Robert Browning is the master of the dramatic monologue form, in which a poem’s speaker is a specific character — whether entirely invented or based on a real person. Think of it as a soliloquy without a play around it. In fact, Browning originally wanted to be a dramatist, but soon discovered he had no real gift for constructing plays. However, he was superb at creating characters and giving them speeches. What makes these poems particularly pleasing as a set? In other words, what does Browning do in these poems that makes them surprising, clever, and pleasurable for the reader?
A colleague of mine, upon first reading “Porphyria’s Lover,” laughingly (though admiringly) pronounced it “Victorian snuff literature.” What has struck many readers of the poem, however, is the speaker’s extraordinary passivity. In any case, the lover in question is psychologically interesting. What is his motive for his crime? In what tone is the final line said? Does this poem have a theme, or is it strictly a tale of insanity and murder reminiscent of a story by Edgar A. Poe?
Ferrara is the only speaker in “My Last Duchess,” yet our understanding of the character of his last duchess, his attitudes towards her, his actions, and his current purposes — pay attention to whom Ferrara is addressing, and how the dramatic monologue form involves the reader in the scenario being depicted — is likely to conflict in fundamental ways with what he says. How does Browning create this dissonance? A related but not identical question: what effects do the particular rhyme scheme and meter he employs have on this poem?
As with Ferrara in “My Last Duchess,” our opinion of the unnamed monk in “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” would not tally with the character’s own self-estimation. In this case, however, the effect is more comic. Why?