Chapter III: Part I: The Monologue as a Dramatic Form (2)

"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace
We've got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal's in the market-place,
And you'll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his wings
Where I, to heart's desire,
Perched him!" The Chief's eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.

The Chief's eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle's eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes:
"You're wounded!" "Nay," his soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
"I'm killed, Sire!" And, his Chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead.

I have heard prominent public readers give this as a mere story without affording any definite conception of either speaker or listener. In the first reading over of the poem, one may find no hint of either. But the student catches the phrase "we French," and at once sees that a Frenchman must be speaking. He soon discovers that the whole poem is colored by the feeling of some old soldier of Napoleon who was either an eye-witness of the scene or who knew Napoleon's bearing so well that he could easily picture it to his imagination. The poem now becomes a living thing, and its interpretation by voice and action is rendered possible. But is this all? To whom does the soldier speak? The listener seems entirely in the background. This is wise, because the other in telling his story would naturally lose himself in his memories and grow more or less oblivious of his hearer. But the conception of a sympathetic auditor is needed to quicken the fervor and animation of the speaker. Does not the phrase "we French" imply that the listener is another Frenchman whose patriotic enthusiasm responds to the story? The short phrases, and suggestive hints through the poem, are thus explained. The speaker seems to imply that Napoleon's bearing is well known to his listener. Certainly upon the conception of such a speaker and such a hearer depends the spirit, dramatic force, and even thought of the poem.

I have chosen this illustration purposely, because, of all monologues, this lays possibly the least emphasis on a listener; yet it cannot be adequately rendered by the voice, or even properly conceived in thought, without a distinct realization of such a person.

In Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra," the speaker is an old man. "Grow old along with me!" indicates this, and we feel his age and experience all through the poem. But without the presence of this youth, who must have expressed pity for the loneliness and gloom of age, the old man would never have broken forth so suddenly and so forcibly in the portrayal of his noble philosophy of life. He expands with joy, love for his race, and reverence for Providence. "Grow old along with me!" "Trust God: see all, nor be afraid!" His enthusiasm, his exalted realization of life, are due to his own nobility of character. But his earnestness, his vivid illustrations, his emphasis and action, spring from his efforts to expound the philosophy of life to his youthful listener and to correct the young man's one-sided views. The characters of both speaker and listener are necessary in order that one may receive an understanding of the argument.

RABBI BEN EZRA

Grow old along with me! the best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

Not that, amassing flowers, youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall!"
Not that, admiring stars, it yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears, annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate; folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

Poor vaunt of life indeed, were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then as sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Rejoice we are allied to That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod; nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.

Then, welcome each rebuff that turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three parts pain! strive and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

For thence--a paradox which comforts while it mocks--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me;
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

What is he but a brute whose flesh hath soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test--thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?

Yet gifts should prove their use: I own the past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole, brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn"?

Not once beat "Praise be thine! I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
Perfect I call Thy plan: thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"

For pleasant is this flesh: our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:
Would we some prize might hold to match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best!

Let us not always say, "Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"
As the bird wings and sings, let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

Therefore I summon age to grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved a man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new;
Fearless and unperplexed, when I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to indue.

Youth ended, I shall try my gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same, give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.

For note, when evening shuts, a certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
A whisper from the west shoots, "Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."

So, still within this life, though lifted o'er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
"This rage was right i' the main, that acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."

For more is not reserved to man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day;
Here, work enough to watch the Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

As it was better, youth should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made;
So, better, age, exempt from strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right and Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute, subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.

Be there, for once and all, severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I the world arraigned, were they my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?

Not on the vulgar mass called "work" must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand, the low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature, all purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount;

Thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be, all men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel, that metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,--
Thou, to whom fools propound, when the wine makes its round,
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

Fool! All that is at all lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee, _that_ was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops; potter and clay endure.

He fixed thee mid this dance of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest
Machinery just meant to give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

What though the earlier grooves which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim, skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

Look thou not down but up! to uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow, the Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, Heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?

