Origin and introduction of dramatic monologue
Culler noted that the term “dramatic monologue” was not used before 1857, and not widely used until the end of the century, Culler emphasizes that poems with a single dramatic speaker followed several different models in the early nineteenth century.
Dramatic monologue in Victorian Age

The most significant change that took place in English Poetry in its Victorian phase was the introduction of the “dramatic lyric” and the “dramatic monologue.” The Victorian Poets preferred situations and episodes, characters in action rather than contemplation. Although dramatic monologue was practiced by Tennyson (“Ulysses” and Maud”) as well as Arnold (“Dover Beach and To Marguerite”), it was developed and perfected by Browning.
Most scholars agree that narrated monologue shares wit direct speech the lexicon, deictic positioning (“here and “now” as opposed to “there” and “then”), and emotive modulations of the supposed speaker, and with indirect speech at the shift from first to third person.

Definition of dramatic monologue

The dramatic monologue is a poetic genre presenting the imaginary utterance of a single speaker who is someone other than the poet concerned; the speaker often interacts with an identifiable though silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker’s life; in the process, the speaker reveals significant aspects of character or the flow of consciousness. Poems by Robert Browning such as “My Last Duchess” are the usual examples of the form.
Critics derive a definition of the genre from a limited selection of poems by Robert Browning and Tennyson.



The perfect dramatic monologue as a poem having the “definite characteristics of speaker, audience, dramatic action, interplay between speaker and audience, and action which take place in the present”.