The Dramatic Monologue is a compromise between the drama, the soliloquy and the lyric. Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is an excellent example of this form. The poet has kept himself in the background, and the speaker is an Italian noble man, the Duke of Ferrara. The poem is therefore, dramatic. The Duke is about to marry and we are conscious, all the time, of the presence of the listener, who is an emissary come down on behalf of a count with a daughter whom the Duke intents to marry. But the envoy never speaks, and, therefore, the poem is monologue. The speaker in a dramatic monologue speaks at a critical moment in his life, and reveals his soul through his speech. Thus in Browning’s poem the Duke’s artistic taste, his arrogance, his brutality and his cold aloof nature are all brought out through his speech. Above all Browning mixes in actions with the monologue, thus imparting variety, life and roundness to the situation. The actions are implicit in the Duke’s words as when he suggests to the visitor that they should go downstairs. As C.H. Hereford remarks Browning’s dramatic monologues are dramatic in two senses of the word, the speakers reveal thoughts and feelings which are not the poet’s but they are plucked, as it were, from the living organism of the drama.
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00233--The Qualities of the Dramatic Monologue as seen in “My Last Duchess”. [Robert Browning] [English Literature free notes]
The Dramatic Monologue is a compromise between the drama, the soliloquy and the lyric. Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is an excellent example of this form. The poet has kept himself in the background, and the speaker is an Italian noble man, the Duke of Ferrara. The poem is therefore, dramatic. The Duke is about to marry and we are conscious, all the time, of the presence of the listener, who is an emissary come down on behalf of a count with a daughter whom the Duke intents to marry. But the envoy never speaks, and, therefore, the poem is monologue. The speaker in a dramatic monologue speaks at a critical moment in his life, and reveals his soul through his speech. Thus in Browning’s poem the Duke’s artistic taste, his arrogance, his brutality and his cold aloof nature are all brought out through his speech. Above all Browning mixes in actions with the monologue, thus imparting variety, life and roundness to the situation. The actions are implicit in the Duke’s words as when he suggests to the visitor that they should go downstairs. As C.H. Hereford remarks Browning’s dramatic monologues are dramatic in two senses of the word, the speakers reveal thoughts and feelings which are not the poet’s but they are plucked, as it were, from the living organism of the drama.