Milton's Hero in Paradise Lost:

One of the most enigmatic and elusive figure in English literature, Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, has been portrayed as the embodiment of obdurate pride and unconquerable will. Milton’s Satan is an unsurpassable leader whom his legions would follow even unto the gates of hell. He is readily comparable to the heroes of classical epics— he is a variant of Achilles, who equates honour with own status and who has ability to rally his troops by the magic of his eloquent speeches. Milton’s Satan is such an emotionally complex character that we can never completely understand him. He is, by common consent, one of the greatest artistic creations ever appeared in literature. There has been great controversy on the ambiguity of this character. Though the action of poem turns round Man’s first disobedience, but it is the Satan's character that engages reader’s attention and excites his admiration too. Addison observes: “He is the most heroic subject ever chosen for a poem." 

      

         William Blake gives powerful statement: “The reason, Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” 

         

        In fact, all the poetic powers of Milton are shown in delineation the men's fatal enemy. Milton has endowed him the tragic grandeur of classical heroes. Some of the classical heroic qualities of Milton’s Satan are his physical might, his injured pride; his indomitable will, his leadership, and his appeal to human nature. Hazlitt remarks: “Whatever the figure of Satan is introduced, whatever he walks or flies rising aloft incumbent on the dusky air, it is illustrated with the most appropriate image,” 

         Milton’s first description of Satan is intended to impress us with his super-human dimensions. He is of gigantic appearance as in the words of Milton, “In bulk as huge/As whom the fables name of monstrous size.” He is compared to the monstrous size of mythical Titans, or Briareos or Typhoon or that sea-beast Leviathan, “…which God of all his works/Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream.” Then, Satan’s shield is compared to the moon as seen by Galileo through his telescope and his spear is compared to the tallest tree on the hills of Norway.  

        One the key aspect of Satan’s character is his “obdurate pride” and “study of revenge”. Self exaltation is the motive of his conduct. He suffers from a sense of “injured merit”. He vaunts aloud his tragic hubris; overweening self-confidence and his superior foresight. Even when he sees destructive gloom all around him, his contemptuous pride accompanies him: 

           

                                     “Round he throws his baleful eyes 

                                 That witnessed huge affliction and dismay

                                 Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.” 

       He reveals his intellectual pride in his address to Hell: “And thou profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor, one who brings A mind not be changed by place or time.” S.T. Coleridge remarks: “....around this character (Milton) has thrown a singularity of daring, a grandeur of sufferance and a ruined splendor.” 

        Another key aspect of Satan’s personality is his outstanding courage and indomitable will. He, though, is wrong-headed but has extraordinary courageous personality. Heaven is lost to him and his legions forever but he does not lose heart and inspires his comrades with new zeal: 

                                    “What though the field be lost? 

                               All is not lost—the unconquerable will 

                               And study of revenge and immortal hate.” 

        Milton’s Satan is endowed with the unique qualities of a great leader. He has courage, resourcefulness and unyielding spirit. He knows how to command and inspire his followers in the times of distress. As a leader Satan has great anxiety for his followers, feels sorry for their miserable condition, appreciates their loyalty and sheds tears of sympathy for them. He stirs his followers by bombastic and rhetorical language: 

                   “Peace is despaired/For who can think submission.” 

          “Princes, Potentates/Warriors, the flower of Heaven, once yours now lost.” 

                “Awake, Arise or be forever fallen.” 

        His dictum is, “Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.” As a result of his fiery speeches, millions of rebel angels drew their swords and “Highly they raged/Against the Highest.” 

        Regardless of the fact that millions of rebel angels Satan has at his command, however, such faithfulness does not diminish his resentment over his defeat in Heaven, “For the thought/Both of lost happiness and lasting pain/Torments him.” He makes conscious attempts to preserve his calm demeanour for the sake of his followers. While he plots his revenge against God, Satan struggles from an inner turmoil that he hides from his legions. He cannot allow his feelings of regret to show to his followers because this kind of uncertainty would be interpreted as weakness. To him weakness is a crime: “Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable/Doing or suffering.” 

