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The Tradition of the Dramatic Monologue

Much like his early masterpiece, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” The Waste Land draws on the tradition of the dramatic monologue. Dramatic monologues are similar to the soliloquies that appear in plays, and according to the preeminent literary critic M. H. Abrams, three things characterize the form. First, dramatic monologues are spoken at a particular time and place by a specific individual who is not the poet. Second, they are specifically directed at a listener whose presence isn’t explicitly referenced but rather implied by the speaker’s words. Third, their primary focus is to reveal the speaker’s character. Although elements of the dramatic monologue have existed in literature at least since the time of the Greek poets, it wasn’t until the Victorian period that these elements coalesced into the form we know today. The Victorian most closely associated with the dramatic monologue is Robert Browning (1812–1889), who perfected the form across two volumes of verse: Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatis Personae (1864). Though Eliot was personally dismissive of Browning’s work, his own poetry owes much to this Victorian predecessor. With particular regard to The Waste Land, Eliot took the dramatic monologue to an extreme by collaging together a wide range of different speakers.

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