But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I--to the wheel of life, with shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst;

So take and use Thy work, amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand! perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Even when the words are the same, the delivery changes according to the peculiarities of the hearer. No one tells a story in the same way to different persons. When it is narrated to a little child, greater emphasis is placed on points; we make longer pauses and more salient, definite pictures; but if it is told to an educated man, the thought is sketched more in outline. To one who is ignorant of the circumstances many details are carefully suggested. Even the figures and illustrations are consciously or unconsciously so chosen by one with the dramatic instinct as to adapt the truth to the listener.

In "The Englishman in Italy," the story is told to a child. After the quotation, "such trifles," the Englishman speaking would no doubt laugh. The spirit of the poem is shown by the fact that it is spoken by an Englishman to a little child that is an Italian.

A monologue shows the effect of character upon character, and hence nearly always implies the direct speaking of one person to another. In this it differs from a speech. Still, the principle applies even to the speaker. He cannot present a subject in the same way to an educated and to an uneducated audience, but instinctively chooses words common to him and to his hearers and finds such illustrations as make his meaning obvious to them. All language is imperfect. Truth is not made clear by being made superficial, but by the careful choosing of words and illustrations understood by the hearer. The speaker, accordingly, must feel his audience. The imperfection of ordinary teaching and speaking is thus explained by a form of dramatic art. Browning says at the close of "The Ring and the Book":

"Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.
How look a brother in the face and say
'Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind,
Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length,
And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith!'
Say this as silvery as tongue can troll--
The anger of the man may be endured,
The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him
Are not so bad to bear--but here's the plague,
That all this trouble comes of telling truth,
Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false,
Seems to be just the thing it would supplant,
Nor recognizable by whom it left;
While falsehood would have done the work of truth.
But Art,--wherein man nowise speaks to men,
Only to mankind,--Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word."

In "A Woman's Last Word," already explained (p. 6), the listening husband, his attitude towards his wife, his jealousy and suspicion, all serve to call forth her love and nobility of character. He is the cause of the monologue, and must be as definitely conceived as the speaker. Without a clear conception of his character, her words cannot receive the right interpretation.

In "Bishop Blougram's Apology," the listener, Mr. Gigadibs, is definitely, though indirectly, portrayed. He is a young man of thirty, impulsive, ideal, but has not yet struggled with the problems of life. His criticisms of Blougram are answered by that worldly-minded ecclesiastic, who can declare most truly the fact that an absolute faith is not possible, and then assume--and thus contradict himself--that to ignorant people he must preach an absolute faith. The character of the Bishop is strongly conceived, and his perception of the highest possibility of life, as well as his failure to carry it out, are portrayed with marvellous complexity and full recognition of the difficulties of reconciling idealism with realism. But the character of his young, enthusiastic, and earnest critic, who lacks his experience and who may be partially silenced, is as important as the apology of Blougram. The poem is a debate between an idealist and a realist, the speech of the realist alone being given. We catch the weakness and the strength of both points of view, and thus enter into the comprehension of a most subtle struggle for self-justification.

It is some distance from Bishop Blougram to Mr. Dooley, but the necessity for a listener in the monologue, a listener of definite character, is shown in both cases.

Dooley's talks are a departure from the regular form of the monologue, in the fact that Hennessey now and then speaks a word directly; but this partial introduction of dialogue does not change the fact that all of these talks are monologues. Such interruptions are not the only types of departure from the strict form of the monologue. Browning gives a narrative conclusion to "Pheidippides" and "Bishop Blougram's Apology," and many variations are found among different authors. Hennessey's remarks may be introduced as a way of arousing in the imagination of ordinary people a conception of the listener. The relationship of the two characters is thus possibly more easily pictured to the ordinary imagination.

Of the necessity of Hennessey there can be no doubt. Mr. Dooley would never speak in this way but for the sympathetic and reverently attentive Hennessey. The two are complemental and necessary to each other.

Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures were very popular, perhaps partly because of the silence expressing the patience of Caudle, though there were appendices that indicated remarks written down by Mr. Caudle, but long afterwards and when alone. There are some advantages in the pure form; the mind is kept more concentrated. So without Hennessey's direct remarks the picture of Dooley might have been even better sustained. The form of a monologue, however, must not be expected to remain rigid. The point here to be apprehended is the necessity of recognizing a listener as well as a speaker.

