Browning and the Dramatic Monologue. S. S. Curry
the developed brute; a God though in the germ.
And I shall thereupon take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new;
Fearless and unperplexed, when I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to indue.
Youth ended, I shall try my gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same, give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
For note, when evening shuts, a certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
A whisper from the west shoots, “Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day.”
So, still within this life, though lifted o’er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
“This rage was right i’ the main, that acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past.”
For more is not reserved to man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day;
Here, work enough to watch the Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool’s true play.
As it was better, youth should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made;
So, better, age, exempt from strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid!
Enough now, if the Right and Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute, subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
Be there, for once and all, severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I the world arraigned, were they my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?
Not on the vulgar mass called “work” must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O’er which, from level stand, the low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
But all, the world’s coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature, all purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount;
Thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be, all men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Ay, note that Potter’s wheel, that metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay—
Thou, to whom fools propound, when the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!”
Fool! All that is at all lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee, that was, is, and shall be: Time’s wheel runs back or stops; potter and clay endure. He fixed thee mid this dance of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest Machinery just meant to give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. What though the earlier grooves which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press? What though, about thy rim, skull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? Look thou not down but up! to uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal, The new wine’s foaming flow, the Master’s lips a-glow! Thou, Heaven’s consummate cup, what needst thou with earth’s wheel? But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I—to the wheel of life, with shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst; So take and use Thy work, amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
Even when the words are the same, the delivery changes according to the peculiarities of the hearer. No one tells a story in the same way to different persons. When it is narrated to a little child, greater emphasis is placed on points; we make longer pauses and more salient, definite pictures; but if it is told to an educated man, the thought is sketched more in outline. To one who is ignorant of the circumstances many details are carefully suggested. Even the figures and illustrations are consciously or unconsciously so chosen by one with the dramatic instinct as to adapt the truth to the listener.
In “The Englishman in Italy,” the story is told to a child. After the quotation, “such trifles,” the Englishman speaking would no doubt laugh. The spirit of the poem is shown by the fact that it is spoken by an Englishman to a little child that is an Italian.
A monologue shows the effect of character upon character, and hence nearly always implies the direct speaking of one person to another. In this it differs from a speech. Still, the principle applies even to the speaker. He cannot present a subject in the same way to an educated and to an uneducated audience, but instinctively chooses words common to him and to his hearers and finds such illustrations as make his meaning obvious to them. All language is imperfect. Truth is not made clear by being made superficial, but by the careful choosing of words and illustrations understood by the hearer. The speaker, accordingly, must feel his audience. The imperfection of ordinary teaching and speaking is thus explained by a form of dramatic art. Browning says at the close of “The Ring and the Book”:
“Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.
How look a brother in the face and say
‘Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind, Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length, And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith!’ Say this as silvery as tongue can troll— The anger of the man may be endured, The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him Are not so bad to bear—but here’s the plague, That all this trouble comes of telling truth, Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false, Seems to be just the thing it would supplant, Nor recognizable by whom it left; While falsehood would have done the work of truth. But Art—wherein man nowise speaks to men, Only to mankind—Art may tell a truth Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.”
In “A Woman’s Last Word,” already explained (p. 6),