TEN After, a "dramatic monologue," and it is a good name to give to a whole series of his poems, the "trick" of which I do not quite say he invented, but which he wrought into forms so specially his own, that they stand apart from work of a similar kind in other poets. Browning also made monologues of this kind. They, too, had their own qualities and manner, and were exceedingly various in metre. Browning's mind was filled with so great a crowd of various men and women, and of so many different times and countries, that he was forced, in order to realise their differences, into many different metrical movements. Tennyson, on the contrary, not conceiving so many types as Browning, is satisfied, on the whole, with one long, six-accented metre, with many trisyllables. The dramatic monologues of Browning are sometimes lyrical, sometimes narrative, sometimes reflective, sometimes heroic, poetry. The poetic form in which Tennyson composed his monologues scarcely varies at all. It is an excellent manner for his purpose, and having found it, he clung to it. One man or woman speaks, telling a tale of the past or of the present. Another person—and here the dramatic element enters-is supposed to be near at hand, but we only know what he says by the speaker repeating a part of what he has heard and replying to it; and we only know of his presence by all that is said being addressed to him. The poor woman in Rizpah speaks to her visitor; the Northern Farmer to his servant. This is Tennyson's form of the dramatic monologue, and it is wrought out with great skill and effectiveness. It is an easy form to work in, the easiest of all; and it is characteristic of Tennyson's love of the simple that he should choose the easiest. The form being easy to write in, the work inevitably tends to become, in inartistic hands, slovenly, long-winded, and unforceful. In Tennyson's hands, on the contrary, it is of the most robust, careful, concentrated kind. It is extremely rare when anything weak intrudes, or when the edge of the meaning is not quite sharp and clear. Any failure in excellence is more due to certain elements in the subject, chiefly controversial, and which were better excluded, than to the work itself. It must, however, be remembered that the power of writing a good dramatic monologue does not include the power of writing a good drama. I doubt very much whether even Shakspere could have written a good dramatic monologue. He could not have kept to the single character. The pull in his soul towards the creation of more men and women would have been too much for him. On the other hand, the creator of a good dramatic monologue is not likely to be a good dramatist. Of course, he may have that power, but I remember no case of it. The habit of mind by which a poet creates, as in a dramatic monologue, one vivid personality out of himself is so totally different from the habit of creating a number of personalities, all of whom the dramatist conceives as apart from himself, that it is not probable one man will have both habits of mind. Moreover, the power of drawing one man in one set of circumstances is very different from the power of drawing a number of characters clashing together in circumstances which are continually changing. The writer of the dramatic monologue is likely to keep to his habit if he take to the drama, and all his characters will tend to express themselves in monologue. Changing circumstances will not modify their speech or their action as much as they ought to do. At root, all the characters will be the poet; we shall detect him everywhere; nor will there be enough distinction between the characters to make the play interesting, the action dramatic, the personages alive enough, or the catastrophe a necessity. This is true of all Tennyson's, and, in a lesser degree, of Browning's dramas. The Northern Farmer, the Northern Cobbler, the second Northern Farmer, the village wife in The Entail, are all keenly alive. But I do not believe that Tennyson could have brought these four into a drama, and driven them, by their characters hurtling together, to a necessary conclusion; or invented, with excellence, the mutual play which should lead to that conclusion. In this, the highest of all the creative forms of poetry, he would have broken down; and he always did break down when he tried. The fact is that, for drama, his own personality was too much with him; he could not get rid of it. But the great dramatist can divest himself of his personality. His personages have their own characters, not his. He has lost himself in making them. I might even say that his will does not order their action; it is rather the meeting of the various characters, under the circumstances, which makes the conclusion inevitable. He invents, it is true, the circumstances, but his personages do not act as he would act; they follow their separate bents; independent, as it were, of his will. And so apart from him are they, so little is he in them as a character, that I can conceive, to put it paradoxically, that he might be unaware of what they are going to do. The true dramatist sits outside of his characters. This is the highest kind of creation. Such a creator is the true Prometheus. He makes men and women who are not himself. But this is not the kind of work Tennyson or Browning could do. We hear the individuality of their maker in all the personages of their dramas say. We see the aims of their maker, his tricks of mental attitude, his theories of life, in all they do. The untrue dramatist sits inside of all his characters. Both Browning and Tennyson ought to have kept to dramatic monologue, or to such a variation of dramatic monologue as Pippa Passes, which no one can call a drama. All the same, it is necessary to say, though not here to dwell on, that Browning has made a far more successful attempt at drama than Tennyson. But Once more, in a drama the characters speak no more when the conclusion arrives. The dramatist therefore always looks to the future. He is anxious that his characters should play together towards a far-off end; that every one of them should minister his own part to the end; that each man's part should illuminate the parts of all the others. All his interests look forward. in the dramatic monologue there is no forward look; nothing has to be made for a distant end or fitted to it. What has been in the past or what is actually doing in the present is described, and to write of the past or the present is, of course, much easier than to compose a changing succession of events and varying emotions. towards a close in the future. It needs twice the genius to write a good drama that it takes to write a good dramatic monologue; but, unfortunately, those who have so much of the dramatic instinct as to be able to write a dramatic monologue persuade themselves with great rapidity that they can write a drama. It thoroughly disturbs me when I think what a series of little masterpieces of dramatic monologue we might have had |