

Man, however, rarely, if ever, expresses a truth without a personal coloring due to his own character and the character of the listener. The same truth uttered by different persons appears different. Occasionally a little child, or a man with a childlike nature, may think in a blind, natural way without adapting truth to other minds; but such direct, spontaneous, and truthful expression is extremely rare. It is one of the most important functions of art to teach us the fact that there is always “an intervention of personality,” which needs to be realized in its specific interpretation.

The monologue is a study of the effect of mind upon mind, of the adaptation of the ideas of one individual to another, and of the revelation this makes of the characters of speaker and listener.

The nature of the monologue will be best understood by comparing it with some of the literary forms which it resembles, or with which it is often unconsciously confused.

On account of the fact that there is but one speaker, it has been confused with oratory. A monologue is often conceived as a kind of stilted conversational oration; and the word monologue is apt to call to mind some talker, like Coleridge, who monopolized the whole conversation.

A monologue, however, is not a speech. An oration is the presentation of truth to an audience by a personality. There is some purpose at stake; the speaker must strengthen convictions and cause decisions on some point at issue. But a monologue is not an address to an audience; it is a study of character, of the processes of thinking in one individual as moulded by the presence of some other personality. Its theme is not merely the thought uttered, but primarily the character of the speaker, who consciously or unconsciously unfolds himself.

Again, the monologue has been confused with the lyric poem. Browning called one of his volumes “Dramatic Lyrics”; another, “Dramatic Idyls”; and another, “Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.” Though many monologues are lyric in spirit, they are more frequently dramatic.

A lyric is the utterance of an individual intensely realizing a specific situation, and implies deep feeling. But the monologue may or may not be emotional. No doubt it may result from as intense a realization as the lyric poem. It resembles a lyric in being simple and in being usually short, but is unlike it in that its theme is chiefly dramatic, its interest indirect, and that it lays bare to a far greater degree human motives in certain situations and under the ruling forces of a life.

The monologue is like a lyric also in that it must be recognized as a complete whole. Each clause must be understood in relation to others as a part of the whole. An essay can be understood sentence after sentence. A story gives a sequence of events for their own sake. A discussion may consist of a mere recital or succession of facts. In all these the whole is built up part by part. But the monologue differs from all these in that the whole must be felt from the beginning.

Further, in the monologue ideas are not given directly, as in the story or essay, but usually the more important points are suggested indirectly. The attention of the reader or hearer is focussed upon a living human being. What is said is not necessarily a universal and impersonal truth, it is the opinion of a certain type of man. We judge what is said by the character of the speaker, by the person to whom he speaks, and by the occasion.

Mr. Furnivall may prefer to have every man speak directly from the shoulder and may write slightingly of such an indirect way of stating a truth as we find in the monologue. We may all prefer, or think we do, the direct way of speaking,—a sermon or lecture, for example,—and dislike what Edmund Spenser called a “dark conceit”; but soon or late we shall agree with Spenser, the master of allegory, that the artistic method is “more interesting,” and that example is better than precept.

The monologue is one of the examples of the indirect method common to all art—a method which is necessary on account of the peculiarities of human nature. One person finds it difficult to explain a truth directly to another. Nine-tenths of every picture is the product, not of perception, but of apperception. Hence, without the aid of art, we express in words only half truths. The monologue makes human expression more adequate. It is like a nut; the shell must be penetrated before we can find the kernel. The real truth of the monologue comes only after comprehension of the whole. It reserves its truth until the thought has slowly grown in the mind of the hearer. It holds back something until all parts are co-ordinated and “does the thing shall breed the thought.” Accordingly, there are many things to settle in a monologue before the truth it contains can possibly be realized.

In the first place, we must decide who the speaker is, what is his character, and the specific attitude of his mind. It is not merely the thought uttered that makes the impression. As a picture is something between a thought and a thing, not an idea on the one hand nor an object on the other, but a union of the two, so the monologue unites a truth or idea with the personality that utters it. An idea, a fact, may be valuable, but it becomes clear and impressive to some human consciousness only by being united with a human soul, and stated from one point of view and with the force of an individual life.

The story of Count Gismond, for example, is told by the woman he saved from disgrace, who loves him of all men, and who is now his wife. We feel the whole story colored by her gratitude, devotion, and tenderness. The reader must conceive the character of the speaker, and enter into the depths of her motives, before understanding the thought; but after he has done so, he receives a clearer and more forcible impression than is otherwise possible.

The stories of Sam Lawson by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe are essentially monologues. In Professor Churchill’s rendering of them the peculiarities of this Yankee were truly shown to be the chief centre of interest. As we realize the spirit of these stories, we easily imagine ourselves on the “shady side of a blueberry pasture,” listening to Sam talking to a group of boys, or possibly to only one boy, and our interest centres in the revelation of the working of his mind. His repose, his indifference to work, his insight into human nature, his quaint humor and sympathy, are the chief causes of the pleasure given by these stories.

Possibly the letter is the literary form nearest to the monologue. We can easily see why. A good letter writer is dominated by his attention to one individual. The peculiar character of that individual is ever before him. The intimacy and abandon of the writer in pouring out his deepest thoughts is due to the sympathetic, confidential, conversational attitude of one human being to another.

“Blessed be letters!” said Donald G. Mitchell. “They are the monitors, they are also the comforters, they are the only true heart-talkers.” There is, however, a great difference between letters and conversation. In conversation “your truest thought is modified during its utterance by a look, a sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is not individual; it is not integral; it is social, and marks half of you and half of others. It bends, it sways, it multiplies, it retires, it advances, as the talk of others presses, relaxes, or quickens.”

This effect of others upon the speaker is especially expressed in the monologue, particularly in examples of a popular and humorous character.

While the monologue is the accentuation of some specific attitude of one human being as modified by contact with another, in a letter the attitude toward the other person is usually prolonged, due to past relationship; is more subjective, and expressed without any change caused by the presence of the person addressed. In some very animated letters, however, the attitude of the future reader’s mind is anticipated or realized by the writer, and there is more or less of an approximation to the monologue. At any rate, this realization of what the other will think colors the composition. Letters are animated in proportion as they possess this dramatic character, and are at times practically monologues.

The skilful writer of a monologue omits obscure references in words to the sneers and looks of the hearer, except those which directly change the current of the speaker’s thought. All must centre in the impression made upon the character speaking. In conversation, at times, a talker becomes more or less oblivious of his companion, yet the presence of his listener all the time affects the attitude of his mind.

If we render a letter artistically to a company of people, we necessarily turn it into a monologue. We read the letter with the person in our mind, as a listener, to whom it is directed. We do not give its deeper ideas and personal or dramatic suggestions to a company as a speech.

It is not surprising to find many monologues in epistolary form. Browning’s “Cleon,” in which is so truly presented the spirit of the Greeks,—to whom Paul spoke and wrote and among whom he worked,—is a letter written by Cleon, a Greek poet, to King Protus, his friend. Protus has written to Cleon concerning the opinions held by one Paulus, a rumor of whose preaching of the doctrine of immortality has reached him. “An epistle containing the strange Medical Experiments of Karshish, the Arab Physician,” is a letter from Karshish to his old teacher describing the strange case of Lazarus with an account of an interview with him after he had risen from the dead.

This poem illustrates also the fact that a monologue may not be on the personal plane. Browning is seemingly the only writer in English who has been able to present a character completely negative, or one without personal relations to the events. The character in this poem has a purely scientific attribute of mind and looks upon this event from a purely neutral point of view. It is only to him a curious case. By this method, the deeper significance may be given to the events while at the same time accentuating a peculiar type of mind, or it may be a rare moment in the life of nearly every individual. This poem is accordingly very interesting from a psychological point of view. It illustrates the scientific temper. The French have many examples of such writers, but Browning gives the best,—in fact almost the only illustration in English literature.

“The Biglow Papers,” by Lowell, though in the form of letters, are really dramatic monologues. Each character is made to speak dramatically or in his own peculiar way. The chief interest of every one of these poems centres in the character speaking. The mental action is sustained consistently; the dramatic completeness, the definite point of view, and the dialect, enable us to picture the peculiar characters who think and feel, live and move, talk and act for our enjoyment.

The monologue, accordingly, is nearer to the dialogue than to a letter. The differences between the dialogue and the monologue are the chief differences between the monologue and the play. In a dialogue there is a constant and immediate effect of another personality upon the speaker. The same is true of the monologue. The speaker of the monologue must accentuate the effect of his interlocutor as flexibly and freely as in the case of the dialogue. In the dialogue, however, the speaker and the listener change places; the monologue has but one speaker, and can only suggest the views or character of a listener by revealing some impression produced upon the speaker while in the act of speaking. This makes pauses and expressive modulations of the voice even more necessary in the monologue than in the dialogue.

