An Investigation and Enquiry into Monologues - Essay Example

An Investigation and Enquiry into Monologues Introduction: Monologue can be commonly defined as the extended speech by a character in a drama. The main characteristic of a monologue or a dramatic monologue is that it is spoken aloud so that the audience hears it clear enough. The content of the monologue can be the character’s inner thoughts, or another character’s thoughts, or simply addressing the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media including plays, films, animation, and so on. Therefore, the primary objective of a monologue is to get inside the thoughts and feelings of characters. Origin and development of monologues: Coming to the origin of monologues, dramatic monologues are a literary product of the 19th century. They can be labelled appropriately as the Victorian invention as the form was invented and practiced mainly by the Victorian poets including Robert Browning, Tennyson, Rossetti, and others. The earliest articulation of dramatic monologues can be identified with the advent of the intelligent criminal in the Victorian periods, and the growing concern for exploring the criminal psyche (Sinfield, 1977). Dramatic monologue is also a kind of per formative psychoanalysis as it attempts to explore the speaker’s mind. Browning is highly regarded for his ability to create devious characters in his poems. His monologues portray a complex characterization of the speakers although in a subtler way. In “My Last Duchess”, Browning’s speaker is a pompous Italian Duke who shows off the portrait of his young gracious wife he had executed. The speaker’s dissatisfaction with his wife’s unaffected graciousness is prominent in the monologue as quoted by Sinfield (Sinfield 4), “She thanked men, - good; but thanked Somehow…I know not how…as if she ranked My gift of a nine hundred years old name With anybody’s gift” This is further accompanied by the utmost revelation of the Duke’s scheming characterization, “This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive.” The pleasant and gracious nature of the Duchess is communicated through the Duke’s words, however, the Duke does not intend to appreciate it in any way. There are considerable disagreements among critics with regard to the Duke’s callous revelation of the death of the last Duchess. Either the Duke is too self-possessed to care about what others think, or he intends to warn his next Duchess. The monologue demonstrates the strong obsession of the Duke who is “still obsessed with the remarkable girl he failed to dominate, and impelled to justify to himself and others his ruthless response.” (Sinfield 5) Unlike Browning’s subtle speaker characterization, speakers in Shakespeare’s monologues (Shakespearean soliloquies) reveal their deepest confessions rather blatantly. Perhaps, the best known Shakespearean monologue is the ‘To be or not to be’ monologue by the protagonist in Hamlet. The monologue speaks distinctly of Hamlet’s confusing state of mind and his complex characterization. The inner conflicts of Hamlet are expressed through the ambiguity of his characterization and his inability to decide whether to commit suicide or seek revenge for his father’s death. The very first lines of the monologue apparently describes this ambiguity, “To be or not to be - that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them.” Clemen (1977) discusses the free flow of speaker characterization in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Hamlet’s way of employing images is unique in Shakespeare’s drama. When he begins to speak, the images fairly stream to him without the slightest effort - not as similes or conscious paraphrases, but as immediate and spontaneous visions.” Whenever Hamlet thinks and speaks, there is the keen observation of reality. Hamlet’s monologues usually refer to the events and objects of reality in terms of the underlying thoughts. It is notable that special attention was given to the practice of dramatic monologues in the Victorian period with almost all the major poets of the period practicing the genre. One of the most significant Victorians practicing dramatic monologues is Tennyson. His “Ulysses” is a dramatic monologue. The entire poem is spoken by a single character whose identity as well as characterization is developed through his own words. The protagonist Ulysses reveals the sterility of his life and his incompetence as a ruler in the very first lines of the monologue (Bristow 81), “It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed and know not me” Rossetti’s “Jenny” is an example of ‘interior monologue’ (Bristow 74) which expresses the speaker’s sympathy for a prostitute. Jenny’s wavering unconsciousness or “Jenny’s flattering sleep” as referred by the speaker has provided him the visual pleasure of how appealing she is in her repose, which also constitutes the theme of the monologue. The dream-like pleasure is clearly portrayed in the following lines, “…as I watch you there, -- For all your wealth of loosened hair, Your silk engirdled and unlac’d And warm sweets open to the waist, All golden in the lamplight’s gleam, -- You know not what a book you seem, Half-read by lightning in a dream!” Monologue vs. poetry: Identifying monologues Dramatic monologues are often confused with another form of literature called poetry. It can be argued generally that all monologues are poems, but all poems are not monologues. For a poem to become a dramatic monologue, it must have a speaker and an implied auditor. One of the most significant as well as most debated definitions of a dramatic monologue is given by Robert Langbaum in his book The Poetry