Robert Browning came to be acknowledged as "the other great poet of his generation. Even in his eminence Browning was perceived against and as somehow different from the model of a poet already established in the writing and public person of Tennyson" (Donald J. Gray, Victorian Literature: Poetry, New York: MacMillan, 1976, 205). That he is different is readily apparent in the roughened syntax and grotesque rhymes he often employed and in his use of the dramatic monologue for which he is now so well known.

According to A Handbook to Literature (William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996), the dramatic monologue is

[a] poem that reveals a "soul in action" through the speech of one character in a dramatic situation. The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker's life. The circumstances surrounding the conversation, one side of which we "hear"  . . .  are made clear by implication, and an insight into the character of the speaker may result. (166)

Although Browning did not invent the dramatic monologue, he certainly made it his own.

It took Browning ten years to discover this form, and it was another twenty years before the general reading public truly "discovered" Browning (Gray 205). Of his many works, we will look at selections from Dramatic Lyrics, 1842; Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845; Men and Women, 1855; and Dramatis Personae, 1864. These marked the rise of Browning's career, especially Men and Women and Dramatis Personae. The Ring and the Book, 1868-69, a retelling of a seventeenth-century murder from the various points of view of those involved, more or less capped his career.

Gray succinctly outlines the recurrent themes which we will examining (206):

• the necessity to act in this world
• the inevitability of failure
• the excitements and possibility of the flesh
• the existence of a spiritual reality that will reward action, retrieve failure, and redeem actuality

After reading the introductory section carefully, you may find it useful to read/review your selections online. A briefly annotated version of each of them, including a few illustrations, is available from the links below.

If you wish to view the annotations, simply move your mouse on and off the highlighted text. Do not click on it, or you will receive an error message.

• "Porphyria's Lover"
• "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"
• "My Last Duchess"
• "The Laboratory"
• "The Lost Leader"
• "Fra Lippo Lippi"
• "Andrea del Sarto"
• "Two in the Campagna"

^© Scott Foll 2000. All rights reserved.