Yet the mere fact that a poem or literary work has but one speaker does not make it a monologue; it may be a speech. Burns’s “For A’ That and A’ That” is a speech. Matthew Arnold may not be quite fair when he says that it is mere preaching, that Burns was not sincere, and that we find the real Burns in “The Jolly Beggars.” Still, all must feel in reading it that Burns is exhorting others and railing a little at the world, but not revealing a character unconsciously or indirectly, through contact with either a man of another type, or through the exigencies of a given situation. Burns is boasting a little and asserting his independence.

The monologue demands not only a speaker, but a speaker in such a situation as will cause him to reveal himself unconsciously and indirectly, and such a moment as will lay bare his deepest motives. He must speak also in a natural, lifelike way. There must be no suggestion of a platform, no conscious presentation of truth for a definite end, as with the orator.

It is a peculiar fact that the most difficult of all things is to tell the truth. Every man “knows a good many things that are not so.” For every affirmation of importance, we demand witnesses. Whenever a man speaks, we look into his character, into the living, natural languages which are unconscious witnesses of the depth of his earnestness and sincerity. Even in every-day life men judge of truth by character. What a man is, always colors, if it does not determine, what he says. But the essence of the monologue is to bring what a man says and what he is into harmony.

The interpreter of a monologue must be true to the character of the speaker. He must faithfully portray, not his own, but the attitude and bearing, feelings and impression, of this character. Every normal person would greatly admire the beauties of “the villa,” but the “Italian person of quality,” in Browning’s monologue, feels for it great contempt.

In Browning’s “Youth and Art” we feel continually the point of view, the feeling, and the character of the speaker.

YOUTH AND ART

It once might have been, once only:
We lodged in a street together,
You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
I, a lone she-bird of his feather.
Your trade was with sticks and clay,
You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished,
Then laughed, “They will see, some day,
Smith made, and Gibson demolished.”
My business was song, song, song;
I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered,
“Kate Brown’s on the boards ere long,
And Grisi’s existence imbittered!”
I earned no more by a warble
Than you by a sketch in plaster:
You wanted a piece of marble,
I needed a music-master.

We studied hard in our styles,
Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,
For air, looked out on the tiles,
For fun, watched each other’s windows.
You lounged, like a boy of the South,
Cap and blouse—nay, a bit of beard, too;
Or you got it, rubbing your mouth
With fingers the clay adhered to.
And I—soon managed to find
Weak points in the flower-fence facing,
Was forced to put up a blind
And be safe in my corset-lacing.
No harm! It was not my fault
If you never turned your eye’s tail up
As I shook upon E in alt.,
Or ran the chromatic scale up;
For spring bade the sparrows pair,
And the boys and girls gave guesses,
And stalls in our street looked rare
With bulrush and water-cresses.
Why did not you pinch a flower
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power
Of thanks in a look, or sing it?
I did look, sharp as a lynx
(And yet the memory rankles)
When models arrived, some minx
Tripped up stairs, she and her ankles.
But I think I gave you as good!
“That foreign fellow—who can know
How she pays, in a playful mood,
For his tuning her that piano?”
Could you say so, and never say,
“Suppose we join hands and fortunes,
And I fetch her from over the way,
Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?”

No, no; you would not be rash,
Nor I rasher and something over:
You’ve to settle yet Gibson’s hash,
And Grisi yet lives in clover.
But you meet the Prince at the Board.
I’m queen myself at bals-parés,
I’ve married a rich old lord,
And you’re dubbed knight and an R. A.
Each life’s unfulfilled, you see;
It hangs still patchy and scrappy;
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,—been happy.
And nobody calls you a dunce,
And people suppose me clever;
This could but have happened once,
And we missed it, lost it forever.

The theme is the dream and experience of two lovers. The speaker is married to a rich old lord, and her lover of other days, a sculptor, is “dubbed knight and an R. A.” Stirred by her youthful dreams, or it may be by the meeting of her lover in society, or possibly in imagination,—as a queen of “bals-parés” would hardly talk to a “knight and an R. A.” in this frank manner,—it is the woman who breaks forth suddenly with the dream of her old love—

“It once might have been, once only,”—

and relates the story of the days when they were both young students, she of singing and he of sculpture, and describes, or lightly caricatures, their experience. Is her laughter, as she goes on in such a playful mood describing the different events of their lives, an endeavor to conceal a hidden pain? Has she grown worldly minded, sneering at every youthful dream, even her own, or is she awakening from this worldly point of view to a realization at last of “life unfulfilled”?

Browning, instead of an abstract discussion, presents in an artistic form an important truth, that he who lives for the world does not live at all. By introducing this woman to us in a serious attitude of mind, reflecting on the one hand a worldly mood, on the other the deep, abiding love of a true woman, he makes the desired impression. The last line throbs with deep emotion, and we feel how slowly and sadly she would acknowledge the failure of life:

“And we missed it, lost it forever.”

Browning’s “Caliban upon Setebos” furnishes a forcible illustration of the importance of the speaker and the necessity of preserving his character and point of view in the monologue. “’Will sprawl” begins a long parenthesis which implies the first intention of Caliban to lie flat in “the pit’s much mire.” He describes definitely the position he likes “in the cool slush.” The words express Caliban’s feelings at his noonday rest and the position he takes for enjoyment. He has not yet risen to the dignity of the consciousness of the ego. He does not use the pronoun “I” or the possessive “my.” His verbs are impersonal,—“’Will sprawl,” not “I will sprawl,”—and he

“Talks to his own self, howe’er he please,
Touching that other whom his dam called God.”

He lies down in this position to have a good “think” regarding his “dam’s God, Setebos.” Notice the continual recurrence of the impersonal “thinketh” without any subject. Here we have a most humorous but really profound meditation of such a creature with all the elements of “natural theology in the island.” The subheading before the monologue, “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself,” indicates the current of Browning’s ideas.

When we have once pictured Caliban definitely in our minds with his “saith” and “thinketh,” we perceive the analogy which he establishes after the manner of men between his own low nature and that of deity.

To read such a work without a definite conception of the character talking, makes utter nonsense of the reading. Every sentiment and feeling in the poem regarding God is dramatic. However deep or profound the lesson conveyed, it is entirely indirect.

How different is the story of the glove and King Francis, as treated by Leigh Hunt, from its interpretation by Browning! Leigh Hunt centres everything in the sequence of events and the simple statement of facts.

“King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,
And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court.”

But Browning! He chooses a distinct character, Peter Ronsard, a poet, to tell the story, and adopts a totally different point of view, centring all in the speaker’s justification of the woman who threw the glove. Practically the same facts are told; even the King’s words are almost identical with those given by Hunt:

“’Twas mere vanity,
Not love, set that task to humanity!”

and he gives the ordinary point of view:

“Lords and ladies alike turned with loathing
From such a proved wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

But human character and motive is given a deeper interpretation and the poet does not accept their views:

“Not so, I; for I caught the expression
In her brow’s undisturbed self-possession
Amid the court’s scoffing and merriment;—
As if from no pleasing experiment,
She rose, yet of pain not much heedful
So long as the process was needful.”

The poet followed her and asked what it all meant, and if she did not wish to recall her rash deed.

“For I, so I spoke, am a poet,
Human nature,—behooves that I know it!”

So he tells you she explained that he had vowed and boasted what he would do, and she felt that she would put him to the test. Browning represents her as rejecting Delorge, whose admiration was shown by this incident to be superficial, and as marrying a humble but true-hearted lover.

“The Ring and the Book” illustrates possibly more amply than any other poem the peculiar dramatic force of the monologue.

The story, out of which is built a poem twice as long as “Paradise Lost,” can be told in a few words. Guido, a nobleman of Arezzo, poor, but of noble family, has sought advancement at the Papal Court. Embittered by failure, he resolves to establish himself by marriage with an heiress, and makes an offer for Pompilia, an innocent girl of sixteen, the only child of parents supposed to be wealthy. The father, Pietro, refuses the offer, but the mother arranges a secret marriage, and Pietro accepts the situation. The old couple put all their property into the hands of the son-in-law and go with him to Arezzo. The marriage proves unhappy, and Guido robs and persecutes the old people until they return poor to Rome. The mother then makes the unexpected revelation that Pompilia is not her child. She had bought her, and Pietro and the world believe that she was her own. On this account they seek to recover Pompilia’s dowry. Pompilia suffers outrageous treatment from her husband, who wishes to be rid of her and yet keep her property, and lays all kinds of snares in the endeavor to drive her away. She at length flees, and is aided in so doing by a noble-hearted priest. On the road they are overtaken by the husband, who starts proceedings for a divorce at Rome. The divorce is refused, but the wife is placed in mild imprisonment, though later she is allowed to return to her so-called parents, in whose home she gives birth to a son. Guido now tries to get possession of the child, as, by this means he secures all rights to the property. With some hirelings he goes to the lonely house, and murders Pompilia and her parents. Pompilia does not die immediately, but lives to give her testimony against her husband. Guido flees, is arrested on Roman territory, and is tried and condemned to death. An appeal is made to the Pope, who confirms the sentence.

