often begins with a startling abruptness, and the reader must
read along some distance before he gathers what the beginning means.
Take the monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi for example. The situation
is necessarily left more or less unexplained. The poet says nothing
`in propria persona', and no reply is made to the speaker
by the person or persons addressed. Sometimes a look, a gesture,
or a remark, must be supposed on the part of the one addressed,
which occasions a responsive remark. Sometimes the speaker IMPUTES
a question; and the reader is sometimes obliged to stop and consider
whether a question is imputed by the speaker to the one
he is addressing, or is a direct question of his own. This is often
the case throughout `The Ring and the Book'. But to the initiated,
these features of the monologue present little or no difficulty,
and they conduce to great compactness of composition --
a closeness of texture which the reader comes in time to enjoy,
and to prefer to a more loosely woven diction.

--
* The dramatic monologue differs from a soliloquy in this:
while there is but one speaker, the presence of a silent second person
is supposed, to whom the arguments of the speaker are addressed.
Perhaps such a situation may be termed a novelty of invention
in our Poet. It is obvious that the dramatic monologue gains over
the soliloquy in that it allows the artist greater room in which
to work out his conception of character. We cannot gaze long
at a solitary figure on a canvas, however powerfully treated,
without feeling some need of relief. In the same way a soliloquy
(comp. the great soliloquies of Shakespeare) cannot be protracted
to any great length without wearying the listener. The thoughts
of a man in self-communion are apt to run in a certain circle,