        Finally, both Satan and angels exhibit very human traits and succumb to the common temptations and sins. That is why audience often catch a glimpse of themselves in portrayal of these ethereal figures. From the above discussion, it becomes evident that the character of Satan is a blend of noble and ignoble, the exalted and the mean, the high or the low; and therefore it becomes extremely difficult to declare him a hero or a villain. 

         

        The 19th century Romantics considered Satan as the chief figure of Paradise Lost as Romanticism envisages that a hero should have a towering personality and eloquent speaker along with being a keen advocate of freedom. Shelley, for example, considered, “Milton’s Devil as a moral being”. Classicists, on the other hand,  deem him a personification of evil. Hence, buying their argument, one cannot treat Satan as hero of Paradise Lost as he is essentially a wicked character and an embodiment of evil.  He may have some heroic qualities but he cannot be a hero. As the poem proceeds, the towering figure of Satan degenerates; he loses his foothold and reclaims his common reputation—of deceitfulness. We can Sum up above discussion in the words of C.S. Lewis: “From hero to general, from general to politician, from politician to secret-service agent and thence to a…toad, and finally to a snake—such is the progress of Satan.”

The Theme of Paradise Lost:

In the opening lines of Paradise Lost, Milton announces that he is going to tackle a lofty theme of Man’s first disobedience and fall from grace.

“Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world and all our woe.”

In his Invocation to Heavenly Muse, Milton states the theme and purpose of his epic. “…I may assert Eternal Providence/And justify the ways of God to men.”  Indeed, Paradise Lost was, for Milton, the fulfillment of his long cherished ambition.  Milton chose a towering theme for his epic which ranks it with the great epics like those of Homer, Virgil and Dante. In his Invocation Milton resolved that his “adventurous song” intended to soar “with no middle flight”. Accordingly, he invoked Heavenly Muse to inspire him so that he might be successful in undertaking, the like of which had yet not been attempted “in prose or rhyme”.

Raleigh remarks:

“The theme of Paradise Lost is vaster and more universal. It concerns itself with the fortunes not of a city or an empire but the whole human race, and with that particular event in the history of race which has moulded all its destinies.”

The story of Paradise Lost is Biblical and theme falls into three parts—theme of disobedience, manifestation of Eternal Providence, and justification of Divine ways. The first part of theme implies that the obedience to God’s commandments is imperative at all costs. In Paradise, God imposes only one condition on Adam and Eve—not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The prohibition is not so much a matter of fruit of a tree as it is obeying God’s ordinance. By not obeying God’s commandment, Adam and Eve brought calamity into their lives, and the lives of all mankind.

Milton’s theme of Paradise Lost, however, does end with the idea of disobedience—Milton says that he will assert Eternal Providence. If man had never disobeyed God, death would have never entered the world and Man would have become lesser angel. Because Adam and Eve gave into temptation and disobeyed God, they provided an opportunity for the manifestation of God’s love, mercy and grace so that fall ultimately produces a greater good than would have happened otherwise.

A.C. George remarks:

“We can state essential theme of Paradise Lost as the sustained opposition between love and hate; God responds to the destructive challenge of Satan with the creative expression of love…The former theme is the direct conflict of Celestial battle and the latter is Satan’s challenge of God—indirectly through his own creation, Man. The second theme arises out of the first.”

The doctrine of free will is such an idea which has been insisted on consistently throughout Paradise Lost. God does not interfere with the free will of individuals though He has free knowledge of everything. In case of Satan too, God allowed him his freedom and;

“Left him at large to his own dark designs

That with reiterated crimes he might

Heap on himself damnation…”

The third part of Milton’s argument is justification of God’s ways. Touching upon this theme, Milton emphatically declares that the nature of God is such that to turn everything, even evil, to good as when He creates earth and men to replace rebel angels, or when He sends Christ to redeem fallen humans. This clearly differentiates God from Satan, the great egotist, who thinks only of his own interest; and who had vowed to revenge himself on God by turning all good to evil. Everywhere Satan spreads his lies about God’s tyranny and his own “injured merit”. He pretends that laws are made by God to keep Him in power and subjugate others.