This story is told ten or twelve times, all interest centring in the characters of the speakers, in their points of view and attitudes of mind. More fully, perhaps, than any other poem, “The Ring and the Book” shows that every one in relating the simplest events or facts gives a coloring to the truth of his character.

In Book I Browning speaks in his own character, and states the facts and how the story came into his hands. In Book II, called “Half-Rome,” a Roman, more or less in sympathy with the husband, tells the story. In Book III, styled “The Other Half-Rome,” one in sympathy with the wife tells the story. In Book IV, called “Tertium Quid,” a society gentleman, who prides himself on his critical acumen, tells the story in a drawing-room. Each speaker in these monologues has a character of his own, and the facts are strongly colored according to his nature and point of view. In Book V Guido makes his defence before the judges. He is a criminal defending himself, and puts facts in such a way as to justify his actions. In Book VI the priest who assisted Pompilia to escape passionately proclaims the lofty motives which actuated Pompilia and himself. In Book VII Pompilia, on her deathbed, gives her testimony, telling the story with intense pathos. In Book VIII a lawyer, with all the ingenuity of his profession, speaks in defence of Guido, but without touching upon the merits of the case. In Book IX Pompilia’s advocate, endeavoring to display his fine cultured style, gives a legal justification of her course. In Book X the Pope decides against Guido, and gives the reasons for this decision. Book XI is Guido’s last confession as a condemned man; here his character is still more definitely unfolded. He tries to bribe his guards; though still defiant, he shows his base, cowardly nature at the close, and ends his final weak and chaotic appeal by calling on Pompilia, thus giving the highest testimony possible to the purity and sweetness of the woman he murdered:

“Don’t open! Hold me from them! I am yours,
I am the Granduke’s—no, I am the Pope’s!
Abate,—Cardinal,—Christ,—Maria,—God, ...
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?”

In his defence he was concealing his real deeds and character, and justifying himself. In this book he reveals himself with great frankness.

In Book XII the case is given as it fades into history, and the poem closes with a lesson regarding the function or necessity of art in telling truth.

“The Ring and the Book” affords perhaps the highest example of the value of the monologue as a form of art. Men who have only one point of view are always “cranks,”—able, that is, to turn only one way. A preacher who can appreciate only the point of view of his own denomination will never get very near the truth. The statesman who declares “there is but one side to a question” may sometime by his narrowness assist in plunging his country into a great war. No man can help his fellows if unable to see things from their point of view. “The Ring and the Book” shows every speaker coloring the truth unconsciously by his own character, and Browning, by putting the same facts in the mouths of different persons, enables us to discover the personal element.

This is the specific function of the monologue. It artistically interprets truth by interpreting the soul that realizes it. This excites interest in the speaker and shows its dramatic character.

Browning, by its aid, interprets peculiarities of human nature before unnoticed. Dramatic instinct is given a new literary form and expression. Human nature receives a profounder interpretation. We are made more teachable and sympathetic. The monologue exhibits one person drawing quick conclusions, another meeting doubt with counter-doubt, or still another calmly weighing evidences; it occupies many points of view, thus giving a clearer perception of truth through the mirror of human character.

III. THE HEARER

To comprehend the spirit of the monologue demands a clear conception, not only of the character of the speaker, but also of the person addressed. The hearer is often of as great importance to the meaning of a monologue as is the person speaking.

It is a common blunder to consider dramatic instinct as concerned only with a speaker. Nearly every one regards it as the ability to “act a character,” to imitate the action or the speech of some particular individual. But this conception is far too narrow. The dramatic instinct is primarily concerned with insight into character, with problems of imagination, and with sympathy. By it we realize another’s point of view or attitude of mind towards a truth or situation, and identify ourselves sympathetically with character.

Dramatic instinct is necessary to all human endeavor. It is as necessary for the orator as it is for the actor. While it is true that the speaker must be himself and must succeed by the vigor of his own personality, and that the actor must succeed through “fidelity of portraiture,” still the orator must be able not only to say the right word, but to know when he says it, and this ability results only from dramatic instinct. The actor needs more of the personating instinct or insight into motives of character; the speaker, more insight into the conditions of human thought and feeling.

While one function of dramatic instinct is the ability to identify one’s self with another, it is much easier to identify one’s self with the speaker than with the listener. Even on the stage the most difficult task for the actor is to listen in character; that is, to receive impressions from the standpoint of the character he is representing.

Possibly the fundamental element in dramatic instinct is the ability to occupy a point of view, to see a truth as another sees it. This shows why dramatic instinct is the foundation of success. It enables a teacher to know whether his student is at the right point of view to apprehend a truth, or in the proper attitude of mind towards a subject. It tells him when he has made a truth understood. It gives the speaker power to adapt and to illustrate his truth to others, and to see things from his hearers’ point of view. It gives the writer power to impress his reader. Even the business man must intuitively perceive the point of view and the mental attitude of those with whom he deals.

Dramatic instinct as applied to listening on the stage, and everywhere, is apt to be overlooked. It is comparatively easy when quoting some one to stand at his point of view and to imitate his manner, or to contrast the differences between a number of speakers; but a higher type of dramatic power is exhibited in the ability to put ourselves in the place and receive the impressions of some specific type of listener.

The speeches of different characters are given formally and successively in a drama. Hence, the writer of a play, or the actor, is apt to centre attention, when speaking, upon the character, without reference to the shape his thought takes from what the other character has said, and especially from those attitudes or actions of the other character which are not revealed by words. The same is true in the novel, and even in epic poetry. True dramatic instinct in any form demands that the speaker show not only his own thought and motive by his words, but that of the character he is portraying, and the influence produced upon him at the instant by the thought and character of the listener.

While the dialogue is not the only form of dramatic art, still its study is required for the understanding of the monologue, or almost any aspect of dramatic expression. The very name “dialogue” implies a listener and a speaker who are continually changing places. The listener indicates by his face and by actions of the body his impression, his attention, the effect upon him of the words of the speaker, his objection or approval. Thus he influences the speaker in shaping his ideas and choosing his words.

In the monologue the speaker must suggest the character of both speaker and listener and interpret the relation of one human being to another. He must show, as he speaks, the impression he receives from the manner in which his listener is affected by what he is saying. A public reader, or impersonator, of all the characters of a play must perform a similar feat; he must represent each character not only as speaker, but show that he has just been a listener and received an impression or stimulus from another; otherwise he cannot suggest any true dramatic action.

In the monologue, as in all true dramatic representation, the listener as well as the speaker must be realized as continuously living and thinking. The listener, though he utters not a word, must be conceived from the effect he makes upon the speaker, in order to perceive the argument as well as the situation and point of view.

The necessity of realizing a listener is one of the most important points to be noted in the study of the monologue. Take, as an illustration, Browning’s “Incident of the French Camp.”

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
A mile or so away,
On a little mound, Napoleon
Stood on our storming day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.
Just as perhaps he mused, “My plans
That soar, to earth may fall,
Let once my army-leader Lannes
Waver at yonder wall,”—
Out ’twixt the battery smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound
Full galloping; nor bridle drew
Until he reached the mound.

Then off there flung in smiling joy,
And held himself erect
By just his horse’s mane, a boy:
You hardly could suspect—
(So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.
“Well,” cried he, “Emperor, by God’s grace
We’ve got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal’s in the market-place,
And you’ll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his wings
Where I, to heart’s desire,
Perched him!” The Chief’s eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.
The Chief’s eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle’s eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes:
“You’re wounded!” “Nay,” his soldier’s pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
“I’m killed, Sire!” And, his Chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead.

I have heard prominent public readers give this as a mere story without affording any definite conception of either speaker or listener. In the first reading over of the poem, one may find no hint of either. But the student catches the phrase “we French,” and at once sees that a Frenchman must be speaking. He soon discovers that the whole poem is colored by the feeling of some old soldier of Napoleon who was either an eye-witness of the scene or who knew Napoleon’s bearing so well that he could easily picture it to his imagination. The poem now becomes a living thing, and its interpretation by voice and action is rendered possible. But is this all? To whom does the soldier speak? The listener seems entirely in the background. This is wise, because the other in telling his story would naturally lose himself in his memories and grow more or less oblivious of his hearer. But the conception of a sympathetic auditor is needed to quicken the fervor and animation of the speaker. Does not the phrase “we French” imply that the listener is another Frenchman whose patriotic enthusiasm responds to the story? The short phrases, and suggestive hints through the poem, are thus explained. The speaker seems to imply that Napoleon’s bearing is well known to his listener. Certainly upon the conception of such a speaker and such a hearer depends the spirit, dramatic force, and even thought of the poem.

