Browning and the Dramatic Monologue Part 7

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 pa.s.s into the oratoric att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstance. 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 pa.s.sively 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 s.h.a.g 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.

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights.

You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees.

Is it better in May, I ask you? you've summer all at once; In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns!

'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!

In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash Round the lady atop in the conch--fifty gazers do not abash, Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash!

All the year long at the villa, nothing's to see though you linger, Except yon cypress that points like Death's lean lifted forefinger.

Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.

Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill, And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.

Enough of the seasons,--I spare you the months of the fever and chill.

Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin: No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in: You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.

By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth; Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.

At the post-office such a scene-picture--the new play, piping hot!

And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.

Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes, And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's!

Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero, "And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,) "the skirts of Saint Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached."

Noon strikes,--here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!

_Bang, whang, whang_, goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife; No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life.

But bless you, it's dear--it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.

They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays pa.s.sing the gate It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!

Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still--ah, the pity, the pity!

Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals, And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles.

One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles, And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals.

_Bang, whang, whang_, goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife.

Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

Of course, there are arguments in favor of placing the "person of quality"

in the city near his beloved objects. One of the last lines, beginning "Look, two and two go the priests," seems to imply the discovery and actual presence of the procession. But if Browning had located the speaker in the city, would he not say "here" and not "there," as he does at the end of the third line?