Every Dooley demands a listener. He must have appreciation. These monologues are a humorous, possibly unconscious, presentation of this principle. The audience or the reader is turned by the author into a contemplative spectator of a simple situation. A play demands a struggle, but here we have all the restfulness, ease, and repose of life itself. We all like to sit back and observe, especially when a character is unfolding itself.

In the monologue as well as in the play there is no direct teaching. Things happen as in life, and we see the action of a thought upon a certain mind and do our own exhorting or preaching.

The monologue adapts itself to all kinds of characters and to every species of theme. It does not require a plot, or even a great struggle, as in the case of the play. Attention is fixed upon one individual; we are led into the midst of the natural situations of every-day life, and receive with great force the impressions which events, ideas, or other characters make upon a specific type of man.

Eugene Field often makes children talk in monologues. Some persons have criticized Field's children's poems and said they were not for children at all. This is true, and Field no doubt intended it so. He made his children talk naturally and freely, as if to each other, but not as they would talk to older people.

"Jes' 'Fore Christmas" is true to a boy's character, but we must be careful in choosing a listener. The boy would not speak in this way to an audience, to the family at the dinner table, nor to any one but a confidant. He must have, in fact, a Hennessey,--possibly some other boy, or, more likely, some hired man.

It is a mistake, unfortunately a common one, to give such a poem as a speech to an audience. It is not a speech, but only one end of a conversation. It is almost lyric in its portrayal of feeling, but still it concerns human action and the relations of persons to each other. Therefore, it is primarily dramatic, and a monologue. The words must be considered as spoken to some confidential listener.

A proper conception of the monologue produces a higher appreciation of the work of Field. As monologues, his poems are always consistent and beautiful. When considered as mere stories for children, their artistic form has been misconceived, and interpreters of them with this conception have often failed.

Even "Little Boy Blue," a decided lyric, has a definite speaker, and the objects described and the events indicated are intensely as well as dramatically realized. Notice the abrupt transitions, the sudden changes in feeling. It is more easily rendered with a slight suggestion of a sympathetic listener.

Many persons regard James Whitcomb Riley's "Knee-deep in June" as a lyric; but has it enough unconsciousness for this? To me it is far more flexible and spontaneous when considered as a monologue. The interpreter of the poem can make longer pauses. He can so identify himself with the character as to give genial and hearty laughter, and thus indicate dramatically the sudden arrival of ideas. To reveal the awakening of an idea is the very soul of spontaneous expression, and such awakening is nearly always dramatic. So in the following conception, what a sudden, joyous discovery can be made of

"Mr. Blue Jay full o' sass,
In them base-ball cloes o' hisn."

Notice also the sudden breaks in transition that can be indicated in

"Blue birds' nests tucked up there
Conveniently for the boy 'at's apt to be
Up some other apple tree."

Notice after "to be" how he suddenly enjoys the birds' cunning and laughs for the moment at the boys' failure. You can accentuate, too, his dramatic feeling for May and "'bominate its promises" with more decision and point.

The "you" in this poem and the frequent imperatives indicate the conception in the author's mind of a speaker and a sympathetic companion out in the fields in June. It certainly detracts from the simplicity, dramatic intensity, naturalness, and spontaneity to make of it a kind of address to an audience. The same is true of the "Liztown Humorist," "Kingsby's Mill," "Joney," and many others which are usually considered and rendered as stories. They are monologues. Possibly a completer title for them would be lyric monologues.

While the interpreter of these monologues can easily turn his auditors into a sympathetic and familiar group who might stand for his listener, he can transport them in imagination to the right situation; and while this is often done by interpreters with good effect, to my mind this does not change their character as monologues.

Granting, however, that some of Riley's poems are more or less speeches, it must be admitted that he has written some definite and formal poems which cannot be so conceived. "Nothin' to Say," for example, is one of the most decided and formal monologues found anywhere. In this the listener

NOTHIN' TO SAY

Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say!--
Gyrls that's in love, I've noticed, ginerly has their way!
Yer mother did afore you, when her folks objected to me--
Yit here I am, and here you air; and yer mother--where is she?

