The theme of all art is to interpret impressions or to produce upon the human heart an adequate impression of events and of truth. Dramatic art has always led the other arts in its power to present the motives of different characters, show the various processes of passion passing into action, the consequences of action, or the working of the complex elements of a human character.
Professor Dowden in his recent life of Browning, in endeavoring to explain the peculiarities of Browning's plays, makes an important point, which is still more applicable to the dramatic form which he calls "the short monodrama," but which I call the monologue. "Dramatic, in the sense that he (Browning) created and studied minds and hearts other than his own, he pre-eminently was; if he desired to set forth or to vindicate his most intimate ideas or impulses, he effected this indirectly, by detaching them from his own personality and giving them a brain and a heart other than his own in which to live and move and have their being. There is a kind of dramatic art which we may term static, and another kind which we may term dynamic. The former deals especially with characters in position, the latter with characters in movement. Passion and thought may be exhibited and interpreted by dramatic genius of either type; to represent passion and thought and action--action incarnating and developing thought and passion--the dynamic power is required. And by action we are to understand not merely a visible deed, but also a word, a feeling, an idea, which has in it a direct operative force. The dramatic genius of Browning was in the main of the static kind; it studies with extraordinary skill and subtlety character in position; it attains only an imperfect or labored success with character in movement" ("Browning," by Edward Dowden, p. 53).
The expression "static dramatic" is more applicable to Browning's plays, paradoxical as it may seem, than to his monologues. The monologues are full of dynamic force. Even Dowden himself speaks in another place of "Muléykeh," and calls it "one of the most delightful of Browning's later poems, uniting as it does the poetry of swift motion with the poetry of high-hearted passion." Browning certainly does in many of his monologues suggest most decided action. The expression "static" must be understood as referring to the dramatic elements or manifestations of character, which result from situation and thinking rather than through action and plot.