dramatic monologue

American  

[druh-mat-ik mon-uh-lawg, -log] / drəˈmæt ɪk ˈmɒn əˌlɔg, -ˌlɒg /

noun

1. a poetic form in which a single character, addressing a silent listener at a critical moment, reveals something personal or related to the dramatic situation.

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Etymology

Origin of dramatic monologue

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

In a dramatic monologue also written by Harbaugh, the coach took a direct shot at his former college rival, Ohio State coach Ryan Day.

From Los Angeles Times

Perhaps that should change: Ai is among the pre-eminent practitioners of the dramatic monologue — a persona-driven mode of poetic address exemplified in the work of Victorian poet Robert Browning.

From New York Times

Both productions were staged by Felicitas Bruckner, a young German director who scored a coup at the Kammerspiele last year with an electrifying staging of Wolfram Lotz’s wild dramatic monologue, “The Politicians”; the three extraordinary actors who made that earlier production such a triumph are part of the small cast.

From New York Times

Richard Howard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who helped revive the dramatic monologue as a poetic form, writing elegant, highly mannered verses from the point of view of Walt Whitman, Telemachus and John Milton’s daughters even as he maintained a parallel career as a renowned translator of French literature, died March 31 at a hospital in Manhattan.

From Washington Post

While it was somewhat unusual for Mr. Howard to embrace the dramatic monologue at a time when confessional poetry was in vogue, it was even more striking that he wrote syllabic verse, embracing a poetic form that was more common to languages such as French, rather than writing in free verse or adopting a more typical metric line like iambic pentameter.

From Washington Post