Browning's Dramatic Monologue
A dramatic monologue is dramatic discourse usually employing the following elements: a fiction speaker, an implied audience, a symbolic setting, dramatic gestures, and emphasis on speaker�s subjectivity. Dramatic monologues provide interesting snapshots of the speakers and their personalities. Robert Browning is often considered the master of the form of the dramatic monologue � if not the first to �inaugurate [the first] to perfect this poetic form.� In Browning�s dramatic monologues the speakers lay bare his inner thoughts and feelings �that is why they are regarded as the soul studies. Browning admits: �the soul is the stage; moods and thoughts are characters.� He emphasizes: �My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study.� Well-known for his expertise of dram atic monologue, Browning made a special feature of it in his work. The dramatic monologue verse form allowed Browning to explore and probe the minds of specific characters. Thi...