of Experience, where he argues that dramatic monologues draw our sympathy for the speaker that is commanded by the poet, which eventually determines readers’ judgment of the speaker (Sinfield 6). Browning’s monologues are considered as appropriate examples to prove this argument. Sinfield further states that a dramatic monologue includes “a first person speaker who is not the poet and whose character is unwittingly revealed, an auditor whose influence is felt in the poem, a specific time and place, colloquial language, some sympathetic involvement with the speaker, and an ironic discrepancy between the speaker’s view of himself and a larger judgment which the poet implies and the reader must develop.” (Sinfield 3) Coming to the characteristic features of monologues, the genre is an expressive literary form used by a speaker (who is not the poet) for conveying to the audience information about his character thoughts, motives and state of mind. As already discussed earlier, the main feature of a dramatic monologue is that it is a speech described by a single person who is patently not the poet, in a specific situation at a critical moment. The monologues are usually addressed to a silent audience. The poet’s role in the monologue is to reveal the speaker’s temperament and character to its readers. Monologues can express both internal as well as external emotions of the speaker. In this sense, monologues can be divided broadly into internal monologues and external monologues. While the former reveals the inner voice or the stream of consciousness of the speaker which he speaks to himself, the latter expresses the same thoughts to someone else off-stage or off-camera. Rossetti’s “Jenny” (mentioned earlier) is a perfect example of internal or interior monologue. “The Last Duchess” represents the latter form where he speaker addresses the silent audience. It is notable in most of the dramatic monologues that the speaker’s main objective is to seek for some sort of transformation. “The majority of dramatic monologists are not criminals or charlatans, only searchers after some transformation, whether spiritual, professional, or personal.” (Bristow 73) In this context, Tennyson’s Ulysses expresses this tendency in the last lines of his monologue (Bristow 81), “We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, - One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” While discussing monologues of present time, Byron (2003) states that the rise of a global electronic media has greatly influenced contemporary monologues. He further argues, “Contemporary monologues not only exploit various types of media discourse, they also frequently appropriate specific people, events and issues publicized by the media” (Byron 7) When it comes to assessing the articulation of thoughts and feelings in monologues, not all speakers are clearly particularized about their feelings or intentions. For instance, the speaker in Rossetti’s “Jenny” shows his assessment of Jenny throughout the monologue, but the primary content of the speaker’s thoughts is Jenny’s voiceless judgment of him. In case of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the soliloquies by the speaker are quite direct in articulating his inner thoughts and complexities. Over the time, the stylistics of monologue writing has been though a number of transformations although its primary features remain the same: that is, the expression of a single person’s thoughts by way of revelation of his emotional outpouring or other characteristic constituents. Contemporary monologues focus on creating a specific language that enables the speaker to reveal his character clearly. In this context, the monologue writers should concentrate on the structure of that specific language rather than on the content of the monologue. In other words, effective monologue writing gives us the opportunity to explore the possibilities of language. Conclusion: Dramatic monologues are considered as a significant part of a literary creation as they are the perfect medium to explore the identity, internal conflicts and complexities of a character. While monologues draw the attention of audiences towards character revelation of the speaker in terms of a critical situation, it is the objective of the poet to direct the audience to contribute their sympathy and judgment to the character. A lot of debates and arguments have been exercised in discussing this issue. But the poet is particularly prominent about creating the words of the speaker. Postmodern literature has brought a characteristic change in the way dramatic monologues are written. With the growing interest on the constitution of the self, dramatic monologues have come a long way in terms of the approaches made to stylistic changes and other relevant language structure. Moreover, women’s poetry is also getting special attention now as more of them are being “included in the general theoretical discourse on the dramatic monologue” (Byron 27). To conclude, in the words of Bristow, “The form of the dramatic monologue from the start dealt in transformations involving myriad sexualities, controversial contemporary and historical figures, and tangled affiliations and prejudices. Attending to so vast an array of speakers, we might hear these works finally…announce how much the dramatic monologue still has to say to us.” (Bristow 85) References: Bristow, J. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Byron, G. Dramatic Monologue. London: Routledge, 2003. Clemen, W. The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery. Oxon: Routledge, 1977. Sinfield, Alan. Dramatic Monologue. London: Harper & Raw Publishers, 1977. Read More