The dramatic monologueaudience described it appreciatively but noted: "It is to be feared however
that the men of this generation will hold it to be somewhat too unwhole-
some." 23 When Browning published the first dramatic monologues in
January 1836 ("Porphyria's Lover" and "Johannes Agricola in Medita-
tion"), he placed them under the combined heading "Madhouse Cells." In
its earliest incarnations, then, the form featured monologists whose
deviance was in some sense their subject, and Browning's heading marks
his attempt to educate his reader concerning the centrality to this genre of
what Ekbert Faas terms "abnormal mental states." 24 A theme of transgres-
sion, or unwholesomeness, seems to have been characteristic of the genre
from its inception, itself constituting part of the ingenuity and becoming
part of the tradition of the form. It should be noted that this transgressive
bent is not necessarily integral to the monologic form, only that this strain
of identifiable peculiarity, transgressiveness or even subversiveness was
present from the start, and became almost immediately conventional. It is
important, though, to bear in mind that other kinds of poem besides the
dramatic monologue feature characters who might be termed demented.
There are as well a number of dramatic monologues whose speakers voice
opinions that their authors endorse wholeheartedly and rationally. Yet
frequently the newfound flexible poetic conventions of this genre provided
a forum for speakers who strain against the restrictions of societies that
their monologues go far in representing. Thus in these poems the form's
distance from convention is expressed on a thematic level as well as a
generic one.
The majority of dramatic monologists are not criminals or charlatans,
only searchers after some transformation, whether spiritual, professional,
or personal. And yet these speakers display a marked tendency toward
adopting extreme positions, including those not represented in any way as
disturbing or insane. This tendency helps to explain why the genre is so
suited to representing complex moral dilemmas, spanning a notably broad
range of religious beliefs and personal opinions, while cutting a wide
historical and social swathe. From their inception, dramatic monologues
roam through much of the world and myriad historical periods, themselves
at once responding to and propelling the larger Victorian appetite for
exploration and appropriation of other cultures, however distant geogra-
phically or chronologically. How, then, might one claim generic kinship
among such varied poets and poetic styles as the Victorian period offers
us? And how can we yoke together such disparate and frequently desperate
speakers? Their interrelation may partly have its basis in their unfitness for
any community other than the generic one that they join in forming.
Attending to echoes and affiliations among speakers can help us track
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