The Dramatic Monologue | A Versatile Technique

A dramatic monologue is typically a lyric poem, where a person reveals interesting aspects of their character or psychology while speaking to someone else. It is, like the name implies, a dramatic device. It allows the speaker to express themselves naturally, while revealing their innermost thoughts to us the audience. The writer also has the opportunity to tell the story by hiding behind a specific character perspective.

It is similar to and different from a soliloquy. The soliloquy often occurs in a play, with the speaker using it as an opportunity to reveal their hidden feelings and thoughts directly to the audience. The dramatic monologue often takes the same approach by directly addressing a silent audience.

However, it more often includes an extra layer of artifice. It could take the form of a letter or dialogue to someone else besides the silent audience. Robert Browning has what may well be the most famous example of dramatic monologue in “My Last Duchess” (published in 1842). 

In the poem, an Italian aristocrat or duke shows off the painting of his deceased wife to an emissary. The wife has more or less been turned into a painting behind a curtain, with a smile on her face. In the process of talking with the emissary, he casually reveals that he had her killed and for what reason: 

                                                    . . . She had

A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace—all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked

Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody’s gift. . . 

This shows the duke to be an insecure egomaniac. He is an aristocrat who believes that his “gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name” means that his wife should preserve all her smiles just for him, and no one else. He is even jealous of the sunset (or “the dropping of the daylight in the West”) when it causes his wife to smile. 

The dramatic monologue is, in a sense, feministic. The poet uses it to expose the duke as a control freak whose wealth and aristocratic status have him believing that he has a right to own and even commodify and objectify a woman into a work of art. However, this criticism is not said explicitly. Everything is told from the perspective of the duke, who seems oblivious to his own monstrosity as he speaks in a genteel manner, that is, educated and courteous. This can make the literary analysis or close reading a little tricky, as you should be critical enough to tell the difference between what the author says and what the persona is saying.

The effect of the poem is achieved through a kind of ironic distance between the poet and the persona of the poem. Browning exposes the immoral inhumanity of the duke through the duke's own mouth. This type of dramatic monologue can be seen as the most sophisticated version of this narrative technique. It allows the reader to peek into the psychology of the speaker to recognize internal conflicts and incongruities that even the speaker is unaware of. In this article, we focus on more examples of dramatic monologues, including two from Hilda Doolittle otherwise known as H.D.

Portrait of H.D. from 1922.

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The dramatic monologue: More than a narrative device 

Now, dramatic monologues don’t always have to reveal deep psychological insight. Sometimes, they simply serve as a basic narrative device. Other times, they provide a writer a chance to represent voices that have been overlooked or misunderstood. A good example of a dramatic monologue being used as a narrative device for comedic effect is Edward Baugh’s “The Carpenter’s Complaint”:

Now you think that is right, sah? Talk the truth.

The man was mi friend. I build it, I

Build the house that him live in; but now

That him dead, that mawga-foot bwoy, him son,

Come say, him want a nice job for the coffin,

So him give it to Mister Belnavis to make -

That big-belly crook who don't know him arse

From a chisel . . .

It’s a dramatic monologue about a carpenter who was passed over by the son of his friend, who has died. The son, whom he refers to as “that mawga-foot bwoy” (which is Jamaican dialect for "that skinny-legged kid") has chosen someone else to build his best friend’s coffin. 

In the poem, the carpenter is in a bar speaking to the barkeeper while drinking. The Jamaican dialect and invective is an obvious source of humor. The device is used to provide an authentic replication of Jamaican dialect. This form of dramatic monologue is the most basic. It simply tells the story or presents a perspective from a character without any subtlety or deep psychological analysis.

This is in contrast to Robert Browning's "Last Duchess," where Browning relies on an ironic distance between himself and the character perspective represented by the duke. We know Browning, and by extension, no decent human being, would agree with the duke's views of his wife and women in general. However, Browning steps back and allows the duke to fully express his morally bankrupt views, without any authorial intrusion or commentary.

Another notable form that the dramatic monologue has taken relates to the retelling of myths, especially from a feminist perspective. It is typical in the free verse poems of H.D. or Hilda Doolittle. Mythical female characters from Greek myths are given a chance to tell their side of the story directly to the audience.

