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CORNELIA D.J. PEARSALLThe dramatic monologue
Early in Augusta Webster's dramatic monologue, "An Inventor" (1870), the
speaker expresses his frustration over a contraption that he has not yet
perfected. "It must," he insists, "perform my thought, it must awake / this
soulless whirring thing of springs and wheels, / and be a power among us"
(119). 1 These desperate imperatives ("it must") are followed by a question
that might betray a sense of futility were it not also the question of any
innovator: "Aye but how?" The speaker seeks public exhibition or display
of his thought; only then can the object be "a power among us," and so
enjoy a social and cultural import beyond even its maker. But the phrase
also suggests a more pragmatic, less theatrical, and less hierarchical
imperative for the object: it must execute his thought, it must accomplish
or fulfill some action or deed, and it must be effectual. 2
The notion of creating a vehicle for the performance of thoughts may
remind us of another nineteenth-century invention: the dramatic mono-
logue itself. This chapter explores the element of performance in the
dramatic monologue, the ways these poems enact or express aspects of
their speakers, and the ways in which these varied monologues are
"dramatic." It will also, however, pursue what we might term the performa-
tive element of the dramatic monologue, the methods by which these
discursive forays, these words, accomplish various goals - some apparent,
others subtle and less readily perceptible. 3 Given this genre's interest in the
exploration of character, it may not be surprising that "the first book on the
dramatic monologue," according to A. Dwight Culler, was by an elocution
instructor, Samuel Silas Curry. 4 Himself president of Boston's School of
Expression, Curry, in his 1908 Browning and the Dramatic Monologue,
stresses the form's overtly theatrical elements, the modes in which they
might be literally performed. He also suggests in passing that the poems
themselves are performative and seek some effect: "There is some purpose
at stake; the speaker must... cause decisions on some point of issue." 5 In
contrast, Robert Langbaum, among the leading theorists of the dramatic
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