You look lots like yer mother: Purty much same in size;
And about the same complected; and favor about the eyes:
Like her, too, about her _livin_ here,--because _she_ couldn't stay:
It'll 'most seem like you was dead--like her!--But I hain't got nothin'
to say!

She left you her little Bible--writ yer name acrost the page--
And left her ear-bobs fer you, ef ever you come of age.
I've allus kep' 'em and gyuarded 'em, but ef yer goin' away--
Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say!

You don't rikollect her, I reckon? No; you wasn't a year old then!
And now yer--how old air you? W'y, child, not "_twenty!_" When?
And yer nex' birthday's in Aprile? and you want to git married that day?
... I wisht yer mother was livin'!--But--I hain't got nothin' to say!

Twenty year! and as good a gyrl as parent ever found.
There's a straw ketched onto yer dress there--I'll bresh it off--turn
round.
(Her mother was jes' twenty when us two run away!)
Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say!

can be as definitely located as the speaker. To conceal his own tears, the speaker turns or stops and pretends to brush off a straw caught on his daughter's dress. We have here in this monologue also something unusual, but very suggestive and strictly dramatic,--an aside wherein he evidently turns away from his daughter--

("Her mother was jes' twenty when us two run away.")

Since the daughter is definitely located as listener and the other speeches are spoken to her, this can be given easily as a contrast, as an aside to himself, and a slight turn of the body will serve to emphasize, even as an aside often does in a play, the location of the daughter, and the speaker's relation to her. The sentiment also serves to emphasize the character of the speaker.

In "Griggsby's Station" we have a most decided monologue. Who is speaking, and to whom is the monologue addressed? Is the speaker the daughter in a family suddenly grown rich, talking to her mother? The character of the speaker and of the listener must be definitely conceived and carefully suggested in order to give truth to the rendering or even to realize its meaning.

The same is true regarding many of Holman Day's stories in his "Up in Maine," and other books. With hardly any exception these are best rendered as monologues.

Many of the poems of Sam Walter Foss and other popular writers of the present are monologues. The homelike characters demand sympathetic listeners, who are, by implication, of the same general type and character as the speaker. Even "The House by the Side of the Road" is better given with the spirit of the monologue. It is too personal, too dramatic, to be turned into a speech.

Again, notice Mrs. Piatt's "Sometime," and a dozen examples in Webb's "Vagrom Verse"; also "With Lead and Line along Varying Shores"; and in Oscar Fay Adams's "Sicut Patribus," where you would hardly expect monologues, you find that "At Bay" and "Conrad's Choir" have the form of monologues.

Many monologues in our popular writers seem at first simple and without the formal and definite construction of those employed by Browning, yet after careful examination we feel that the conception of the monologue has slowly taken possession of our writers, it may be unconsciously, and that the true interpretation of many of the most popular poems demands from the reader a dramatic conception.

For the comprehension of any monologue, those points where the speaker is directly affected by the hearer need especial attention. The speaker occasionally echoes the words of his hearer. Mrs. Caudle, for instance, often quotes the words of her spouse, and these were printed by Douglas Jerrold in italics and even in separate paragraphs. "For the love of mercy let you sleep?" for example, was thus printed to emphasize the interruption by Caudle. These words would be echoed by her with affected surprise. Then she would pour out her sarcasm: "Mercy indeed; I wish you would show a little of it to other people." In most authors these echoed speeches are indicated by quotation marks. Browning sometimes has words in parentheses. Note "(What 'cicada'? Pooh!)" in "A Tale." "Cicada" was certainly spoken by the listener, but the other words in the parentheses and other parentheses in this monologue are more personal remarks by the speaker. They have reference, however, to the listener's attitude.

In some cases Browning gives no indication by even quotation marks that the speaker is echoing words of the hearer. The attitude of the listener must be varied by the dramatic instinct of the reader. The grasp of the situation greatly depends upon this. It is one of the most important aspects of the dramatic instinct. ("Up at a Villa--Down in the City," see p. 65.) "Why" and "What of a Villa" certainly refers to the words, or at least the attitude, of the listener, which is realized from the manner of the speaker.