I have chosen this illustration purposely, because, of all monologues, this lays possibly the least emphasis on a listener; yet it cannot be adequately rendered by the voice, or even properly conceived in thought, without a distinct realization of such a person.

In Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” the speaker is an old man. “Grow old along with me!” indicates this, and we feel his age and experience all through the poem. But without the presence of this youth, who must have expressed pity for the loneliness and gloom of age, the old man would never have broken forth so suddenly and so forcibly in the portrayal of his noble philosophy of life. He expands with joy, love for his race, and reverence for Providence. “Grow old along with me!” “Trust God: see all, nor be afraid!” His enthusiasm, his exalted realization of life, are due to his own nobility of character. But his earnestness, his vivid illustrations, his emphasis and action, spring from his efforts to expound the philosophy of life to his youthful listener and to correct the young man’s one-sided views. The characters of both speaker and listener are necessary in order that one may receive an understanding of the argument.

RABBI BEN EZRA

Grow old along with me! the best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand who saith, “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”
Not that, amassing flowers, youth sighed, “Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall!”
Not that, admiring stars, it yearned, “Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!”
Not for such hopes and fears, annulling youth’s brief years,
Do I remonstrate; folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed, were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then as sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?
Rejoice we are allied to That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod; nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.
Then, welcome each rebuff that turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three parts pain! strive and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
For thence—a paradox which comforts while it mocks—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me;
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.

What is he but a brute whose flesh hath soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test—thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
Yet gifts should prove their use: I own the past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole, brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once “How good to live and learn”?
Not once beat “Praise be thine! I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
Perfect I call Thy plan: thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what Thou shalt do!”
For pleasant is this flesh: our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:
Would we some prize might hold to match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!
Let us not always say, “Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!”
As the bird wings and sings, let us cry, “All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!”
Therefore I summon age to grant youth’s heritage,
Life’s struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved a man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.
And I shall thereupon take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new;
Fearless and unperplexed, when I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to indue.
Youth ended, I shall try my gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same, give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
For note, when evening shuts, a certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
A whisper from the west shoots, “Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day.”

So, still within this life, though lifted o’er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
“This rage was right i’ the main, that acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past.”
For more is not reserved to man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day;
Here, work enough to watch the Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool’s true play.
As it was better, youth should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made;
So, better, age, exempt from strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid!
Enough now, if the Right and Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute, subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
Be there, for once and all, severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I the world arraigned, were they my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?
Not on the vulgar mass called “work” must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O’er which, from level stand, the low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
But all, the world’s coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature, all purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount;
Thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be, all men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter’s wheel, that metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound, when the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!”
Fool! All that is at all lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee, that was, is, and shall be:
Time’s wheel runs back or stops; potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee mid this dance of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest
Machinery just meant to give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
What though the earlier grooves which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim, skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
Look thou not down but up! to uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal,
The new wine’s foaming flow, the Master’s lips a-glow!
Thou, Heaven’s consummate cup, what needst thou with earth’s wheel?
But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I—to the wheel of life, with shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst;
So take and use Thy work, amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand! perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Even when the words are the same, the delivery changes according to the peculiarities of the hearer. No one tells a story in the same way to different persons. When it is narrated to a little child, greater emphasis is placed on points; we make longer pauses and more salient, definite pictures; but if it is told to an educated man, the thought is sketched more in outline. To one who is ignorant of the circumstances many details are carefully suggested. Even the figures and illustrations are consciously or unconsciously so chosen by one with the dramatic instinct as to adapt the truth to the listener.

In “The Englishman in Italy,” the story is told to a child. After the quotation, “such trifles,” the Englishman speaking would no doubt laugh. The spirit of the poem is shown by the fact that it is spoken by an Englishman to a little child that is an Italian.

A monologue shows the effect of character upon character, and hence nearly always implies the direct speaking of one person to another. In this it differs from a speech. Still, the principle applies even to the speaker. He cannot present a subject in the same way to an educated and to an uneducated audience, but instinctively chooses words common to him and to his hearers and finds such illustrations as make his meaning obvious to them. All language is imperfect. Truth is not made clear by being made superficial, but by the careful choosing of words and illustrations understood by the hearer. The speaker, accordingly, must feel his audience. The imperfection of ordinary teaching and speaking is thus explained by a form of dramatic art. Browning says at the close of “The Ring and the Book”:

“Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.
How look a brother in the face and say
‘Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind,
Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length,
And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith!’
Say this as silvery as tongue can troll—
The anger of the man may be endured,
The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him
Are not so bad to bear—but here’s the plague,
That all this trouble comes of telling truth,
Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false,
Seems to be just the thing it would supplant,
Nor recognizable by whom it left;
While falsehood would have done the work of truth.
But Art,—wherein man nowise speaks to men,
Only to mankind,—Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.”

In “A Woman’s Last Word,” already explained (p. [6]), the listening husband, his attitude towards his wife, his jealousy and suspicion, all serve to call forth her love and nobility of character. He is the cause of the monologue, and must be as definitely conceived as the speaker. Without a clear conception of his character, her words cannot receive the right interpretation.

In “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” the listener, Mr. Gigadibs, is definitely, though indirectly, portrayed. He is a young man of thirty, impulsive, ideal, but has not yet struggled with the problems of life. His criticisms of Blougram are answered by that worldly-minded ecclesiastic, who can declare most truly the fact that an absolute faith is not possible, and then assume—and thus contradict himself—that to ignorant people he must preach an absolute faith. The character of the Bishop is strongly conceived, and his perception of the highest possibility of life, as well as his failure to carry it out, are portrayed with marvellous complexity and full recognition of the difficulties of reconciling idealism with realism. But the character of his young, enthusiastic, and earnest critic, who lacks his experience and who may be partially silenced, is as important as the apology of Blougram. The poem is a debate between an idealist and a realist, the speech of the realist alone being given. We catch the weakness and the strength of both points of view, and thus enter into the comprehension of a most subtle struggle for self-justification.

It is some distance from Bishop Blougram to Mr. Dooley, but the necessity for a listener in the monologue, a listener of definite character, is shown in both cases.

Dooley’s talks are a departure from the regular form of the monologue, in the fact that Hennessey now and then speaks a word directly; but this partial introduction of dialogue does not change the fact that all of these talks are monologues. Such interruptions are not the only types of departure from the strict form of the monologue. Browning gives a narrative conclusion to “Pheidippides” and “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” and many variations are found among different authors. Hennessey’s remarks may be introduced as a way of arousing in the imagination of ordinary people a conception of the listener. The relationship of the two characters is thus possibly more easily pictured to the ordinary imagination.

Of the necessity of Hennessey there can be no doubt. Mr. Dooley would never speak in this way but for the sympathetic and reverently attentive Hennessey. The two are complemental and necessary to each other.

Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures were very popular, perhaps partly because of the silence expressing the patience of Caudle, though there were appendices that indicated remarks written down by Mr. Caudle, but long afterwards and when alone. There are some advantages in the pure form; the mind is kept more concentrated. So without Hennessey’s direct remarks the picture of Dooley might have been even better sustained. The form of a monologue, however, must not be expected to remain rigid. The point here to be apprehended is the necessity of recognizing a listener as well as a speaker.

Every Dooley demands a listener. He must have appreciation. These monologues are a humorous, possibly unconscious, presentation of this principle. The audience or the reader is turned by the author into a contemplative spectator of a simple situation. A play demands a struggle, but here we have all the restfulness, ease, and repose of life itself. We all like to sit back and observe, especially when a character is unfolding itself.

In the monologue as well as in the play there is no direct teaching. Things happen as in life, and we see the action of a thought upon a certain mind and do our own exhorting or preaching.

The monologue adapts itself to all kinds of characters and to every species of theme. It does not require a plot, or even a great struggle, as in the case of the play. Attention is fixed upon one individual; we are led into the midst of the natural situations of every-day life, and receive with great force the impressions which events, ideas, or other characters make upon a specific type of man.

Eugene Field often makes children talk in monologues. Some persons have criticized Field’s children’s poems and said they were not for children at all. This is true, and Field no doubt intended it so. He made his children talk naturally and freely, as if to each other, but not as they would talk to older people.

“Jes’ ’Fore Christmas” is true to a boy’s character, but we must be careful in choosing a listener. The boy would not speak in this way to an audience, to the family at the dinner table, nor to any one but a confidant. He must have, in fact, a Hennessey,—possibly some other boy, or, more likely, some hired man.

It is a mistake, unfortunately a common one, to give such a poem as a speech to an audience. It is not a speech, but only one end of a conversation. It is almost lyric in its portrayal of feeling, but still it concerns human action and the relations of persons to each other. Therefore, it is primarily dramatic, and a monologue. The words must be considered as spoken to some confidential listener.

