Dramatic monologue: a poetic form in which a single character, addressing a silent auditor at a critical moment, reveals himself or herself and the dramatic situation.

Shakespeare (450 years old this month) was the quintessential poet/dramatist. Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be”, Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, King Lear’s insane and yet curiously apropos ravings, are all a part of our Shakespearean heritage.

But this monologue by Portia from The Merchant of Venice is one of my favorites:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

Other masters of the dramatic monologue in poetry: Robert Browning (My Last Duchess), Edgar Lee Masters (Spoon River Anthology), T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock), Rudyard Kipling (Gunga Din and others), Edgar Allan Poe (Annabel Lee).