In the same poem the question "Is it ever hot in the square?" may be the echo of a word or a thought of the listener. In this case the speaker would answer it more abruptly and positively when he says, "There is a fountain to spout and splash." If, on the contrary, the thought is his own, and comes up naturally in his mind as one of the points in his description or as a result of living over his experience down in the city, he would give it less abruptly, with less force or emphasis. In general, a quotation or the echo of the words of a listener are given by the speaker with a different manner.

Tennyson, though the fact is often overlooked, has written many monologues.

Some readers give "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" as a mere story. Is there, then, no thought of the character of the yeoman who is talking with burning indignation at the death of his friend?

LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Of me you shall not win renown:
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired:
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
I know you proud to bear your name,
Your pride is yet no mate for mine,
Too proud to care from whence I came.
Nor would I break for your sweet sake
A heart that doats on truer charms.
A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats of arms.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Some meeker pupil you must find,
For were you queen of all that is,
I could not stoop to such a mind.
You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
You put strange memories in my head;
Nor thrice your branching limes have blown
Since I beheld young Laurence dead.
Oh, your sweet eyes, your low replies:
A great enchantress you may be:
But there was that across his throat
Which you had hardly cared to see.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
When thus he met his mother's view,
She had the passions of her kind,
She spake some certain truths of you.
Indeed I heard one bitter word
That scarce is fit for you to hear:
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
There stands a spectre in your hall:
The guilt of blood is at your door:
You changed a wholesome heart to gall.
You held your course without remorse,
To make him trust his modest worth,
And, last, you fixed a vacant stare,
And slew him with your noble birth.

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
From yon blue heavens above us bent
The gardener Adam and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.

I know you, Clara Vere de Vere,
You pine among your halls and towers:
The languid light of your proud eyes
Is wearied of the rolling hours.
In glowing health, with boundless wealth,
But sickening of a vague disease,
You know so ill to deal with time,
You needs must play such pranks as these.

Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,
If Time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no beggars at your gate,
Nor any poor about your lands?
Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew,
Pray Heaven for a human heart,
And let the foolish yeoman go.

The character of the speaker must be realized from first to last. But there is something more. Did the yeoman win or lose his case? Does Tennyson give us no sign of the effect of his words upon the lady to whom his rebuke was directed? All whom I have heard read it, cause one to think that she remains stolid, unresponsive, and cold, or else she was not really present, and the poem is a kind of lyric. But you will notice that in the last stanza the speaker drops the "Lady," and says "Clara, Clara," which certainly shows a change in feeling. There are also other indications that she was affected by his words, and that the speaker saw it. In the line, "You know so ill to deal with time," he may be excusing her conduct, while in the last lines he suggests how she should live to atone for the past:

"Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew."

He certainly would not have spoken thus if she had not by word or look shown indications of repentance. Truth must accomplish its results. Art must reflect the victory of truth. We perceive the signs of victory in the very words of the poem, and the character of the speaker's expression must reflect the response in her. The reader who dramatically or truly interprets the poem, feeling this, will show a change in feeling and movement, and give tender coloring to the closing words.

Of course there is much moralizing in this and a smoother movement than in a monologue by Browning. Tennyson is not a master of the monologue. Some may think that Clara would never have endured this long lecture, and that it is unnatural for us to conceive of her as being really present; but, though poetry usually takes fewer words to say something than would be used in life, sometimes--and here possibly--it takes more. Certainly Tennyson often takes more, and this is one reason why he is not a dramatic poet. The poem, however, can be effectively rendered as a monologue, and thus receive a more adequate interpretation.

There is frequently more than one listener. In "The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church," the Bishop speaks to many "sons," though he calls out Anselm especially, his chief heir, perhaps. In "The Ring and the Book" some of the speakers address the court and almost make speeches, as do the lawyers in their pleas, for instance. But the Pope, who acts, it will be remembered, as the judge, is in many cases the person addressed. The principle is the same, though the situations may differ. In every case, such a situation, listener, or listeners are chosen as will best express the character of the speaker. Notice, for example, that Pompilia tells her story on her dying bed to the sympathetic nuns, who would best call forth the points in her story.

The listener is sometimes changed, or may change, positions. In Riley's "There, Little Girl, Don't Cry," the three great periods in a woman's life are portrayed, and the location of the listener must be changed to show the different situations and changes of time and place as well as the character of the listener. Long pauses and extreme variations in the modulations of the voice are also necessary in such a transition. This poem also affords an example of the age and experience of the listener affecting expression.