Regarding the theme of Paradise Lost Coleridge remarks:

“It represents origin of evil and the combat of evil and good, it represents matter of deep interest to all mankind, as forming basis of all religion and true occasion of philosophy whatsoever.”

Has Milton succeeded in justifying Divine ways?

Milton, in writing Paradise Lost, had set forth the professed idea of asserting Eternal Providence and justification of God’s ways in boldest possible manner. So it hardly surprising that argument has undergone vigorous scrutiny by the critics. Is Milton able to accomplish his avowed objective? Critics are divided on this issue. One group says that Milton has succeeded in justifying the Divine ways in the creation of Man, subsequent fall and final redemption.  The other group reverts back to ideological dimension: Is Milton really putting himself where he can vindicate God’s perspective on things? How can he justify God’s perspective while singing amid violence, taking love into hell, readying himself for sacrifice, to be destroyed by the blind desires of angry mob? For them, it is a piece of poetical trespassing on divine ground, a hubris that fails and deserves to fail. David Daiches points out:

“Milton’s heart was not in that sort of justification, whatever he might have consciously thought.”

Those critics condemn Milton that by using word justify, Milton is arrogantly asserting that God’s motives and actions seem so arbitrary that they need vindication and explanation. However Milton’s theme of justifying God’s ways is not as arrogant as some critics think. Milton uses the word justify in the sense of showing justice that underlies an action. Moreover because of Satan’s allegations, Milton is compelled to speak God’s case to us or in his own words to “justify the ways of God to men”     

Whitman’s mysticism and transcendentalism in “Song of Myself”

Mysticism is not really a coherent philosophy of life, but more a temper of mind. A mystic vision is intuitive; a mystic feels the presence of divine reality behind and within the ordinary world of sense and perception. He feels that God and the supreme soul animating all things are identical. He believes that all things in the visible world are but forms and manifestations of the one Divine life.

The self-proclaimed “American Bard” Walt Whitman is undoubtedly a mystic and transcendental poet. He shocked his contemporaries by his embrace of the sensual; “Song of Myself” has been regarded as a prolonged expression of an experience that is essentially mystical. The beautiful sampling of Whitman’s poetry from “Song of Myself” offers a glimpse into the spiritual side of his most radical themes–love for country, love for others and love for self. Whitman seeks to tear down the belief the spiritual resides only in the religious and embraces the idea that nothing is more divine than humankind, nothing greater than individual soul. There is a great deal of sexual elements in Whitman’s poetry; sexual connotations are inseparable from the mystical experience.

In “Song of Myself” Whitman’s overjoyed revelation of union of his body with his soul has been depicted in his mystic expression. Held in the trance-like grip of the soul from beard to feet, the poet has a feeling of fraternity and oneness with God and his fellowmen:

“And I know the hand of God is the promise of my own

 And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own

And that all – of the creation of love.”

As a mystic Whitman believed that there is no difference between Creator and the Creation. His “self” is a universal self. He sees people of both sexes, all ages, many different walks of life; even animals are included. The poet along with the divine spirit not only loves them all; he is also a part of them.

      

In “Song of Myself”, mystical experience is symbolically conveyed through a piece of sensuous experience. Being a mystic poet of his own kind, Whitman gives equal importance to body and soul; he becomes the spokesman of the “forbidden voices” of ‘sexes and lusts indecent.’ He loves his body and is sensitive to another’s touch. Both the lady and the prostitute enjoy equal position in his poetry, for the inner reality, the soul has been created by the same God. Whitman declares: “If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.” Thus he takes equal delight both in good and bad, noble or ignoble.

Whitman does not reject the material world. He seeks the spiritual through the material. He does not subscribe to the belief that objects illusive. There is no tendency on the part of the soul to leave this world for God. Whitman does not belittle the achievements of science and materialism.

 “Hurrah for positive science!

Long live exact demonstration.”

Whitman praises not merely life, but absolute worth of every particular and individual person. Thus, his comic consciousness is the result of the expansion of the ego. The word “I” assumes an enlarged universal connotation bringing the smallest and the greatest things of the universe within its compass.