A proper conception of the monologue produces a higher appreciation of the work of Field. As monologues, his poems are always consistent and beautiful. When considered as mere stories for children, their artistic form has been misconceived, and interpreters of them with this conception have often failed.

Even “Little Boy Blue,” a decided lyric, has a definite speaker, and the objects described and the events indicated are intensely as well as dramatically realized. Notice the abrupt transitions, the sudden changes in feeling. It is more easily rendered with a slight suggestion of a sympathetic listener.

Many persons regard James Whitcomb Riley’s “Knee-deep in June” as a lyric; but has it enough unconsciousness for this? To me it is far more flexible and spontaneous when considered as a monologue. The interpreter of the poem can make longer pauses. He can so identify himself with the character as to give genial and hearty laughter, and thus indicate dramatically the sudden arrival of ideas. To reveal the awakening of an idea is the very soul of spontaneous expression, and such awakening is nearly always dramatic. So in the following conception, what a sudden, joyous discovery can be made of

“Mr. Blue Jay full o’ sass,
In them base-ball cloes o’ hisn.”

Notice also the sudden breaks in transition that can be indicated in

“Blue birds’ nests tucked up there
Conveniently for the boy ’at’s apt to be
Up some other apple tree.”

Notice after “to be” how he suddenly enjoys the birds’ cunning and laughs for the moment at the boys’ failure. You can accentuate, too, his dramatic feeling for May and “’bominate its promises” with more decision and point.

The “you” in this poem and the frequent imperatives indicate the conception in the author’s mind of a speaker and a sympathetic companion out in the fields in June. It certainly detracts from the simplicity, dramatic intensity, naturalness, and spontaneity to make of it a kind of address to an audience. The same is true of the “Liztown Humorist,” “Kingsby’s Mill,” “Joney,” and many others which are usually considered and rendered as stories. They are monologues. Possibly a completer title for them would be lyric monologues.

While the interpreter of these monologues can easily turn his auditors into a sympathetic and familiar group who might stand for his listener, he can transport them in imagination to the right situation; and while this is often done by interpreters with good effect, to my mind this does not change their character as monologues.

Granting, however, that some of Riley’s poems are more or less speeches, it must be admitted that he has written some definite and formal poems which cannot be so conceived. “Nothin’ to Say,” for example, is one of the most decided and formal monologues found anywhere. In this the listener

NOTHIN’ TO SAY

Nothin’ to say, my daughter! Nothin’ at all to say!—
Gyrls that’s in love, I’ve noticed, ginerly has their way!
Yer mother did afore you, when her folks objected to me—
Yit here I am, and here you air; and yer mother—where is she?
You look lots like yer mother: Purty much same in size;
And about the same complected; and favor about the eyes:
Like her, too, about her livin here,—because she couldn’t stay:
It’ll ’most seem like you was dead—like her!—But I hain’t got nothin’ to say!
She left you her little Bible—writ yer name acrost the page—
And left her ear-bobs fer you, ef ever you come of age.
I’ve allus kep’ ’em and gyuarded ’em, but ef yer goin’ away—
Nothin’ to say, my daughter! Nothin’ at all to say!
You don’t rikollect her, I reckon? No; you wasn’t a year old then!
And now yer—how old air you? W’y, child, not “twenty!” When?
And yer nex’ birthday’s in Aprile? and you want to git married that day?
... I wisht yer mother was livin’!—But—I hain’t got nothin’ to say!

Twenty year! and as good a gyrl as parent ever found.
There’s a straw ketched onto yer dress there—I’ll bresh it off—turn round.
(Her mother was jes’ twenty when us two run away!)
Nothin’ to say, my daughter! Nothin’ at all to say!

can be as definitely located as the speaker. To conceal his own tears, the speaker turns or stops and pretends to brush off a straw caught on his daughter’s dress. We have here in this monologue also something unusual, but very suggestive and strictly dramatic,—an aside wherein he evidently turns away from his daughter—

(“Her mother was jes’ twenty when us two run away.”)

Since the daughter is definitely located as listener and the other speeches are spoken to her, this can be given easily as a contrast, as an aside to himself, and a slight turn of the body will serve to emphasize, even as an aside often does in a play, the location of the daughter, and the speaker’s relation to her. The sentiment also serves to emphasize the character of the speaker.

In “Griggsby’s Station” we have a most decided monologue. Who is speaking, and to whom is the monologue addressed? Is the speaker the daughter in a family suddenly grown rich, talking to her mother? The character of the speaker and of the listener must be definitely conceived and carefully suggested in order to give truth to the rendering or even to realize its meaning.

The same is true regarding many of Holman Day’s stories in his “Up in Maine,” and other books. With hardly any exception these are best rendered as monologues.

Many of the poems of Sam Walter Foss and other popular writers of the present are monologues. The homelike characters demand sympathetic listeners, who are, by implication, of the same general type and character as the speaker. Even “The House by the Side of the Road” is better given with the spirit of the monologue. It is too personal, too dramatic, to be turned into a speech.

Again, notice Mrs. Piatt’s “Sometime,” and a dozen examples in Webb’s “Vagrom Verse”; also “With Lead and Line along Varying Shores”; and in Oscar Fay Adams’s “Sicut Patribus,” where you would hardly expect monologues, you find that “At Bay” and “Conrad’s Choir” have the form of monologues.

Many monologues in our popular writers seem at first simple and without the formal and definite construction of those employed by Browning, yet after careful examination we feel that the conception of the monologue has slowly taken possession of our writers, it may be unconsciously, and that the true interpretation of many of the most popular poems demands from the reader a dramatic conception.

For the comprehension of any monologue, those points where the speaker is directly affected by the hearer need especial attention. The speaker occasionally echoes the words of his hearer. Mrs. Caudle, for instance, often quotes the words of her spouse, and these were printed by Douglas Jerrold in italics and even in separate paragraphs. “For the love of mercy let you sleep?” for example, was thus printed to emphasize the interruption by Caudle. These words would be echoed by her with affected surprise. Then she would pour out her sarcasm: “Mercy indeed; I wish you would show a little of it to other people.” In most authors these echoed speeches are indicated by quotation marks. Browning sometimes has words in parentheses. Note “(What ‘cicada’? Pooh!)” in “A Tale.” “Cicada” was certainly spoken by the listener, but the other words in the parentheses and other parentheses in this monologue are more personal remarks by the speaker. They have reference, however, to the listener’s attitude.

In some cases Browning gives no indication by even quotation marks that the speaker is echoing words of the hearer. The attitude of the listener must be varied by the dramatic instinct of the reader. The grasp of the situation greatly depends upon this. It is one of the most important aspects of the dramatic instinct. (“Up at a Villa—Down in the City,” see p. [65].) “Why” and “What of a Villa” certainly refers to the words, or at least the attitude, of the listener, which is realized from the manner of the speaker.

In the same poem the question “Is it ever hot in the square?” may be the echo of a word or a thought of the listener. In this case the speaker would answer it more abruptly and positively when he says, “There is a fountain to spout and splash.” If, on the contrary, the thought is his own, and comes up naturally in his mind as one of the points in his description or as a result of living over his experience down in the city, he would give it less abruptly, with less force or emphasis. In general, a quotation or the echo of the words of a listener are given by the speaker with a different manner.

Tennyson, though the fact is often overlooked, has written many monologues.

Some readers give “Lady Clara Vere de Vere” as a mere story. Is there, then, no thought of the character of the yeoman who is talking with burning indignation at the death of his friend?

LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Of me you shall not win renown:
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired:
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
I know you proud to bear your name,
Your pride is yet no mate for mine,
Too proud to care from whence I came.
Nor would I break for your sweet sake
A heart that doats on truer charms.
A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats of arms.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Some meeker pupil you must find,
For were you queen of all that is,
I could not stoop to such a mind.
You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
You put strange memories in my head;
Nor thrice your branching limes have blown
Since I beheld young Laurence dead.
Oh, your sweet eyes, your low replies:
A great enchantress you may be:
But there was that across his throat
Which you had hardly cared to see.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
When thus he met his mother’s view,
She had the passions of her kind,
She spake some certain truths of you.
Indeed I heard one bitter word
That scarce is fit for you to hear:
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
There stands a spectre in your hall:
The guilt of blood is at your door:
You changed a wholesome heart to gall.
You held your course without remorse,
To make him trust his modest worth,
And, last, you fixed a vacant stare,
And slew him with your noble birth.
Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
From yon blue heavens above us bent
The gardener Adam and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe’er it be, it seems to me,
’Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
I know you, Clara Vere de Vere,
You pine among your halls and towers:
The languid light of your proud eyes
Is wearied of the rolling hours.
In glowing health, with boundless wealth,
But sickening of a vague disease,
You know so ill to deal with time,
You needs must play such pranks as these.
Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,
If Time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no beggars at your gate,
Nor any poor about your lands?
Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew,
Pray Heaven for a human heart,
And let the foolish yeoman go.

