what is dramatic monologue

A dramatic monologue is a type of poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener, usually not the reader. It is a character-driven, narrative, and soliloquy form of poetry that compresses into a single vivid scene a narrative sense of the speaker's history and psychological. The speaker is usually talking to a specific person or group of people, and the poem is meant to be read to an audience. The form is chiefly associated with Robert Browning, who raised it to a highly sophisticated level in such poems as “My Last Duchess,” “The Bishop Orders Praxed’s Church,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” and “Andrea del Sarto,” but it is actually much older. Many Old English poems are dramatic monologues, and the form is also common in folk ballads.