James E. Miller considers Whitman’s Song of Myself as “inverted mystical experience”. While the traditional mystic attempts to annihilate himself and mortify his senses in preparation for his union with the divine; Whitman magnifies the self and glorifies the senses in his progress towards the union with the absolute. Although Whitman is influenced by Emerson and oriental mysticism, yet there is a difference between Whitman’s mysticism and the mysticism of Orient. Oriental mystic believes that communication between soul and God is possible only through the mortification or conquest of the senses and the physical appetites. On the other hand Whitman believes that spiritual experiences are possible without sacrificing the physical appetites.

Whitman seldom lost touch with the physical reality even in the mist of his mystical experience. Physical phenomena for him were symbols of spiritual reality. He believed that “the unseen is proved by seen”; thus he makes use of highly sensuous and concrete imagery to convey his perception of divine reality. He finds a purpose behind any natural objects- grass, sea, birds, flowers animals etc.

Whitman is a mystic as much as he is a poet of democracy and science, but a “mystic without a creed.” Song of Myself portrays Whitman's poetic birth and the mystical journey; the poet feels the exhilaration of being no longer bound by the ties of space and time: he is "afoot with" his "vision." He feels able, indeed, to range back and forth over all time, and to soar like a meteor out into space. His entity is unique: he can assume the "gigantic beauty of a stallion" and can turn himself  into a departing air or annihilate himself into a dirt.

The poet does not deny but dismisses his "contradictions," asserting, "I am large, I contain multitudes." In the beginning the poet vows to "permit to speak at every hazard, / Nature without check with original energy." Leaving "Creeds and schools in abeyance" , he goes "to the bank by the wood” and becomes “ undisguised and naked" similarly, at the end, he describes himself as "not a bit tamed," as "untranslatable," as one who sounds his "barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." His journey over and done, he prepares for departure, bequeathing himself "to the dirt to grow from the grass" he loves, and tells the reader: "If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles." At the end, the poet admonishes his readers to "keep encouraged" and continue their search for him, promising: "I stop somewhere waiting for you." 

  

Shelley a Rebel, Revolutionary and a Utopian Dreamer:

Shelley was a true-born kid of the revolution. The spirit of that revolution found its expression in Shelley’s poetry. Throughout his life he dreamt of a brand new society, a brand new world, completely free from tyranny and oppression. He was a dreamer of dreams and the sole fervid singer of the revolution.

Unlike Wordsworth or Coleridge, Shelley never abandoned the ideals of the revolution, though he was appalled by the dictatorship of Napoleon. Shelley only experienced the revolution at second hand through the books of the writers as Rousseau and William Godwin etc. When he looked back, all he could see was the flame of revolution still flickering in spite of the terror, war and disease. In his preface to “The Revolt of Islam”, he pointed out that the wanted to kindle in the bottom of his readers a virtuous enthusiasm for liberty and justice, which neither violence nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among mankind.

In another allegorical work “Prometheus Unbound” Shelley made his hero arch-rebel which stole the divine fire for humanity and was punished by Jupiter.  In the concluding stanza of the song there is a return of belief that Earth shall share in the emancipation of man:

“Where morning dyes her golden tresses,
Shall soon partake our high emotions;
Kings shall turn pale!” 

In his most cherished lyrical poems, ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and ‘To a Skylark’ Shelley transcends all the limits and indeed explodes.  It is in these lyrics that we often find Shelley at his best. Indeed most of Shelley’s poems are sad in tone and as such he is regarded as “the singer of endless sorrows”.

In ‘Ode to West Wind’, the poet begins his invocation in a buoyant mood. He looks upon the Wind as the destroyer of the present order and usherer of a new one. He quickly introduces the theme of death and compares the dead leaves to ghosts. The way Shelley invokes to the West Wind and the imagery of "Pestilence-stricken multitudes" makes the reader well aware of Shelley’s imaginative powers.