The character of the speaker must be realized from first to last. But there is something more. Did the yeoman win or lose his case? Does Tennyson give us no sign of the effect of his words upon the lady to whom his rebuke was directed? All whom I have heard read it, cause one to think that she remains stolid, unresponsive, and cold, or else she was not really present, and the poem is a kind of lyric. But you will notice that in the last stanza the speaker drops the “Lady,” and says “Clara, Clara,” which certainly shows a change in feeling. There are also other indications that she was affected by his words, and that the speaker saw it. In the line, “You know so ill to deal with time,” he may be excusing her conduct, while in the last lines he suggests how she should live to atone for the past:

“Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew.”

He certainly would not have spoken thus if she had not by word or look shown indications of repentance. Truth must accomplish its results. Art must reflect the victory of truth. We perceive the signs of victory in the very words of the poem, and the character of the speaker’s expression must reflect the response in her. The reader who dramatically or truly interprets the poem, feeling this, will show a change in feeling and movement, and give tender coloring to the closing words.

Of course there is much moralizing in this and a smoother movement than in a monologue by Browning. Tennyson is not a master of the monologue. Some may think that Clara would never have endured this long lecture, and that it is unnatural for us to conceive of her as being really present; but, though poetry usually takes fewer words to say something than would be used in life, sometimes—and here possibly—it takes more. Certainly Tennyson often takes more, and this is one reason why he is not a dramatic poet. The poem, however, can be effectively rendered as a monologue, and thus receive a more adequate interpretation.

There is frequently more than one listener. In “The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church,” the Bishop speaks to many “sons,” though he calls out Anselm especially, his chief heir, perhaps. In “The Ring and the Book” some of the speakers address the court and almost make speeches, as do the lawyers in their pleas, for instance. But the Pope, who acts, it will be remembered, as the judge, is in many cases the person addressed. The principle is the same, though the situations may differ. In every case, such a situation, listener, or listeners are chosen as will best express the character of the speaker. Notice, for example, that Pompilia tells her story on her dying bed to the sympathetic nuns, who would best call forth the points in her story.

The listener is sometimes changed, or may change, positions. In Riley’s “There, Little Girl, Don’t Cry,” the three great periods in a woman’s life are portrayed, and the location of the listener must be changed to show the different situations and changes of time and place as well as the character of the listener. Long pauses and extreme variations in the modulations of the voice are also necessary in such a transition. This poem also affords an example of the age and experience of the listener affecting expression.

In many monologues the person about whom the speaker talks is of great importance. In “The Flight of the Duchess” we almost entirely lose sight of the speaker and of the hearer, and our thought successively centres upon the Duke, on his mother, on the old crone, and, above all, on the Duchess. These characters are made to live before us, and we see the impressions they produce upon a simple, loyal heart. The beauty of this wonderful monologue lies in the portrayal of the honest nature of the speaker and the revelation of the impressions made upon him by those who have played parts in his life.

The series of monologues or soliloquies styled by Browning “James Lee’s Wife” were called “James Lee” in his first edition, and many feel that Browning made a mistake in changing the title; for the theme in these is the character, not of the woman who speaks so much as of the man about whom she speaks.

In Browning’s “Clive,” the speaker, who “is by no means a Clive,” according to Professor Dowden, “has to betray something of his own character and at the same time to set forth the character of the hero of his tale.” Here, of course, both speaker and listener are subordinated to Clive, the person spoken of. Hence some may be tempted to think that “Clive” is a mere story. Dowden, Chesterton, and others speak of it as a story, but it has the movement, the dramatic action, the unity and spirit of a monologue. The fact that the chief character is the one about whom the speaker talks makes the poem none the less dramatic. The more “Clive” is studied, the more will the student feel that its chief theme is the contact and conflict of characters, and the more, too, will he perceive that its atmosphere and peculiarities are caused by the sense of a speaker and a listener, each of a distinct type.

This indirect narration or suggestion is often important, but in every case it is the speaker who reflects as from a mirror impressions produced upon him by the characters of those about whom he speaks.

The study of the relations of speaker and hearer requires discrimination to be made between the soliloquy and the monologue.

Shakespeare’s soliloquies may be thought to be unnatural. No man ever talked to his fellows as Hamlet talks when alone, and Juliet at the window is made to reveal her deepest feelings. But all love songs express what the words of the ordinary man can never reveal. All art, and especially all literature, is a kind of objective embodiment of feeling or the processes of thinking. While Shakespeare’s soliloquies may not seem as natural as conversation, in one sense they are more natural expressions of thinking and feeling. The highest poetry may be as natural as prose, or even more natural; all depends upon the mood or theme. In all art and literature, naturalness is due not to mere external accidents, but to the truthfulness of the expression of deeper emotions of the human heart.

Many feel that any representation in words of a mood or feeling is a lyric; hence they regard most monologues as lyrics. But are not Shakespeare’s soliloquies dramatic? The lyric spirit gives objective form to feeling, but dramatic poetry does this in a way to show character and motives as well as moods.

To a certain extent, the lyric spirit and the dramatic can never be completely separated. There has never been a good play that was not lyric as well as dramatic. There has never been a true lyric poem that has not revealed some trait of human character and implied certain relations of human beings to each other. It is only the predominance of feeling and mood that makes a poem lyric, or the predominance of relations or conflicts of human beings that makes a passage dramatic. All the elements of poetry are inseparably united because they express living aspects of the human heart.

Shakespeare’s soliloquies deserve careful study as the best introduction to the deep nature of the monologue. They are objective embodiments in words of feelings and moods of which the speaker himself is only partly conscious. This is the very climax of literature,—to word what no individual ever words. In a sense, this is true of a lyric, which may interpret in the many words of a song what in life is a mere look or the hardly revealed attitude of a soul. The deepest feelings of love can never be expressed in the prose of conversation. They can be suggested only in the exalted language of poetry.

These principles apply especially to the appreciation of a soliloquy. Of this phase of dramatic or literary art there has been but one master, and that was Shakespeare. He could make Hamlet think and feel before us without relation to another human being. He is the only author, practically, who has ever been able to portray a character entirely alone. In the great climaxes of his plays, we feel that he is dealing with the interpretation of the deepest moods and motives of life.

The exclamation, “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,” after the departure of the King and the Court, reveals to us Hamlet’s real condition, his impression or premonition that something is wrong. We are thus prepared for the effect of the news brought by Horatio and Marcellus, because his attitude has been first revealed to us by Shakespeare. Shakespeare alone could perform this marvellous feat. Again, one of the most important acts closes with a soliloquy which reveals Hamlet’s spirit more definitely than could be done in any other way. This soliloquy comes naturally. Hamlet drives all from him, that he may arrange the dozen lines which he wishes to add to the play. This plan has come to him while he was listening to the actor, and must be shown by his action during the actor’s speech. Hamlet, in a proper stage arrangement, is so placed as to occupy the attention of the audience while the actor is reciting. The impressions produced upon him, and not the player’s rehearsal, form the centre of interest. By turning away while listening to the actor, he can indicate his agitation and the action of his mind in deciding upon the plan which is definitely stated in the soliloquy and forms the culmination of the act.

Notice, too, how Shakespeare makes this soliloquy come naturally between his dismissal of the two emissaries of the King and the writing of the addition to the play. Hamlet’s soul is laid bare. He is roused to a pitch of great excitement over the grief of the actor and his own indifference to his father’s murder. Then, taking up the play, he begins to prepare his extra lines, and with this closes the most passionate of all soliloquies.

Strictly speaking, a soliloquy is only a revelation of the thinking of a person entirely alone and uninfluenced by another; but a monologue implies thinking influenced by some peculiar type of hearer.

Browning’s soliloquies are practically monologues. We feel that the character almost “others” itself and talks to itself as if to another person. This is also natural. We know it by observing children. But it is very different from the lonely soul revealing itself in Shakespeare’s soliloquies. In fact, the monologue has taken such hold upon Browning that even Pippa’s soliloquies in “Pippa Passes” are practically monologues.

In the “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” the monk talks to himself almost as to another person, and his every idea is influenced by Brother Lawrence, whom he sees in the garden below him, but to whom he does not speak and who does not see him.

SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER

Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims—
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
At the meal we sit together:
Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What’s the Latin name for “parsley”?
What’s the Greek name for Swine’s Snout?
Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere ’tis fit to touch our chaps—
Marked with L for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
—Can’t I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as ’twere a Barbary corsair’s?
(That is, if he’d let it show!)
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu’s praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp—
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp.
Oh, those melons? If he’s able
We’re to have a feast: so nice!
One goes to the Abbot’s table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There’s a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On gray paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in’t?
Or, there’s Satan!—one might venture
Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he’d miss, till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We’re so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine ...
’St, there’s Vespers! Plena gratiâ
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r—you swine!

