DRAMATIC POETRY

Kenneth Dan P. Imbong

Zybel Xhem Diesto

Jessa Canieso

Dramatic Poetry

- like narrative poetry it tell stories. But in dramatic poetry, the poet lets one or more of
the story’s characters act out the story. Many plays are written as dramatic poetry. The
difference between drama and dramatic poetry is a matter of degree. If the dialogue of a
play rhymes, has repeating rhymes or features of other distinct poetic elements, the
play is connected as dramatic poetry.

Types of Dramatic Poetry

 Dramatic monologue - is the combination of the words dramatic and monologue.

The ‘dramatic’ says that it could be acted out and is a form of drama, while the
‘monologue’ defines as a speech that one person makes, either to himself or to
another, it is written to reveal both the situation at hand and the character
himself. - a combination of drama and poetry.

Example: “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning

“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said

“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus.”

This extract is from the famous monologue of a duke. He tells his audience, possibly the
father of his new bride, about his last duchess who could not survive his severity. It is a
type of psychological monologue which tells the psychological state of mind of the
speaker. Browning has exposed the duke’s cruel state of mind through this poem “My
Last Duchess.”

 Soliloquy - Is a long speech in which a character who is alone on a stage

expresses his or her private thoughts or feelings. It is interested to give the
illusion of unspoken reflection.

- A soliloquy is a popular literary device often used in drama to reveal the

innermost thoughts of a character. It is a great technique used to convey the
progress of action of the play, by means of expressing a character’s thoughts
about a certain character or past, present, or upcoming event, while talking to
himself without acknowledging the presence of any other person.

Example:

From Romeo and Juliet-Juliet speaks her thoughts aloud just before she drinks
the potion that will make her appear to be dead:
Come, vial. (holds out the vial)
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then tomorrow morning?
No, no. This shall forbid it. Lie thou there.
(lays her knife down)
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath ministered to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonored
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is. And yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? There's a fearful point.
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
From Hamlet-Hamlet muses on life and death.
To be, or not to be? That is the question-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep-
No more-and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream-ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

3. Character Sketch

- In a character sketch, you are letting the reader know many things about the
character in a few lines of poetry or, as in a story, in a paragraph or two. It is like
drawing a quick pencil sketch rather than doing a full portrait. The reader should get a
general idea about the nature of this person, and know something about how they look
and how they live in the world.

Example:

High Purr Billy Biography Sketch back

My somewhat outsize ears and longish neck
(I swear exist, which contrary to popular myth
never seen by living persons) support this egg shaped
(fried or scrambled some might argue) head.

A mostly flat and hairless chest attests to a regular

regimen of light (self-concocted) chest-pounding routine.
Exercise (as well as meditation) a vital part of my
daily program to deal with the ordinary stresses
of primitive existence. Coffee happens to be the

sotto voce sole vice, which exotic brews provide

helpful jump-start. I sometimes even chump on cup
kept teeth sharp. That unproductive habit came
to a screeching halt after breaking every pearly white.

Now to that locale known as the trumpeting rump

pull stilts skin. Although the unseen forces of biology
and genetics dealt me an itsy bitsy, tiny tushy
(which serves as the but for fellow Apes to taunt

and tease) such anatomical feature offers little

value as the worthiness of sexual prowess.
This palm pilot sized gluteus Maximus offers one benefit.

Ease to squeeze into tight spaces without getting stuck.

This tiny tushy accompanied by a vestigial and
teeny-weensy Weiner schnitzel of a phallus, which
undersized cock a doodle do doth bulge into

an erectile state within shooting distance of

coveted warm, wet and wooly private world
property of each and every woman.

A pair of skinny (flamingo like) legs (covered in

adequate hair) now completes this general character sketch.