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WORKS OF S. S. CURRY, PH.D., LITT.D.

_Of eminent value._--DR. LYMAN ABBOTT.

_Both method and spirit practically without precedent._--J. M. LEVEQUE,
Editor Morning World, New Orleans.

PROVINCE OF EXPRESSION. A study of the general problems regarding delivery
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LESSONS IN VOCAL EXPRESSION. Study of the modulations of the voice as
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It is the best book on expression I ever read, far ahead of anything
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IMAGINATION AND DRAMATIC INSTINCT. Creative action of the mind, insight,
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VOCAL AND LITERARY INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE.

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FOUNDATIONS OF EXPRESSION. Principles and fundamental steps in the
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BROWNING AND THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE. Introduction to Browning's poetry and
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  BROWNING AND THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE

  NATURE AND INTERPRETATION OF AN
  OVERLOOKED FORM OF LITERATURE


  S. S. CURRY, PH.D., LITT.D.
  PRESIDENT OF THE SCHOOL OF EXPRESSION


  BOSTON
  EXPRESSION COMPANY
  PIERCE BUILDING, COPLEY SQUARE




  COPYRIGHT, 1908
  BY S. S. CURRY


  THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.




CONTENTS


                                                  PAGE
  Part I

  THE MONOLOGUE AS A DRAMATIC FORM

     I. A NEW LITERARY FORM                          1

    II. THE SPEAKER                                 12

   III. THE HEARER                                  30

    IV. PLACE OR SITUATION                          64

     V. TIME AND CONNECTION                         78

    VI. ARGUMENT                                    86

   VII. THE MONOLOGUE AS A FORM OF LITERATURE      100

  VIII. HISTORY OF THE MONOLOGUE                   113


  Part II

  DRAMATIC RENDERING OF THE MONOLOGUE

    IX. NECESSITY OF ORAL RENDITION                133

     X. ACTIONS OF MIND AND VOICE                  147

    XI. ACTIONS OF MIND AND BODY                   172

   XII. THE MONOLOGUE AND METRE                    195

  XIII. DIALECT                                    222

   XIV. PROPERTIES                                 230

    XV. FAULTS IN RENDERING A MONOLOGUE            241

   XVI. IMPORTANCE OF THE MONOLOGUE                248

  XVII. SOME TYPICAL MONOLOGUES FROM BROWNING      265


  INDEX                                            305




PART I

THE MONOLOGUE AS A DRAMATIC FORM




I. A NEW LITERARY FORM


Why were the poems of Robert Browning so long unread? Why was his real
message or spirit understood by few forty years after he began to write?

The story is told that Douglas Jerrold, when recovering from a serious
illness, opened a copy of "Sordello," which was among some new books sent
to him by a friend. Sentence after sentence brought no consecutive
thought, and at last it dawned upon him that perhaps his sickness had
wrecked his mental faculties, and he sank back on the sofa, overwhelmed
with dismay. Just then his wife and sister entered and, thrusting the book
into their hands, he eagerly demanded what they thought of it. He watched
them intently, and when at last Mrs. Jerrold exclaimed, "I do not
understand what this man means," Jerrold uttered a cry of relief, "Thank
God, I am not an idiot!" Browning, while protesting that he was not
obscure, used to tell this story with great enjoyment.

What was the chief cause of the almost universal failure to understand
Browning? Many reasons are assigned. His themes were such as had never
before been found in poetry, his allusions and illustrations so unfamiliar
as to presuppose wide knowledge on the part of the reader; he had a very
concise and abrupt way of stating things.

Yet, after all, were these the chief causes? Was he not obscure because he
had chosen a new or unusual dramatic form? Nearly every one of his poems
is written in the form of a monologue, which, according to Professor
Johnson, "may be termed a novelty of invention in Browning." Hence, to the
average man of a generation ago, Browning's poems were written in almost a
new language.

This secret of the difficulty of appreciating Browning is not even yet
fully realized. There are many "Introductions" to his poems and some
valuable works on his life, yet nowhere can we find an adequate discussion
of his dramatic form, its nature, and the influence it has exerted upon
modern poetry.

Let us endeavor to take the point of view of the average man who opened
one of Browning's volumes when first published; or let us imagine the
feeling of an ordinary reader to-day on first chancing upon such a poem as
"The Patriot."