In many monologues the person about whom the speaker talks is of great importance. In "The Flight of the Duchess" we almost entirely lose sight of the speaker and of the hearer, and our thought successively centres upon the Duke, on his mother, on the old crone, and, above all, on the Duchess. These characters are made to live before us, and we see the impressions they produce upon a simple, loyal heart. The beauty of this wonderful monologue lies in the portrayal of the honest nature of the speaker and the revelation of the impressions made upon him by those who have played parts in his life.

The series of monologues or soliloquies styled by Browning "James Lee's Wife" were called "James Lee" in his first edition, and many feel that Browning made a mistake in changing the title; for the theme in these is the character, not of the woman who speaks so much as of the man about whom she speaks.

In Browning's "Clive," the speaker, who "is by no means a Clive," according to Professor Dowden, "has to betray something of his own character and at the same time to set forth the character of the hero of his tale." Here, of course, both speaker and listener are subordinated to Clive, the person spoken of. Hence some may be tempted to think that "Clive" is a mere story. Dowden, Chesterton, and others speak of it as a story, but it has the movement, the dramatic action, the unity and spirit of a monologue. The fact that the chief character is the one about whom the speaker talks makes the poem none the less dramatic. The more "Clive" is studied, the more will the student feel that its chief theme is the contact and conflict of characters, and the more, too, will he perceive that its atmosphere and peculiarities are caused by the sense of a speaker and a listener, each of a distinct type.

This indirect narration or suggestion is often important, but in every case it is the speaker who reflects as from a mirror impressions produced upon him by the characters of those about whom he speaks.

The study of the relations of speaker and hearer requires discrimination to be made between the soliloquy and the monologue.

Shakespeare's soliloquies may be thought to be unnatural. No man ever talked to his fellows as Hamlet talks when alone, and Juliet at the window is made to reveal her deepest feelings. But all love songs express what the words of the ordinary man can never reveal. All art, and especially all literature, is a kind of objective embodiment of feeling or the processes of thinking. While Shakespeare's soliloquies may not seem as natural as conversation, in one sense they are more natural expressions of thinking and feeling. The highest poetry may be as natural as prose, or even more natural; all depends upon the mood or theme. In all art and literature, naturalness is due not to mere external accidents, but to the truthfulness of the expression of deeper emotions of the human heart.

Many feel that any representation in words of a mood or feeling is a lyric; hence they regard most monologues as lyrics. But are not Shakespeare's soliloquies dramatic? The lyric spirit gives objective form to feeling, but dramatic poetry does this in a way to show character and motives as well as moods.

To a certain extent, the lyric spirit and the dramatic can never be completely separated. There has never been a good play that was not lyric as well as dramatic. There has never been a true lyric poem that has not revealed some trait of human character and implied certain relations of human beings to each other. It is only the predominance of feeling and mood that makes a poem lyric, or the predominance of relations or conflicts of human beings that makes a passage dramatic. All the elements of poetry are inseparably united because they express living aspects of the human heart.

Shakespeare's soliloquies deserve careful study as the best introduction to the deep nature of the monologue. They are objective embodiments in words of feelings and moods of which the speaker himself is only partly conscious. This is the very climax of literature,--to word what no individual ever words. In a sense, this is true of a lyric, which may interpret in the many words of a song what in life is a mere look or the hardly revealed attitude of a soul. The deepest feelings of love can never be expressed in the prose of conversation. They can be suggested only in the exalted language of poetry.

These principles apply especially to the appreciation of a soliloquy. Of this phase of dramatic or literary art there has been but one master, and that was Shakespeare. He could make Hamlet think and feel before us without relation to another human being. He is the only author, practically, who has ever been able to portray a character entirely alone. In the great climaxes of his plays, we feel that he is dealing with the interpretation of the deepest moods and motives of life.