Although the West Wind symbolizes his own personality, yet in the middle of the poem he seems somehow pessimistic when he says, "Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!/ I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!" The subsequent thought of the future at once turns his melancholy into ecstatic rapture as he foresees the approaching happiness:

“The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

     Each like a corpse, within its grave, until

     Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

  Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth,”

The ecstasy arises out of his ardent belief in the imminent regeneration of mankind and the end of all evils. The West Wind acts as a driving force for change and rejuvenation in the human and natural world. He hopes that all forms of tyranny and oppression will be replaced, in the millennium to come, by all-round happiness. The joyous rapture is born of an intense feeling of optimism:

“Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!”

We also find Shelley’s same revolutionary zeal in ode “To a Skylark”. In the opening stanza, the bird is seen as a "blithe spirit" that "pourest thy full heart/ In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." There is nothing artificial in the music of the bird; it overflows profusely from its heart. Shelley’s Skylark, is not just a bird but an embodiment of this ideal, the poet can hear its song but the bird ever remains invisible.

Among the Romantic poets, Shelley is marveled for his inimitable abstract ideas, but he is less of an artist .He was aiming not at the poetry of art, but at the poetry of rapture. Keats advised him to be “more an artist” and to “load every rift with ore”, but Shelley was aiming at a different effect from that of Keats’s richly decorated poetry. The poem” Ode to the West Wind” is universally accepted as one of the best poems in English literature remarkable for its theme, range of thought, spontaneity, poetic beauty and lyrical quality.

In his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, he describes it as the spirit of Beauty pervading the universe. He speaks of it as an “unseen power” that rarely visits human hearts as an “awful loveliness” that can free this world from tyranny and oppression. Thus, a profound note of yearning for the unattainable is another feature of Shelley’s poetry. According to Cazamian,

“The tone of Shelley’s poetry is that of a keen aspiration, in which mystical desire, with its anguished pangs and spiritual raptures, transcends the joys and sufferings of ordinary mankind.” Mathew Arnold very aptly refers to Shelley as “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain”.

Shelly’s optimism about the imminent dawn of a golden age is genuine and firm and his prophecy of that millennium underlies most of his poems. In Ode to West Wind also this prophetic note is present with sheer intensity of expression:

“And, by the incarnation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Shelly’s personification of West Wind is equally forceful:

“Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning!”

Hand in hand with his irreconcilable spirit, is his utopian idealism? He wants to reconstitute society in keeping with his ideals of goodness, truth and beauty. According to Compton- Rickett, “To renovate the world, to bring about utopia, is his constant aim, and for this reason we may regard Shelley as … the visionary and reformer.”

Summing up, Shelley is emphatically the poet-militant, and the prophet of struggling manhood. His words are like trumpet-calls sounded in the van of man’s struggle, wafted back by winds, and heard through the din of conflict by his meaner brethren, who are obscurely fighting for good in the throng and crush of life. So he invokes the West Wind to become trumpet of his prophecy and scatter his revolutionary message that “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Robert Browning’s Optimism

                     “I find earth not grey but rosy/Heaven not grim but fair of hue.”

Robert Browning, a cherished poet of the Victorian era, has many of his poems filled with unbridled optimism. “Browning is emphatically the poet-militant, and the prophet of struggling manhood. His words are like trumpet-calls sounded in the van of man’s struggle, wafted back by winds, and heard through the din of conflict by his meaner brethren, who are obscurely fighting for good in the throng and crush of life”, very aptly remarks  a critic. 

When Browning started writing, the attitude of the milieu was scientific and materialistic. And this means, people had lost faith in religion, morality and spirituality. He was optimistic about the existence of God and the notion of a perfect heaven. His poetry is a reflection of this, deviating from the scientific temperament typical of his age.

Robert Browning is an optimist, and as an optimist, he is a moralist and a religious teacher holding a very distinct place among the writers of the Victorian Age. He is “an uncompromising foe of scientific materialism”.

Browning is a very consistent thinker of optimistic philosophy of life. His optimism is based on life's realities. Life is full of imperfection but in this very imperfection lies hope, according to Browning's philosophy. He does not challenge the old dogmas. He accepts the conventional view of God, the immortality of the soul, and the Christian belief in incarnation.