The average man beginning to read, "It was roses, roses," fancies he is
reading a mere story and waits for the unfolding of events, but very soon
becomes confused. Where is he? Nothing happens. Somebody is talking, but
about what?

One who looks for mere effects and not for causes, for facts and not for
experiences, for a mere sequence of events, and not for the laying bare of
the motives and struggles of the human heart, will be apt soon to throw
the book down and turn to his daily paper to read the accounts of stocks,
fires, or murders, disgusted with the very name of Browning, if not with
poetry.

If he look more closely, he will find a subtitle, "An Old Story," but this
confuses him still more. "Story" is evidently used in some peculiar
sense, and "old" may be used in the sense of ancient, familiar, or
oft-repeated; it may imply that certain results always follow certain
conditions. If a careful student glance through the poem, he will find

THE PATRIOT

AN OLD STORY

  It was roses, roses, all the way,
    With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
  The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
    The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
  A year ago on this very day.

  The air broke into a mist with bells,
    The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
  Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels--
    But give me your sun from yonder skies!"
  They had answered "And afterward, what else?"

  Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
    To give it my loving friends to keep!
  Naught man could do, have I left undone:
    And you see my harvest, what I reap
  This very day, now a year is run.

  There's nobody on the house-tops now--
    Just a palsied few at the windows set;
  For the best of the sight is, all allow,
    At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet,
  By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

  I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
    A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
  And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
    For they fling, whoever has a mind,
  Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

  Thus I entered, and thus I go!
    In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
  "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
    Me?"--God might question; now instead,
  'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

that the Patriot is one who entered the city a year before, and who during
this time has done his best to secure reforms, but at the end of the year
is led forth to the scaffold. The poem pictures to us the thoughts that
stir his mind on the way to his death. He recognizes the same street, he
remembers the roses, the myrtle, the house-roofs so crowded that they seem
to heave and sway, the flags on the church spires, the bells, the
willingness of the multitude to give him even the sun; but he it is who
aimed at the impossible--to give his friends the sun. Having done all he
could, now comes his reward. There is nobody on the house-tops, and only a
few too old to go to the scaffold have crept to the windows. The great
crowd is at the gate or at the scaffold's foot. He goes in the rain, his
hands tied behind him, his forehead bleeding from the stones that are
hurled at him. The closing thought, so abruptly expressed, the most
difficult one in the poem, is a mere hint of what might have happened had
he triumphed in the world's sense of the word. He might have fallen
dead,--dead in a deeper sense than the loss of life; his soul might have
become dead to truth, to noble ideals, and to aspiration. Had he done what
men wanted him to do, he would have been paid by the world. He has
certainly not done the world's bidding, and in a few short words he
reveals his resignation, his heroism, and his sublime triumph.

                        "Now instead,
  'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so."

The first line of the last stanza in the first edition of the poem
contained the word "Brescia," suggesting a reference to the reformer
Arnold. But Browning later omitted "Brescia," because the poem was not
meant to be in any sense historical, but rather to represent the reformer
of every age whose ideals are misunderstood and whose noblest work is
rewarded by death. "History," said Aristotle, "tells what Alcibiades did,
poetry what he ought to have done." "The Patriot" is not a matter-of-fact
narrative, but a revelation of human experience.

The reader must approach such a poem as a work of art. Sympathetic and
contemplative attention must be given to it as an entirety. Then point
after point, idea after idea, will become clear and vivid, and at last the
whole will be intensely realized.

For another example of Browning's short poems take "A Woman's Last Word."

Suppose one tries to read this as if it were an ordinary lyric. One is
sure to be greatly confused as to its meaning. What is it all about? The
words are simple enough, and while the ordinary man recognizes this, he is
all the more perplexed. Perceiving certain merits, he exclaims, "If a man
can write such beautiful individual lines, why does he not make his whole
story clear and simple?"

If, however, one will meditate over the whole, take hints here and there
and put them together, a distinct picture is slowly formed in the mind. A
wife, whose husband demands that she explain to him something in her past
life, is speaking. She has perhaps loved some one before him, and his
curiosity or jealousy is aroused. The poem really constitutes her appeal
to his higher nature and her insistence upon the sacredness of their
present relation, which she fears words may profane. She does not even
fully understand the past herself. To explain would be false to him, hence
with love and tenderness she pleads for delay. Yet she promises to speak
his "speech," but "to-morrow, not to-night." Perhaps she hopes that his
mood will change; possibly she feels that he is not now in the right
attitude of mind to understand or sympathize with her experiences.

