ROBERT BROWNING: A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE

ABSTRACT. Robert Browning is well-known for his expertise of dramatic monologue,

Browning made a special feature of his work. The dramatic monologue verse form allowed
Browning to explore and probe the minds of specific characters. His characters served
as personae that let him adopt different traits and tell stories. List of works: Some individually
notable poems are also listed. Political views, Religious beliefs, Spiritualism incident,
Cultural references, Three defining characteristics of his Dramatic Monologues, Dramatic
monologue, Types of dramatic monologue, Literary Style of his, Poems, Critical Review of
Robert Browning’s Style and Poems, he as a Writer, his Facts, Multiple Perspectives on Single
Events, Medieval and Renaissance European Settings, Psychological Portraits, Symbols Taste,
Evil and Violence. These list of Works and Influence of his work will attract the readers.
The current article aims to study Robert browning, the prominent Victorian poet. The
Dramatic monologue has been practiced for a very long time.
These works of Robert Browning some of the most effective literary devices within different
forms is the dramatic monologue. The dramatic monologue distinguishes the speaker’s
character from that of the poet’s work. It was Robert browning who invested it with a deeper
level of meaning giving it frequency in an attempt to support preexisting aesthetic values in favor
of a poem that valued form over content. Although such a dialogue is called dramatic, but it is
not a theatrical device, proper.

Keywords: “Dramatic Monologue in the works of Robert browning”

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1. Introduction: Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of

the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known
for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and
challenging vocabulary and syntax.
Browning's early career began promisingly, but collapsed. The long
poems Pauline and Paracelsus received some acclaim, but in 1840 the difficult Sordello, which
was seen as wilfully obscure, brought his poetry into disrepute. His reputation took more than a
decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early
period and developed a more personal style.
In 1846, Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, and went to live in Italy. By the time
of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women. The
collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed,
and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation today
rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period.
Robert Browning Dramatic Monologue. Yes it is but it is not for the theatre. It is an unnatural
conversation that is unbalanced toward the speaker’s intentions mesmerized by the speaker’s
speech. The speech is powerful and effective, but it is the exposition of the speaker’s thought
and it acts as the stage to the performance of the speaker’s thought and speech. The dramatic
monologue has a target at sight, and it influences the audience or readers and affects their
attitudes toward the prevalent ideas in the society. Therefore, the degree to which the reviewer
would be demoralized is demonstrated by their complaint that he had been unable to discover
any dramatic quality whatever in considering more than half of them (Jack, 1987). The dramatic
monologue is a lyric poem in which the speaker addresses a silent listener, revealing
themselves in the context of a dramatic situation (Murfin & Supryia, 1998). Thereby the
character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker’s
life. Dramatic monologue, are made by clear implication, and an insight into the character of the
speaker may result (Holman & Harmon, 1992). There are three conditions of a Browning
dramatic monologue: the reader takes the part of the listen listener; the speaker uses a case-
making argumentative tone; they complete the dramatic scene from within, by means of
inference and imagination (Landow). Langbaum (1987) sees the dramatic monologue as a
combination of lyric and dramatic elements that indicate a poetic innovation whose influence
could be traced in the work of all the great modernist poets (O’Neill, 1995). Browning’s
monologues as the speaker is set dramatically into a situation which demands an explanation;
the explanation is directed at a listener, whom the speaker intends to awaken or influence; the
speaker’s attitude toward the listener is one of obligation, and in this sense the speaker
assumes a mask to affect his listener’s opinion. . This methodit is the method of art that
persuade and tends to direct the listener toward the speaker’s point of view. Robert Browning’s
speakers are closed, cautious, and reflective, measuring their words in terms of their social and
dramatic implications. The reader, then, is forced more directly into the dramatic situation
because the notion of conflict has grown in subtlety: The dramatic monologue pits a character
against a situation, which demands that the character fight for psychological survival. (Garratt,
1973). When Browning died in 1889, he was regarded as a sage and philosopher-poet who
through his writing had made contributions to Victorian social and political discourse. Unusually
for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive. Such
Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th
century.