He is hopeful about the struggle of human life. He says persistent struggle gives meaning to life. The perfection of life resides not in accomplishment, but in the strife to accomplish. ‘In Last Ride Together’ Browning counsels to:
                                              "Welcome each rebuff.
                                       That turns earth's smoothness rough,
                                  Each sting that ages not sit nor stand but go" 

Browning's optimism is founded on the realities of life. It is not 'blind' as he does not shut his eyes to the evil prevailing in daily life routine. He knows that human life is a mixture of good and evil, of love and the ugliness, of despair and hopefulness, but he derives hope from this very imperfection of life. Browning’s thorough-going optimism naturally seems to imply a pantheistic view of the world. In the famous lines of "Pippa Passes", he says:

                          "God is in his Heaven –All is right with the world!"

Browning's optimism is firmly based on his faith in the immortality of the soul. The body may die but the soul lives on in the Infinite.

Browning believes in the futility of this worldly life. He thinks that failure serves as a source of inspiration for progress as in "Andrea Del Sarto":
                                “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
                                             Or what's heaven for?”

 Browning's philosophical view about old age is optimistic which is made explicit in "Rabbi Ben Ezra”. Regret for lost youth and terror for the old age are stock ideas. But the Rabbi invites everybody to grow old eagerly:

                                               “Grow old along with me! 

                                                    The best is yet to be,

                                   The last of life, for which the first was made:”

                                              … See all, nor be afraid"

Life in this world is worth living because both life and the world are the expressions of Divine Love. The world is beautiful as God created it out of the fullness of His love. As says Lippo in Fra Lippo Lippi:

                                              “The world’s no bolt for us,     

                                 Nor blank, it means intensely, and means good.”

 Browning's optimism finds the passion of joy; no one has sung more fervently than Browning of the delight of life. The Rabbi in "Rabbi Ben Ezra" often passes philosophical judgments.

                                      "As the bird wings and sings, 

                                          Let us cry 'All good things.”

In the Last Ride Together we find Browning's optimistic attitude towards love through the words of the rejected lover:

                                        "The instant made eternity, –

                                   And heaven just prove that in and she

                                      Ride, ride together, for ever ride?

Therefore, we can safely conclude that Browning speaks out the strongest words of optimistic faith in his Victorian Age of scepticism and pessimism. As Moody comments: 

“Browning's robust optimism in the face of all the unsettling and disturbing forces of the age is thrown out in sharp relief.”

Of all English poets, no other is so completely, so consciously, so magnificently a teacher of man as is Browning whose “poetry is intensely charged with moral purpose.” These following lines from the Epilogue to Asolando offer a fitting tribute to one of the great poets of Victorian age.

                  “One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

                            Never doubted clouds would break

                 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

                       Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better 

                                           Sleep to wake"

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Browning's Dramatic Monologue

A dramatic monologue is dramatic discourse usually employing the following elements: a fiction speaker, an implied audience, a symbolic setting, dramatic gestures, and emphasis on speaker’s subjectivity.  Dramatic monologues provide interesting snapshots of the speakers and their personalities.

Robert Browning is often considered the master of the form of the dramatic monologue – if not the first to “inaugurate [the first] to perfect this poetic form.” In Browning’s dramatic monologues the speakers lay bare his inner thoughts and feelings –that is why they are regarded as the soul studies. Browning admits: “the soul is the stage; moods and thoughts are characters.” He emphasizes: “My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study.”

Well-known for his expertise of dramatic monologue, Browning made a special feature of it in his work. The dramatic monologue verse form allowed Browning to explore and probe the minds of specific characters. This particular format allowed Browning to maintain a great distance between himself and his creations: by channeling the voice of a character, Browning could expose evil without actually being evil himself. His characters served as personae that let him adopt different traits and tell stories.

Browning’s terrific monologues worked as a tool to examine issues of the day that may not have been examined otherwise, particularly domestic abuse and religious hypocrisy. Browning has popularized dramatic monologue influencing Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and many other British poets of the next generations.