A WOMAN'S LAST WORD

  Let's contend no more, Love,
    Strive nor weep:
  All be as before, Love,
    --Only sleep!

  What so wild as words are?
    I and thou
  In debate, as birds are,
    Hawk on bough!

  See the creature stalking
    While we speak!
  Hush and hide the talking,
    Cheek on cheek.

  What so false as truth is,
    False to thee?
  Where the serpent's tooth is,
    Shun the tree--

  Where the apple reddens,
    Never pry--
  Lest we lose our Edens,
    Eve and I.

  Be a god and hold me
    With a charm!
  Be a man and fold me
    With thine arm!

  Teach me, only teach, Love!
    As I ought
  I will speak thy speech, Love,
    Think thy thought--

  Meet, if thou require it,
    Both demands
  Laying flesh and spirit
    In thy hands.

  That shall be to-morrow,
    Not to-night:
  I must bury sorrow
    Out of sight:

  --Must a little weep, Love,
    (Foolish me!)
  And so fall asleep, Love,
    Loved by thee.

In this poem a most delicate relation between two human beings is
interpreted. Short though it is, it yet goes deeper into motives,
concentrates attention more energetically upon one point of view, and is
possibly more impressive than if the theme had been unfolded in a play or
novel. It turns the listener or reader within himself, and he feels in his
own breast the response to her words.

All great art discharges its function by evoking imagination and feeling,
but it is not always the intellectual meaning which first appears.

However far apart these two poems may be in spirit or subject, there are
certain characteristics common to them; they are both monologues.

The monologue, as Browning has exemplified it, is one end of a
conversation. A definite speaker is conceived in a definite, dramatic
situation. Usually we find also a well-defined listener, though his
character is understood entirely from the impression he produces upon the
speaker. We feel that this listener has said something and that his
presence and character influence the speaker's thought, words, and manner.
The conversation does not consist of abstract remarks, but takes place in
a definite situation as a part of human life.

We must realize the situation, the speaker, the hearer, before the meaning
can become clear; and it is the failure to do this which has caused many
to find Browning obscure.

For example, observe Browning's "Confessions."

CONFESSIONS

  What is he buzzing in my ears?
    "Now that I come to die,
  Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"
    Ah, reverend sir, not I!

  What I viewed there once, what I view again
    Where the physic bottles stand
  On the table's edge,--is a suburb lane,
    With a wall to my bedside hand.

  That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
    From a house you could descry
  O'er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue
    Or green to a healthy eye?

  To mine, it serves for the old June weather
    Blue above lane and wall;
  And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"
    Is the house o'er-topping all.

  At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
    There watched for me, one June,
  A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,
    My poor mind's out of tune.

  Only, there was a way... you crept
    Close by the side, to dodge
  Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
    They styled their house "The Lodge."

  What right had a lounger up their lane?
    But, by creeping very close,
  With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain
    And stretch themselves to Oes,

  Yet never catch her and me together,
    As she left the attic, there,
  By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether,"
    And stole from stair to stair,

  And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
    We loved, sir--used to meet:
  How sad and bad and mad it was--
    But then, how it was sweet!

Here, evidently, the speaker, who has "come to die," has been aroused by
some "reverend sir," who has been expostulating with him and uttering
conventional phrases about the vanity of human life. Such superficial
pessimism awakens protest, and the dying man remonstrates in the words of
the poem.

The speaker is apparently in bed and hardly believes himself fully
possessed of his senses. He even asks if the curtain is "green or blue to
a healthy eye," as if he feared to trust his judgment, lest it be
perverted by disease.

An abrupt beginning is very characteristic of a monologue, and when given
properly, the first words arrest attention and suggest the situation.

After the speaker's bewildered repetition of the visitor's words and his
blunt answer "not I," which says such views are not his own, he talks of
his "bedside hand," turns a row of bottles into a street, and tells of the
sweetest experience of his life. He refuses to say that it was not sweet;
he will not allow an abnormal condition such as his sickness to determine
his views of life. The result is an introspection of the deeper hope found
in the heart of man.

The poem is not an essay or a sermon, it is not the lyric expression of a
mood; it portrays the conflict of individual with individual and reveals
the deepest motives of a character. It is not a dialogue, but only one end
of a conversation, and for