Discuss the origins and characteristics of the dramatic monologue.

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“Literacy Tradition”                Language/Literature Pre 1914 Poetry

Discuss the origins and characteristics of the dramatic monologue

Dramatic monologues and soliloquies are very similar forms of literature despite the fact that one is poetry and the other is drama.  

A soliloquy is the act of talking to oneself, silently or aloud in drama. It is a convention.  Playwrights use this device as a convenient way to convey to the audience information about a character’s thoughts, motives, and state of mind.  Shakespeare was a great user of the soliloquy, the best known of his being Hamlet’s speech “To be or not to be.”  A soliloquy relies on a surrounding play for information about the situation whereas dramatic monologue does not.  Dramatic monologue already contains a description of the situation within the poem, therefore does not need a surrounding play.  Dramatic monologue is a poem deriving from the soliloquy, with only a single speaker and narrated in first person.  The speaker reveals their character whilst evidently directing their speech to a listener.  A good example of this is in ‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning (1812-1889), “How such a glance came there; so not the first are you to turn and ask thus.”  Or in another of his poems ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, “And yet God has not said a word!”  Although the listener here is less obvious, there is one, the implied ear is God.  This particular piece of dramatic monologue has a more confessional tone as has Juliet’s soliloquy in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Act IV Scene iii.  Here we can begin to recognise the way in which dramatic monologue has evolved from the soliloquy, hence the similarities between the two.            

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We can go in to more depth with these conventions.  Both forms are narrated from a single speaker and there is no other voice but the protagonist’s.  This is the case for both forms but there is a difference, in a soliloquy the protagonist is not directing their speech to a listener, they are merely thinking aloud.  An example of this is ‘now I am alone,’ taken from ‘Hamlet.’  He clearly states that there is no one on stage but him.  However there are less obvious examples such as Juliet’s soliloquy, there is evidently no listener but there is one implied. ...

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