The typical speaker of a Browning monologue is aggressive, often threatening, nearly always superior intellectually or socially to the listener, a typically eloquent rhetorician who has complete control over what he speaks and which is capable of lying. The speaker is often attempting to use his words to alter radically his listener’ perception.

One of the best illustrations of Browning’s psychological analysis can be seen in the depiction of the Duke in My Last Duchess. The combination of villain and aesthete in the Duke creates an especially strong tension, and Browning exploits the combination to the fullest. The crafty duke wants to overwhelm emissary by his meandering insinuation as well as overpowering intimidation. 

As a chronicler of “events and incidents in the development of soul” Robert Browning often allows his speaker to reveal or condemn his own behavior. The Duke is authoritarian and expected absolute obedience from his Duchess. Daunted by his wife’s freedom of spirit, he complains that she “was too easily impressed” by anyone and did not appreciate his “gift of nine hundred years old name”. As she did not reserve the singularity of her “earnest glance” solely for him, the Duke was embarrassed by her flirtious nature. When her behavior escalated, “[he] gave commands; /Then all smiles stopped together.” Although the Duke was unable to control the duchess when she was alive, after her death he is in complete control of her as he puts it: “… none puts by the curtain I have drawn for you but I”, revealing that how he values the most beautiful things he can control. On their descent he points to a bronze bust of Neptune taming a horse–again signifying his controlling nature.

“Porphyria’s Lover” is another shocking example of domestic violence. The young Porphyria, venturing all the social and physical barriers, comes to her deranged lover and makes herself ready for him. The lover, swelled with pride and happiness, decides to capture and eternalize that moment: “I found/A thing to do, and all her hair/In one long yellow string I wound/Three times her little throat around/And strangled her.” He justifies his murder by claiming that she felt no pain – “No pain felt she/I am quite sure she felt no pain” – and that she now is happy – “Her head, which droops upon it still/The smiling rosy little head/ So glad it has its utmost will.”

The dramatic monologue “The Bishop orders his Tomb” is another well accomplished work, notable both for its command of voice and its sharp psychological portrait of the dying bishop. The bishop has obviously broken almost every rule of conduct imposed by the Church on the clergy; yet he deludes himself that he has earned the right to a magnificent tomb in a choice spot in the church.  The bishop admits to his own vanity quoting the Bible in the very first line of the poem: “Vanity, saith the preacher vanity”, yet it is the least of his sins. He has fathered children out of wedlock: “Nephews – sons mine…ah, God, I know not!, covets what others have: “Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;/ Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South/He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!”

The bishop has rejected the scriptural teachings of God and instead embraces his own notion or Paradise, He notes how a magnificent tomb will equate him with “the airy dome where live/The angels.”

As he continues to describe the magnificence of his tomb, he notices that his sons are whispering to each other and comes to realisation that they are plotting against him by replacing his precious Lapis Lazuli with ordinary travertine. He pleads them to at least decorate his tomb in jasper and choose an epitaph worthy of his legacy. He tries to evoke their conscience by saying that, “A ye hope/To revel down my villas while I grasp/Bricked over with beggars mouldy travertine/Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at”

When he realises that his sons will work dishonourably against him, he falls to accusing them of ingratitude He resorts to threats as the monologue concludes: “All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope/My villas!”

E. T. Young observes: “The poem is penetrating study of soul dissection and the emotions which welter in the bishop’s mind.”

Another beautiful illustration of interior monologue is the “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”, in which a splenetic monk grumbles against his fellow monk. It begins with the speaker trying to articulate the sounds of his “heart’s abhorrence” for a fellow friar. Presenting himself as the model of righteousness, the speaker condemns Friar Lawrence for his immorality; but we soon recognize that the faults he assigns to Lawrence are in fact his own. Perhaps most importantly, the speaker describes a bargain he would make with Satan to hurt Lawrence, which reveals the malevolence and hypocrisy on his part.

On the whole, it can be safely said that Browning uses his dramatic monologue in the most peculiar and exemplary fashion to yield an unfamiliar and unheard of art product that was to glorify his legacy for generations to come.