The exclamation, "Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt," after the departure of the King and the Court, reveals to us Hamlet's real condition, his impression or premonition that something is wrong. We are thus prepared for the effect of the news brought by Horatio and Marcellus, because his attitude has been first revealed to us by Shakespeare. Shakespeare alone could perform this marvellous feat. Again, one of the most important acts closes with a soliloquy which reveals Hamlet's spirit more definitely than could be done in any other way. This soliloquy comes naturally. Hamlet drives all from him, that he may arrange the dozen lines which he wishes to add to the play. This plan has come to him while he was listening to the actor, and must be shown by his action during the actor's speech. Hamlet, in a proper stage arrangement, is so placed as to occupy the attention of the audience while the actor is reciting. The impressions produced upon him, and not the player's rehearsal, form the centre of interest. By turning away while listening to the actor, he can indicate his agitation and the action of his mind in deciding upon the plan which is definitely stated in the soliloquy and forms the culmination of the act.

Notice, too, how Shakespeare makes this soliloquy come naturally between his dismissal of the two emissaries of the King and the writing of the addition to the play. Hamlet's soul is laid bare. He is roused to a pitch of great excitement over the grief of the actor and his own indifference to his father's murder. Then, taking up the play, he begins to prepare his extra lines, and with this closes the most passionate of all soliloquies.

Strictly speaking, a soliloquy is only a revelation of the thinking of a person entirely alone and uninfluenced by another; but a monologue implies thinking influenced by some peculiar type of hearer.

Browning's soliloquies are practically monologues. We feel that the character almost "others" itself and talks to itself as if to another person. This is also natural. We know it by observing children. But it is very different from the lonely soul revealing itself in Shakespeare's soliloquies. In fact, the monologue has taken such hold upon Browning that even Pippa's soliloquies in "Pippa Passes" are practically monologues.

In the "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," the monk talks to himself almost as to another person, and his every idea is influenced by Brother Lawrence, whom he sees in the garden below him, but to whom he does not speak and who does not see him.

SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER

Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims--
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!

At the meal we sit together:
_Salve tibi!_ I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
_Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for "parsley"?_
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps--
Marked with L for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)

_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
--Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)

When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp--
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp.

Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast: so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?

Or, my scrofulous French novel
On gray paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

Or, there's Satan!--one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss, till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Hine ..._
'St, there's Vespers! _Plena gratia
Ave, Virgo!_ Gr-r-r--you swine!

In this "soliloquy" we have, in a few lines, possibly the strongest interpretation of hypocrisy in literature. The soliloquy begins with the speaker's accidental discovery of the kindly-hearted monk, Brother Lawrence, attending to his flowers in the court below, and the sight causes an explosion of rage. So intense is his feeling that, in his imagination, he talks directly to Brother Lawrence. Note, for example, such suggestions as, "How go on your flowers?" Of course, Brother Lawrence knows nothing of the speaker's presence; that worthy, with gusto, answers his own questions to himself.

Notice also the abrupt transitions. Browning, even in his soliloquies, often introduces events. "There his lily snaps!" is given with sudden glee as the speaker discovers the accident.

The difference between Browning and Shakespeare may be still more clearly conceived. "Shakespeare," says some one, "makes his characters live; Browning makes his think." Shakespeare reveals character by making a man think alone, or, in contact with others, act. Browning fixes our attention upon an individual, and shows us what he is by making him think, and usually he suggests the cause of the thinking in some relation to objects, events, or characters. The situation in every case is most favorable to the expression of thought and feeling, and of deeper motives. The chief difference between Shakespeare and Browning is the difference between a play and a monologue. The point of view of the two men is not the same, and we must appreciate that of both.

Browning's "Saul" may be regarded as a soliloquy. David is alone. Browning's words here help us to an appreciation of his peculiar kind of soliloquy.

"Let me tell out my tale to its ending--my voice to my heart
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part,
As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep,
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep!"

"My voice to my heart" is very suggestive. Browning always made his speaker, when alone, talk to himself. He divides the personality of the individual much more than did Shakespeare. Shakespeare simply makes a man think aloud, while Browning almost makes consciousness dual.

Some one may ask,--Why not take any story or lyric and give it directly to an imaginary listener, and only indirectly to the audience?

This is exactly what should be done in some cases. Who can declaim as a speech or as if to an audience "John Anderson, my Jo," or "The Lover's Appeal," and not feel the situation to be ludicrous?

