CORNELIA D.J. PEARSALL(RB 75), pertain to the alterations that his own body undergoes as the
monologue progresses. 22
In the course of his speaking, the Bishop's body begins to experience its
own form of transubstantiation, as he stretches his feet "forth straight as
stone can point" (88) and his vestments and bedclothes petrify "Into great
laps and folds of sculptor's-work" (90). He alludes to "marble's language"
(98), referring specifically to the Latin epitaph that he deems appropriate.
But the monologue itself is composed of this surprisingly fluid lapidary
tongue, and it is this discursive substance that constructs a tomb that takes
shape before our eyes. The dramatic monologue turns toward the ongoing
marriage between his body and stone, imagined now in terms of the
possible dissolution of both: "Gritstone, a-crumble!" (116), inadequately
housing "the corpse... oozing through" (117). While repeatedly stressing
his body's inertia and incapacity (he reiterates, "As I lie here," "As here I
lie" [10, 86]), the monologue nevertheless keeps his body in motion,
commanding its own myriad transformations.
In multiple ways, then, the Bishop orders his tomb; the monologue is
fully aware that even monumental construction is a discursive art. And
indeed most speakers of dramatic monologues hold overt ambitions for
some definite if occasionally indefinable result from their speaking. The
speaker of Tennyson's "Ulysses" (1842) seeks escape from his island, the
speaker of Tennyson's "Tithonus" (i860) seeks escape from his painful
immortality, the speaker of Browning's "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"
(1842) seeks damnation of a colleague, while the speaker of Browning's
"'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'" (1855) seeks, of course, the
tower. This list can continue, and include virtually every dramatic mono-
logue by Tennyson or Browning, though in some cases the goals that help
precipitate or sustain speech are less readily identifiable. This pattern in
itself should prompt us to probe more deeply into the ways that dramatic
monologists are all engaged in ordering, in arranging or dictating various
aspects of their experience. Each speaker brings a complex of ambitions to
his or her discursive moment. A dramatic monologue works actively to
accomplish something for its speakers, perhaps the something they are
overtly seeking - Ulysses's next voyage, the Duke's next duchess - but also
something infinitely more subtle, some other kind of dramatic transforma-
tion of a situation or a self.
Monologic conversationsIn November 1833, when Tennyson read "St. Simeon Stylites" (considered
the first Victorian dramatic monologue) to friends, one member of his
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