Poetry Analysis

Dramatic Poetry
Course Description
This course discusses another genre of poetry called
dramatic poetry. Like the name suggests, this genre
depicts certain features in poetry that especially refer
to dialogues as they are used in drama. This poetry
then uses dialogues or language devices that express
conversational and confessional aspects. As they
make use of dialogues, this poetry tends to be lifelike
and dynamic in its narrative and poetic progression.
This course discusses and examines some example
of dramatic poetry in terms of its form and content.
Dramatic Poetry
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, the students are
expected to be able to:
1. Read and understand the general and
detailed meaning of dramatic poetry.
2. Identify form and content of any dramatic
poems.
3. Examine the characteristics of any dramatic
poems.
4. Interpret and analyze intrinsic elements of
any dramatic poems.
Brief Definition of Dramatic Poetry
 Dramatic poetry in general is similar to narrative
poetry in its emphasis on story component especially
on character.
 The major feature in all dramatic poems is “the
persona or character created by the poet and placed
in a situation that involves some conflict or action”.
 A dramatic poem depicts “a single character or more
than one, but the characters speak their own voices
rather than the poet’s voice”.
 The poet's attitude toward the speaker (tone) could be
from being “sympathetic to repugnant” that a poem
reflects (Miller & Greenberg, 167).
Brief Definition of Dramatic Poetry
 One term that is used in dramatic poetry is a term
used in drama called soliloquy. This term describes
“one person who speaks aloud but no other
character hears his/her words”.
 In drama, this terms refers to “a means of providing
information so that the plot can move forward or
reveals the hidden self, so that it enables the
audience to recognize the character’s motive and
conflict”.
 One good example is Hamlet's soliloquy "To be or not
to be, that’s the question” in William Shakespeare’s
Hamlet (Miller & Greenberg, 167).
Brief Definition of Dramatic Poetry
 A poet can express the soliloquy into another
technique called Dramatic Monologue by
inviting the audience to participate in the poem.
 In both techniques, the poet uses “a single
speaker, a setting in time and place, an event
or incident usually markedby conflict”.
 In addition, the dramatic monologue “provides the
added dimension of an interaction between the speaker
and one or more listeners” (Miller & Greenberg,
171).
Hamilton Greene
by: Edgar Lee Masters
I was the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia
And Thomas Greene of Kentucky,
Of valiant and honorable blood both .
To them l owe all that I became ,
Judge, member of Congress , leader in the State.
From my mother I inherited
Vivacity, fancy, language;
From my father will, judgment, logic.
All honor to them
For what service I was to the people!
Mending Wall
by: Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
Mending Wall
by: Robert Frost
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
Mending Wall
by: Robert Frost
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Mending Wall
by: Robert Frost
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
Mending Wall
by: Robert Frost
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Questions:
1. Read Masters’ “Hamilton Greene”, Frost’s “Mending
Wall”, and Coleridge’s “The Rime of Ancient Mariner”,
explain in brief what dramatic aspects these poems
portray?
2. How do the poems reveal these dramatic aspects?
Quote some lines from the poems that describe these.
3. What similarity and difference in the dramatic
elements among these three poems?
4. How do imagery, figurative language, and sound
devices of the poems create these dramatic quality?