Dramatic Monologue
A dramatic monologue is a literary form that emerged during the Victorian era, characterized by a single character delivering a speech that reveals their thoughts and emotions, distinct from the voice of the poet. This form often conveys a critical situation involving the character, allowing readers to glean insights into other characters and events through the speaker's perspective. Prominent figures such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Matthew Arnold significantly contributed to the popularization of this technique, while female writers like Felicia Hemans and Laticia Landon also played crucial roles in shaping its development. The dramatic monologue invites the audience to engage deeply with the speaker's inner conflicts, often revealing complexities and ironies within their narratives. Beyond its literary applications, the form has been adapted for various social contexts, including education and healthcare, enabling practitioners to explore dialectical tensions and foster understanding. Its capacity to reflect societal issues and challenge established norms underscores the continued relevance of the dramatic monologue in literature and beyond. Through its unique structure, the dramatic monologue serves not only as a form of artistic expression but also as a means of engaging with and addressing social dynamics.
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Dramatic Monologue
The dramatic monologue is a literary form that developed and first appeared in the Victorian poetry of the nineteenth century. The dramatic monologue presents one character’s speech and perspective. The voice of the text is not the voice of the poet but of a person decidedly other than the poet. The content of the dramatic monologue is generally the entire poem and reveals a vital situation for the character. This speech often includes or references other characters, and the reader can acquire and learn clues about outside forces and events from the speaker’s voice. Though the dramatic monologue became a well-identified feature in the literary works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and Robert Browning, the dramatic monologue has since been a fully explored device used to develop characters in all forms of literature for page and stage. Dramatic monologue invites the audience or reader to engage in the character's views.
Background
Near the end of the romantic literary period, the use of single voiced speeches in poetry emerged. By the early Victorian period (1837-1901), the use of the dramatic monologue was a common, identifiable feature. During this period, the term "monodramas" described the passionate speeches voiced by a single character. The first use of the term "dramatic monologue" was probably made in 1857 by poet George W. Thornbury, as he described his own group of poems. Thornbury was writing in the form of Robert Browning, noted as the key contributor to shaping the form of the dramatic monologue.
This form was early identified and known in German literature in the late 1700s. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poetic work, released in an 1871 volume titled Poems, showed heavy use of the dramatic monologue as well. By 1886, Tennyson used the words themselves in the dedication of his volume Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, which was published in 1886. From this point forward, the term as well as the device became a commonplace feature in literature, poetry, prose, and theater.
In the early twenty-first century, scholars turned their attention to recovering and reconstructing the role of women writers in the creation and development of the dramatic monologue form. Female writers of the Victorian age and after played a central role in inviting in the features of the dramatic monologue structure that shed light on a character.
Dramatic monologue as a form of writing invites the reader or observer into the speaker’s contradictions and inability to fully pursue one particular path in life. The complexities and ironies of this literary device cultivate its attraction to writers, dramatists, and poets alike.
Impact
Life and art can be named as co-conspirators throughout time. The dramatic monologue not only reflects the social challenges and ills of the time but also helps to identify ways to address needed change. Relationships are readily drawn between literary forms and literacy acts, or ways in which literature can have social force. The dramatic monologue is no doubt included in this line of thinking as changes in the social world cross all manner of social institutions, gender roles, family constructs, and more.
Without women and their employ of the dramatic monologue, challenges to and questions about women’s roles in society would have been without literary voice. They typically described the creation of the dramatic monologue form by writers Tennyson and Browning around 1830. The form was later revised to include women poets of the time. Laticia Landon and Felicia Hemans are now considered to be formidable contributors to the form of dramatic monologue during the same time period as Tennyson and Browning. Hemans' poetry is particularly noted for challenging gender and its forced definitions for women and men in the nineteenth century.
The soliloquy, monologue, aside, and dramatic verse all share components with the dramatic monologue. These literary devices all invite the audience into the speaker’s confidence. The dramatic monologue is extracted from the context of literature and applied to a variety of social contexts. One of its most intriguing qualities is the often ironic meaning of "between the lines," which is inferred from the words that remain unsaid by the speaker, as well as the ideas that are avoided but nevertheless present. These features of the speaker’s internal turmoil have given rise to its use in a variety of contexts.
The practical application of monologue demonstrates the evolution of literature, the impact of literary devices such as the dramatic monologue, and the integration of life with artistic form. The capture and re-performance of perspectives in monologue form serve to educate practitioners entering the ministry, health care, and educational contexts. These applied demonstrations of monologue confirm its early roots as a tool to invite the audience in to the character’s life experiences.
Participants who engage in versions of the applied dramatic monologue to better engage and navigate the dialectical tensions in a given context are not trained actors or writers, but rather are people seeking to find productive solutions. Classrooms and community groups are just two of the contexts that dramatic monologue practices might be incorporated into to establish new ways of working and coping.
Bibliography
Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form. 3rd ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973. Print.
Byron, Glennis. "Rethinking the Dramatic Monlogue: Victorian Women Poets and Social Critique." Victorian Women Poets: Essays and Studies. Ed. Alison Chapman. London: Cambridge, 2003. Print.
Culler, Dwight. "Monodrama and the Dramatic Monologue." PMLA90.3 (1975): 366–85. Print.
"Five Ways to Explore the Depths of Dramatic Monologue." Kolahal Theatre Workshop, 14 Nov. 2023, kolahal.org/home-4/about-us-kolahal-theatre-workshop-i/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2024.
Harris, Helen Wilson, and Alex Scheibner. "Learning to Give Voice in Ministry to Persons with Dementia: Student Monologues." Journal of Religion, Spirituality, and Aging27.1 (2014): 34–47. Print.
Hermans, Felicia Dorothea Browne. The Poetical Work of Mrs. Hermans. London: Warne, 1800. Print.
MacCullum, Mungo Williams. The Dramatic Monologue in the Victorian Period. London: Folcroft, 1970. Print.
Negrut, Dan. "Robert Browing and the Dramatic Monologue." The Scientific Journal of Humanistic Studies3.4 (2011): 149–53. Print.
Pearsall, Cornelia D. J. Tennyson’s Rapture: Transformation in the Victorian Dramatic Monologue. Oxford, Oxford, 2008. Print.
Prendergast, Monica, and Juliana Saxton. Applied Drama: A Facilitator's Handbook for Working in Community. Jefferson: Intellect, 2013. Print.
Shaw, David. "Masks of the Unconscious: Bad Faith and Causistry in the Dramatic Monologue." ELH66.2 (1999): 439–60. Print.