Modernizing the Dramatic Monologue

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is considered a modern day version of the dramatic monologue. In my first encounter with the text, I was surprised that it is even considered a dramatic monologue at all. According to my understanding of the more traditional, 19^th century Victorian version, a dramatic monologue is a poetic form which includes a speaker and auditor, but which also carves out a place for the reader. Robert Browning invented this form, and wrote poems like My Last Duchess, which include all the dramatic monologue’s elements; a speaker, auditor, and reader. The duke in My Last Duchess, for example, speaks to the envoy of his bride-to-be’s father after killing his previous duchess. This means that the envoy, or the speaker, is not directly communicating to the reader of the poem; instead, the auditor occupies an intervening position between speaker and reader. As readers of poems, we are used to being directly spoken to by characters. Yet Browning wanted to transform this convention of communication, and uses a silent auditor to accomplish this. But what made the dramatic monologue even more revolutionary was the way Browning disguised his own voice through the poem. Often readers associate characters of a poem with the actual poet, assuming the voice of the character to reflect the voice of the poet. By designing so many layers of characters between the poet and the reader, the voice of the poet is lost. Not only is there a speaker between the poet and reader, but an auditor is introduced as well, thus creating even more distance between poet and reader. Eliot, in The Waste Land, modernizes the dramatic monologue. While he may stick with some of its traditional elements, Eliot complicates its form, giving it new meaning. Glennis Byron, in his book Dramatic Monologue, writes,

There is no apparent auditor in this monologue, although it remains marked by the signs of communication; indeed, as in the case of Pound and Eliot, there are few actual auditors, at least ones who are living and present...

By practically eliminating the role of the auditor, Eliot completely changes one of the main functions of Browning’s dramatic monologues. Browning set out to sever the link between poet and reader through the auditor, yet Eliot seems to overlook this. Instead, he uses his own method to create poetic complications. Byron writes,

Rather than playing with the tension between the voice of poet and speaker, both Eliot and Pound can be said to create multiple fragmented voices which become a composite voice, a voice which is, ultimately, the voice of the poet.

Eliot disguises his own poetic voice through “fragmented voices”. The Waste Land consists of many different voices which can sometimes become quite confusing. We aren’t always sure who is speaking and where the speakers are located. Whereas Browning’s monologues usually offer clear indication of setting, speaker, and listener, Eliot’s model seems less clear. In doing so, Eliot designs new methods of complicating the role of the speaker. He presents a newfound take on the traditional dramatic monologue, allowing for a rebirth of the poetic form.