Some of the tenderest lyric poems should be given as though to an imaginary auditor somewhat to one side. As the lyric is subjective, the turning to one side is a help to the subjective sympathetic condition, especially in cases where the words of the lyric are supposed to be addressed to some individual character. It is very difficult for readers to speak to an audience directly and not pass into the oratoric attitude of mind. A little turn to the side, when simple, suggests the indirect nature of a poem. It gives power to change attention and suggests degrees of subjectivity, and thus tends to prevent the true spirit of the poem from being destroyed by oratorical or declamatory effects.

Perhaps Charles Lamb's famous saying, that recitation perverts a beautiful poem, would have been qualified had some poem been read to him with full recognition of its artistic character. The poem is not a speech, but a work of art, and the speaker must be clearly conceived, his emotion sympathetically realized, and given, not to an audience, but to an imaginary listener; thus all the delicacy and tenderness may be truthfully revealed and declamation and unnaturalness avoided.

In general, every kind of literature can be adequately rendered aloud. The true spirit of those poems that have been considered unadapted to such rendering can possibly be shown by the voice if we find the real situation, and do not try to give the words the directness of an oration or a lesson, or the objectivity of a play.

When a story or a poem can be made more natural and more effective by being conceived as spoken by a character of a definite type to a definite type of hearer, it should usually be regarded as a monologue. Readers who picture not only the peculiar character speaking, but the person to whom he speaks, will receive and give a more adequate impression, one more dramatic, more simple, and far more expressive of character than those who confuse it with a lyric or a story.

Dramatic art, in fact all art, is indirect, except in some forms of speaking. The true orator or speaker, however, while having a direct purpose, never directly commands or dominates his audience. Every true artist, painter, musician, or even orator, simply awakens the faculties and powers of others, and leads men to decide for themselves. The true speaker should appeal to imagination and reason, and not attempt to force men to accept his ideals and convictions. That would be domination, not oratory. True art is on the rational basis of kinship of nature. Faculty awakens faculty, vision quickens vision.

No hard and fast line can be drawn between the arts, even between the oration and the monologue. But the oration is more direct, more conscious; speaker and listener understand, as a rule, exactly the purpose and the intention. The monologue, on the contrary, is indirect. Its interpreter endeavors faithfully to portray human nature. He reveals the impressions produced upon him instead of endeavoring directly to produce a specific impression upon an audience.

The conception of the listener in the monologue is different from that of the listener in the oration. In every monologue, the interpreter shows the contact of a speaker with a listener and conveys a definite impression made upon him by each. He especially conveys, not only his identification with the character speaking, but that character's mental or conversational attitude towards another human being and the unconscious variation of mental action resulting from such a relationship.

IV. PLACE OR SITUATION

Whether or not we agree with the ancient rules of the unities regarding place, time, and action as laws of the drama, every one must recognize the fact that all three conceptions are in some sense necessary to an illusion. A dramatic action or position implies not only character, but specific location and circumstance. The situation helps to reveal the character and shows its relation to human life.

Therefore, dramatic effect implies more than contact of different characters. It is concerned with such a placing of the characters as will reveal something of motives.

Two men may meet continually in society or in the ordinary and conventional relations of business and the peculiar characteristics of neither may ever be revealed. Steel and flint may lie passively side by side or may be frozen in the same ice without any suggestion of heat. The steel must strike the flint suddenly to bring forth a spark of fire. In the same way, character must collide with character in such a situation, such a conflict of interests, such opposite determinations or ambitions, as will cause a revelation of motives and dispositions. Steel and flint illustrate character. The stroke is the situation, the spark the dramatic result. Place, accordingly, is often of great importance in dramatic art.

The monologue is no exception to this. The reader must definitely imagine not only a speaker and a listener, but also a location or situation. From a dramatic point of view, situation is perhaps more necessary to a monologue than to a play. Without a situation, nothing can be dramatic.

In Browning's "Up at a Villa--Down in the City," is the speaker located in the city, at the villa, or at some point between the two?

UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY

(AS DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY)

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain's edge as bare as the creature's skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
--I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.

But the city, oh the city--the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry!
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by:
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.