In this “soliloquy” we have, in a few lines, possibly the strongest interpretation of hypocrisy in literature. The soliloquy begins with the speaker’s accidental discovery of the kindly-hearted monk, Brother Lawrence, attending to his flowers in the court below, and the sight causes an explosion of rage. So intense is his feeling that, in his imagination, he talks directly to Brother Lawrence. Note, for example, such suggestions as, “How go on your flowers?” Of course, Brother Lawrence knows nothing of the speaker’s presence; that worthy, with gusto, answers his own questions to himself.

Notice also the abrupt transitions. Browning, even in his soliloquies, often introduces events. “There his lily snaps!” is given with sudden glee as the speaker discovers the accident.

The difference between Browning and Shakespeare may be still more clearly conceived. “Shakespeare,” says some one, “makes his characters live; Browning makes his think.” Shakespeare reveals character by making a man think alone, or, in contact with others, act. Browning fixes our attention upon an individual, and shows us what he is by making him think, and usually he suggests the cause of the thinking in some relation to objects, events, or characters. The situation in every case is most favorable to the expression of thought and feeling, and of deeper motives. The chief difference between Shakespeare and Browning is the difference between a play and a monologue. The point of view of the two men is not the same, and we must appreciate that of both.

Browning’s “Saul” may be regarded as a soliloquy. David is alone. Browning’s words here help us to an appreciation of his peculiar kind of soliloquy.

“Let me tell out my tale to its ending—my voice to my heart
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part,
As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep,
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep!”

“My voice to my heart” is very suggestive. Browning always made his speaker, when alone, talk to himself. He divides the personality of the individual much more than did Shakespeare. Shakespeare simply makes a man think aloud, while Browning almost makes consciousness dual.

Some one may ask,—Why not take any story or lyric and give it directly to an imaginary listener, and only indirectly to the audience?

This is exactly what should be done in some cases. Who can declaim as a speech or as if to an audience “John Anderson, my Jo,” or “The Lover’s Appeal,” and not feel the situation to be ludicrous?

Some of the tenderest lyric poems should be given as though to an imaginary auditor somewhat to one side. As the lyric is subjective, the turning to one side is a help to the subjective sympathetic condition, especially in cases where the words of the lyric are supposed to be addressed to some individual character. It is very difficult for readers to speak to an audience directly and not pass into the oratoric attitude of mind. A little turn to the side, when simple, suggests the indirect nature of a poem. It gives power to change attention and suggests degrees of subjectivity, and thus tends to prevent the true spirit of the poem from being destroyed by oratorical or declamatory effects.

Perhaps Charles Lamb’s famous saying, that recitation perverts a beautiful poem, would have been qualified had some poem been read to him with full recognition of its artistic character. The poem is not a speech, but a work of art, and the speaker must be clearly conceived, his emotion sympathetically realized, and given, not to an audience, but to an imaginary listener; thus all the delicacy and tenderness may be truthfully revealed and declamation and unnaturalness avoided.

In general, every kind of literature can be adequately rendered aloud. The true spirit of those poems that have been considered unadapted to such rendering can possibly be shown by the voice if we find the real situation, and do not try to give the words the directness of an oration or a lesson, or the objectivity of a play.

When a story or a poem can be made more natural and more effective by being conceived as spoken by a character of a definite type to a definite type of hearer, it should usually be regarded as a monologue. Readers who picture not only the peculiar character speaking, but the person to whom he speaks, will receive and give a more adequate impression, one more dramatic, more simple, and far more expressive of character than those who confuse it with a lyric or a story.

Dramatic art, in fact all art, is indirect, except in some forms of speaking. The true orator or speaker, however, while having a direct purpose, never directly commands or dominates his audience. Every true artist, painter, musician, or even orator, simply awakens the faculties and powers of others, and leads men to decide for themselves. The true speaker should appeal to imagination and reason, and not attempt to force men to accept his ideals and convictions. That would be domination, not oratory. True art is on the rational basis of kinship of nature. Faculty awakens faculty, vision quickens vision.

No hard and fast line can be drawn between the arts, even between the oration and the monologue. But the oration is more direct, more conscious; speaker and listener understand, as a rule, exactly the purpose and the intention. The monologue, on the contrary, is indirect. Its interpreter endeavors faithfully to portray human nature. He reveals the impressions produced upon him instead of endeavoring directly to produce a specific impression upon an audience.

The conception of the listener in the monologue is different from that of the listener in the oration. In every monologue, the interpreter shows the contact of a speaker with a listener and conveys a definite impression made upon him by each. He especially conveys, not only his identification with the character speaking, but that character’s mental or conversational attitude towards another human being and the unconscious variation of mental action resulting from such a relationship.

IV. PLACE OR SITUATION

Whether or not we agree with the ancient rules of the unities regarding place, time, and action as laws of the drama, every one must recognize the fact that all three conceptions are in some sense necessary to an illusion. A dramatic action or position implies not only character, but specific location and circumstance. The situation helps to reveal the character and shows its relation to human life.

Therefore, dramatic effect implies more than contact of different characters. It is concerned with such a placing of the characters as will reveal something of motives.

Two men may meet continually in society or in the ordinary and conventional relations of business and the peculiar characteristics of neither may ever be revealed. Steel and flint may lie passively side by side or may be frozen in the same ice without any suggestion of heat. The steel must strike the flint suddenly to bring forth a spark of fire. In the same way, character must collide with character in such a situation, such a conflict of interests, such opposite determinations or ambitions, as will cause a revelation of motives and dispositions. Steel and flint illustrate character. The stroke is the situation, the spark the dramatic result. Place, accordingly, is often of great importance in dramatic art.

The monologue is no exception to this. The reader must definitely imagine not only a speaker and a listener, but also a location or situation. From a dramatic point of view, situation is perhaps more necessary to a monologue than to a play. Without a situation, nothing can be dramatic.

In Browning’s “Up at a Villa—Down in the City,” is the speaker located in the city, at the villa, or at some point between the two?

UP AT A VILLA—DOWN IN THE CITY

(AS DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY)

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one’s life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.
Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain’s edge as bare as the creature’s skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
—I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool.
But the city, oh the city—the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there’s something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry!
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by:
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.
What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
’Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights.
You’ve the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees.
Is it better in May, I ask you? you’ve summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns!
’Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
Is it ever hot in the square? There’s a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash
Round the lady atop in the conch—fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash!
All the year long at the villa, nothing’s to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like Death’s lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.
Enough of the seasons,—I spare you the months of the fever and chill.
Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:
No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in:
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there’s the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture—the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.

Above it, behold the Archbishop’s most fatherly of rebukes,
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke’s!
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,
“And moreover,” (the sonnet goes rhyming,) “the skirts of Saint Paul has reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.”
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.
But bless you, it’s dear—it’s dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate
It’s a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still—ah, the pity, the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles.
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke’s guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals.
Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

Of course, there are arguments in favor of placing the “person of quality” in the city near his beloved objects. One of the last lines, beginning “Look, two and two go the priests,” seems to imply the discovery and actual presence of the procession. But if Browning had located the speaker in the city, would he not say “here” and not “there,” as he does at the end of the third line?

If at the villa, why does he say to his listener, “Well, now, look at our villa!” The fact that he points to it and says,

“stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain’s edge,”

seems to imply, though in plain sight of it, that he is some distance away. Again, if at the villa, how can he discover the procession?

Was the monologue spoken during a walk? We can easily imagine the “person of quality” and his companion starting from the villa and talking while coming down into the city. But this is hardly possible, because when Browning changes his situation in this way, he always suggests definitely the stages of the journey. He never makes a mistake regarding the location or situation of his characters. His conceptions are so dramatic that he is always consistent regarding his characters and the situations or points of view they occupy. However obscure he may be in other points, he never confuses time and place or dramatic situation.

Is it not best to imagine him as having walked out with a friend to some point where the villa above and the city below are both clearly visible? And as the humor of the monologue consists in the impressions which the two places make upon the speaker, the contrasts are sharp and sudden. In such a position we can distinctly realize him now looking with longing towards the city that he loves and then turning with disgust and contempt towards the villa he despises.

Possibly his listener is located on the side towards the villa, as that unknown and almost unnoticed personage seems once or twice, at least, to make a mild defence. That his listener does not wholly agree with him, is indicated by “Why?” at the end of the eleventh line, to which he replies, heaping encomiums upon the city, careless of the fact that his arguments would make any lover of beauty smile: “Houses in four straight lines.”

“And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.”

“What of a villa?” may also be an echo of the listener’s question or remark, or apply to a look expressive of his attitude of mind. “Is it ever hot in the square?” suggests some satire on his part. The listener, however, is barely noticed, as the speaker seems to scorn the slightest opposition or expression of opinion.

