Robert Brownings Monologues - Voice

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Explore the ways the speakers are presented in Browning’s dramatic Monologues, My last Duchess, The Laboratory and Porphyria’s Lover The Laboratory 1845 The Laboratory is a dramatic monologue written by Robert Browning. A dramatic monologue is a poem, with a single speaker, who is speaking aloud their thoughts or emotions on a particular subject. The language used can help you understand the personality of the character and their state of mind. This particular monologue is written in twelve stanzas, all of which are four lines long. At the opening of this monologue the words Ancien Regime are used, this refers to an older form of rule or government, meaning the speaker comes from a past age. Roman numerals are used at each stanza, which again confirms the age of this poem. The setting of this poem is France during 1845. Enjambment is used throughout this poem, excluding stanzas five and ten where each line is end stopped. In each stanza there are four sentences, split into a couplet, a pair of rhymed lines. This produces a beat within the poem, helping create the intensity of the narrator. The narrator in this poem is believed to be a woman, who feels betrayed by her husband or lover. The speaker is determined to get her revenge by poisoning the unnamed man’s new lover. We see into the mind of the speaker, sensing her raging jealousy and determination for revenge. It could be possible this is not the first time the speaker has felt this betrayal. She talks of a Pauline and a Elsie, although it is not stated who they are, she fantasizes of their death “And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead.” The poem sets off in an alchemist, where the poison is being produced. The speaker appears psychotic through her elation as she see’s the poison created before her very own eyes. “Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, Pound
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