A good example of this is H.D.’s poem “At Ithaca” (published in 1924). It is a poem that is told from the perspective of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who waits twenty years as he makes his way back home from the Trojan War, as portrayed in Homer's epic The Odyssey. As she waits, her house is taken over by suitors who all wish for her hand in marriage as they all hope to inherit Odysseus’ kingdom, even while he's alive.

The suitors attempt to force her to accept that Odysseus is dead and choose a new husband among them. She delays them by saying she will choose a suitor after completing a burial shroud for her husband, which she secretly and repeatedly undoes just before it is completed: 

But each time that I see

my work so beautifully

inwoven and would keep

the picture and the whole,

Athene steels my soul.

Slanting across my brain,

I see as shafts of rain

his chariot and his shafts,

I see the arrows fall,

I see the lord who moves

like Hector lord of love,

I see him matched with fair

bright rivals, and I see

those lesser rivals flee.

We see here that Penelope is seriously contemplating giving in to the demands of the suitors. Previously, she completes weaving the shroud and then unweaves it all over again. She is inspired by the Goddess Athena (or Athene), “who steels my soul” when she thinks she “would keep / the picture and the whole," that is, keep the woven shroud complete.  

The Odyssey, Homer’s epic poem, portrays her as a dutiful and chaste wife who remains true and loyal to her husband even in the face of dire adversity. H.D. more or less sticks to this depiction. However, she infuses Penelope with a sense of romantic passion and pride in her husband, which we don’t find in Homer’s depiction. 

We see a heavy strain of eroticism in phallic imagery such as “shafts of rain,” "his shafts," and "arrows." She also uses romantic language and imagery, such as “the lord who moves / like Hector lord of love.” There is something sensational — and I dare say sexy — about the way H.D. transforms the famous martial contests between the legendary Greek and Trojan champions featured in the Iliad as a love or even lovemaking contest.

Military prowess is turned into a metaphor for sexual prowess. The poem not only shows Penelope in a new erotic light. It also may well be a hidden love letter addressed to H.D.’s favorite among what appears to have been a catalog of lovers available for her to choose from. 

So, here, unlike Browning, we see no ironic distance between H.D. and the persona of the poem. Instead, we see a feminist perspective being presented, with the poet fully occupying Penelope's point of view with absolute empathy. The poet even goes beyond empathy.

If the poem is indeed a love letter or ode of some sort to H.D.'s favorite lover, which it most likely is, H.D. is identifying herself with Penelope. She repurposes Penelope's story to express her own experience of love for a man whom she won't ever give up on by drawing an analogy between her and a female character from the Greek epic tradition. Another H.D. poem that relies on the perspective of a female character from Greek myth is "Eurydice" (published in 1917): 

So you have swept me back,

I who could have walked with the live souls

above the earth,

I who could have slept among the live flowers

at last;

so for your arrogance

and your ruthlessness

. . .

I am broken at last,

I who had lived unconscious,

who was almost forgot;

if you had let me wait

I had grown from listlessness

into peace,

if you had let me rest with the dead,

I had forgot you

and the past.

In Greek mythology, Eurydice was a nymph married to the legendary musician Orpheus. Eurydice sadly dies after being bitten by a snake. Orpheus uses his charming music to convince Hades to get her back from hell, but on one condition — Orpheus must not look back at her until they have both arrived in the upper world. 

However, Orpheus, while leading Eurydice back to the surface, loses his nerve and looks back, and Eurydice is lost and descends back to hell. Orpheus is typically portrayed as simply being overcome with doubt. In H.D.’s retelling, he is portrayed as arrogant and ruthless.

Eurydice claims that if left alone, “I had forgot you / and the past.” Instead, she is awakened only to be promised seeing the sun and having the chance cruelly taken from her again. Instead of Eurydice remaining as a tragic and passive figure in her own story, the dramatic monologue gives her a chance to express her passion and her pain. 

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2025, July 10). The Dramatic Monologue | A Versatile Technique. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/dramatic-monologue