In such a position, we can easily imagine him with the whole city at his feet in sufficiently plain view to allow him to discover enough of the procession to waken memory and enthusiasm, and bring all up as a present reality. The procession can be easily imagined as starting from some convent outside the walls and appearing below them on its way to town. All the facts of the procession need not be discovered. It is a scene he has often observed and delighted in, and distance would lend enchantment to the speaker and serve as the climax of his enthusiasm, as he portrayed to his less responsive friend the details of the procession.

Some of his references to both villa and city are certainly from memory. For example, the different sights and sounds that he has seen and heard from time to time in the city, such as the “diligence,” the “scene-picture at the post-office.”

The spirit of the monologue, the enthusiasm and exultation over what gives anything but pleasure to others, requires such a character as will enjoy “the travelling doctor” who “gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth.” Notice Browning’s touch for the reformers, he makes such a man rejoice at the news, “only this morning three liberal thieves were shot.” The “liberal thieves” are doubtless three Italian reformers who had been trying to deliver their country. It is possible to imagine the procession as wholly from memory, and “noon strikes” to be simply a part of his imagination and exultation. How gaily he skips as our Lady, the Madonna, is

“borne smiling and smart,
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!”

He has no conception of the symbol of the seven deadly sins, but dances away at the music, “No keeping one’s haunches still.” Later, however, when he exclaims to his listener, “Look,” he seems to make an actual discovery. Does he start as he actually sees a procession in the distance? A real one coming before him would give life and variety to the monologue. Browning intentionally leaves the conceptions gradually to dawn in the imagination. The doubts, and the questions which may be asked, have been dwelt upon in order to emphasize the point that the speaker must be conceived in a definite situation. When once a situation is located, this will modify some of the shades of feeling and expression.

The point, then, is, that a reader or interpreter must conceive the speaker as occupying a definite place, and when this is done, the position will determine somewhat the feeling and the expression. Difference in situation causes many differences in action and in voice modulations. Whatever location, therefore, the reader decides upon, everything else must be consistent with it.

One point in this monologue may be especially obscure, where reference is made to the city being “dear!” “fowls, wine, at double the rate.” I was one of three in a carriage who were once stopped at a gate in Florence and examined to see whether we carried any “salt,” “oil,” or anything on which there was a tax, which, according to the owner of the villa, “is a horror to think of.” Some Italian cities do not have free trade with the surrounding country; food stuffs are taxed upon “passing the gate,” thus making life in the city more expensive. And here is the reason why this man sadly mourns:

“And so, the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still—ah, the pity, the pity!”

Whatever may be said regarding Browning’s obscurity, however far he may have gone into the most technical knowledge of science in any department of life, however remote his allusions to events or objects or lines of knowledge which are unfamiliar to the world, there is one thing about which he is always definite, possibly more definite than any other writer. In every monologue we can find an indication of the place or situation in which the monologue is located.

Browning has given us one monologue which takes place during a walk, “A Grammarian’s Funeral.” The speaker is one of the band carrying the body of his master from the “common crofts,” and so he is represented as looking up to the top of the hill and talking about the appropriateness of burying the master on the hilltop. Browning’s intimate knowledge of Greek was shown by the phrase “gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De.” The London “Times” criticized this severely when the poem was published, saying that with all respect to Mr. Browning, there was no such enclitic. Browning answered in a note that proved his fine scholarship, and called attention to the fact that this was the point in dispute which the grammarian had tried to settle.

Even the stages of the journey are shown,

“Here’s the town-gate reached: there’s the market-place
Gaping before us.”

In another place he says,

“Caution redoubled,
Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!”

while all the time he pours out his tribute to his master:

“Oh, if we draw a circle premature
Heedless of far gain,
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
Bad is our bargain!...
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred’s soon hit:
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That, has the world here—should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking, shall find him.”

Then, when they arrive at the top, he says,

“Well, here’s the platform, here’s the proper place,”

and addressing the birds,

“All ye highfliers of the feathered race,”

he continues, giving his thoughts, as suggested by the very situation:

“This man decided not to Live but Know—
Bury this man there?
Here, here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects:
Loftily lying,
Leave him, still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.”

Browning’s “At the ‘Mermaid’” reproduces a scene of historic interest. The inn where Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other sympathetic friends used to meet, is presented to the imagination, and Shakespeare is the speaker. Some one has proposed a toast to him as the next poet. Shakespeare protests, and the poem is his answer. Here are shown his modesty, his optimism, his reverence, and his noble views of life. He smilingly points to his works and talks about them to these his friends in a simple, frank way.

“Look and tell me! Written, spoken,
Here’s my lifelong work: and where—
Where’s your warrant or my token
I’m the dead king’s son and heir?
“Here’s my work: does work discover—
What was rest from work—my life?
Did I live man’s hater, lover?
Leave the world at peace, at strife?...

“Blank of such a record, truly,
Here’s the work I hand, this scroll,
Yours to take or leave; as duly,
Mine remains the unproffered soul.
So much, no whit more, my debtors—
How should one like me lay claim
To that largest elders, betters
Sell you cheap their souls for—fame?...
“Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did, and does, smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I’ll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again....
“My experience being other,
How should I contribute verse
Worthy of your king and brother?
Balaam-like I bless, not curse.
I find earth not gray, but rosy,
Heaven not grim, but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
Do I stand and stare? All’s blue....
“Meanwhile greet me—‘friend, good fellow,
Gentle Will,’ my merry men!
As for making Envy yellow
With ‘Next Poet’—(Manners, Ben!)”

It is difficult to imagine any other situation, any other place, any other group of friends, chosen by Browning, that would have been more favorable to the frank unfolding by Shakespeare of the motives which underlie his work and his character. This any one may recognize, whatever his opinions may be regarding the success of this monologue.

The poem is meaningless without a grasp of the situation. “Manners, Ben!” at the close is a protest against Ben’s drinking too soon. Is this a delicate hint at Ben’s habits? Or was his beginning to drink a method by which Browning suggests a comment of Ben’s to the effect that Shakespeare talked too much?

Browning here brings out the true Shakespeare spirit, not, of course, to the satisfaction of those who have their hobbies and systems and consider Shakespeare the only poet, but to others who wish to comprehend the real man.

Douglas Jerrold has indicated the situation of his series of monologues in the title, “Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures.” The mind easily pictures an old-fashioned bed, the draperies drawn around it, with Mr. and Mrs. Caudle retired to rest. Mrs. Caudle seizes this moment when she has her busy spouse at her mercy. Before she falls asleep, she refers to his various shortcomings and fully discusses future contingencies or consequences of his evil deeds as a kind of slumber song for poor Caudle. The imagination distinctly sees Caudle holding himself still, trying to go to sleep. No word can relieve the tension of his mind, and Mrs. Caudle monopolizes all the conversation. Caudle is exercising those powers which Epictetus says that “God has given us by which we can keep ourselves calm and reposeful, as Socrates did, without change of face under the most trying circumstances.”

A study of any monologue will furnish an illustration of situation, but we are naturally, in the study of the subject, led back again to Browning.

In his “Andrea del Sarto,” we are introduced to a scene common in the lives of artists. It has grown too dark to paint, and, dropping his brush, the painter sits in the gray twilight and talks with his wife, who serves him as a model, and muses over his work and his life. No one can fully appreciate the poem who has not been in a studio at some such moment when the artist stopped work and came out of his absorption to talk to those dear to him. At such a time the artist will be personal, will criticize himself severely, and throw out hints of what he has tried to do, of his higher aims, visions, and possibilities, and, while showing appreciation of what other artists have said of him, will recognize, also, the mistakes and failures of his art or life. It is the unfolding of a sensitive soul, a transition from a world of ideals, imaginations, and visions, to one of reality.

Nowhere else in poetry has any author so fully caught the essence of such an hour. Nowhere else can there be found art criticism equal to this self-revelation of the artist who is called “the faultless painter.” What a revelation! What might he have done! What has he been! What a woman is beside him, his greatest curse, but one whose willing slave he recognizes himself to be! What a weak acquiescence, and what a fall!

Notice also the abrupt beginning: “But do not let us quarrel any more.” She is asking ostensibly for money for her “cousin,” but really, to pay the gambling debts of one of her lovers. He grants her request, but pleads that she stay with him in his loneliness and promises to work harder, and again and again in his criticism of himself, of his very perfection, even while he shows Raphael’s weakness in drawing, he hints that there is something in the others not in him. In fact, he recognizes one of the deepest principles of life, as well as art, and exclaims,

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s heaven for? All is silver-gray,
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!”

He reveals his deep grief, how he dare not venture abroad all day lest the French nobles in the city should recognize him and deal with him for having used for himself—or rather for his wife, to build her a house, at her entreaty—the money which had been given by Francis for the purchase of pictures and for his return to Paris. And yet we find a weak soul’s acquiescence in fate—

“All is as God o’errules.”

How sympathetically does Browning reproduce the painter’s point of view in—