Browning and the Dramatic Monologue Part 6

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 pa.s.sions 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 d.u.c.h.ess" 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 d.u.c.h.ess. 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 t.i.tle; 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 pa.s.sage 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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sionate 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 Pa.s.ses" 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 d.a.m.ned flower-pots, do!

If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, G.o.d's blood, would not mine kill you!

What? your myrtle-bush wants tr.i.m.m.i.n.g?

Oh, that rose has prior claims-- Needs its leaden vase filled br.i.m.m.i.n.g?

h.e.l.l 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, l.u.s.trous, 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 ill.u.s.trate, 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 d.a.m.nations, 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 h.e.l.l, 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!