Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues present the speaker’s “self-invention,” and because of the way he portrays the villain (in this case the speaker), the reader usually thinks of him or her as a good person.  Browning did an exceptional job with his “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” written ca. 1839, in which the speaker, assumed to be a monk in a Spanish cloister, resents Brother Lawrence, a fellow monk.

“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” is not a perfect dramatic monologue because there is no clearly identified audience, and there is no dramatic action taking place in the present—except for the speaker’s intense wishes for Brother Lawrence to go to hell.  Because it is a freestanding poem and not a speech from a play, as its name states, this poem is more a soliloquy than a dramatic monologue; it does, however, sketch out a character, pay special attention to aestheticizing details, and has an implied commentary on morality.  Having characteristics from both a soliloquy and a dramatic monologue make its definite categorization rather complicated.

The poem is about a monk (the speaker) who resents Brother Lawrence.  The speaker not only wishes that Brother Lawrence go to hell, but also tries to make his life a living hell meanwhile.  Mocking Brother Lawrence is not good enough for the speaker (stanzas two and three); he makes sure he can do all he can to ruin his life, like destroying his garden (And I, too, at such trouble, / keep them [the flowers] close-nipped at the sly! lines 47-48).

The poem in itself is all an irony—Browning presents a monk (who is supposed to have nothing but pure thoughts) who resents a fellow monk; the resentment, though, is fabricated: the speaker is a jealous monk who finds his pleasures more in the flesh that in the spirit.  He tries to present himself as the ideal of righteousness, and condemns Brother Lawrence for his immorality; but soon the reader realizes that the faults he claims are Brother Lawrence’s are in fact his own.

For instance, when the speaker implies that Brother Lawrence is lusting after Dolores and Sanchicha, his vivid and detailed description of the event leads the reader to believe that he must have lusted after them too, since he knows the affair all too well:

Saint, forsooth!  While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
–Can’t I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as ‘twere a Barbary corsair’s?
Lines 25-31

 However, this is not the only sexually related event.  In the eighth stanza, the speaker plans to place a “scrofulous French novel” in Brother Lawrence’s garden, all pages spread out, to have him read it as he grovels through the ground.  The use of the word grovel, almost implying humiliation, makes an interesting play on words: Brother Lawrence will feel humiliated if caught with pornography; and this is why the speaker’s thoughts go one step beyond—he wants to place several pages of the dirty novel in his sieve with his garden goods.

It is important to notice that “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” is more than an ironic soliloquy/imperfect dramatic monologue: it is a poem that explores moral hypocrisy.  With his poem, Browning exposes the hypocrisy of people in his time, such as moralists and preachers.  Browning suggests that behind righteousness there is self-righteousness; the speaker’s wishes for Brother Lawrence’s damnation in hell imply that he—Brother Lawrence—really is a good person that will most probably end up in heaven; the fact that the speaker is not a good person and will clearly not end up in heaven is a good enough reason for him to hate Brother Lawrence and wish for his death.

The biggest paradox in the poem is in the last stanza, where the speaker thinks about making a deal with Satan to take Brother Lawrence to hell, but will make sure that he can create a loop-hole as to not really have to give his soul to the Devil to honor his part of the deal.  The paradox is that thinking about making a deal with Satan—regardless of whether or not he gets to keep the soul or not—is a mortal sin.  But Browning does not stop his paradox there: the speaker goes ahead and conjures a spell against Brother Lawrence—and it is no secret that witchcraft is a sign of heresy.  To top it all off, the grand finale is “his mixed-up version of the prayer to Mary: ‘Ave, Maria, gratia plena”: Plena gratia, / Ave, Virgo!  Few things are more sacrilegious than saying prayers incorrectly.  Using these specific examples of religious mockery provide a paradox to Browning’s reality in the 1800s.

The content of the poem clearly sets the paradoxical mood; the form, though, emphasizes it in such a way that the reader needs not carefully analyze it to understand what Browning was trying to say.

In 9 stanzas, each with eight tetrametric lines, the speaker’s self-righteousness can be assumed by the maintaining of the perfect rhyme scheme (ABABCDCD) throughout the poem, as to appear traditional and conventional.  Yet there is a varying meter, so the reader understands something to be “wrong” with the poem—and thus the speaker.  Alternating between iambs and trochees constantly allow for a variety of tones and accentuations when reading the poem out loud, and therefore allow the reader to doubt the speaker’s “truthfulness.”

Browning was famous for, among many other talents, his ability to choose the most appropriate words.  For instance, he rhymes the word “Lawrence,” the name of the monk the speaker is jealous of, with the word “abhorrence,” (lines 1-2); in lines 46 and 48, “spy” and “sly” are both words with negative connotation, which serve their purpose, given that that stanza refers to the speaker destroying Brother Lawrence’s garden.  To clearly illustrate the idea of the speaker’s double standards, Browning rhymes the word “Galatians,” a book in the Bible, with the word “damnations,” (lines 49 and 51).

The speaker associates Brother Lawrence with God’s blood (lines 3-4), starting an interesting play with the religious theme.  The fifth stanza continues this play:

When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu’s praise.
I the Trinity illustrate [. . .]
Lines 33-38

 The symbolism to the cross and the reference to the Holy Trinity set a very strong religious mood.  Also, in lines 29-31, Browning compares the rinsing of the cups to a sacrificial ceremony.

Although Browning writes very complex, rich poetry, he does not fail to include simple poetic elements that give a special spark to his poems.  Assonance, for example, creates an interesting flow in some of the lines:

What’s the Latin name for “parsley?” (line 15)

Rinsed like something sacrificial (line 21)

How go on your flowers? None double? (line 45)

 Similarly, alliteration adds to the flow of the poem:

…Swine’s Snout (line16)

What’s the…(line 15)

What’s the… (line 16)

Whew! We’ll have… (line 17)

…distinct damnations (line 51)

…there’s Satan! (line 65)

…one’s soul (line 66)

And repetition:

Sure as heaven as sure as can be (line 54)

What’s the…(line 15)

            What’s the… (line 16)

Browning surprises the reader with his childish use of onomatopoeia in the first and last lines of the poem: “Gr-r-r.”  He also uses onomatopoeia without meaning in line 70, when it seems like the speaker is about to conjure a spell for Brother Lawrence: Hy, Zy, Hine… 

To show the flow of the poem—as one would read it out loud—Browning enjambs a few lines stanzas 2 through 7, just here and there.  But as the poem reaches the eighth and ninth stanzas, when the anger of the speaker is about to explode, Browning enjambs every other line—thus increasing the speed with which one might read the poem.

Browning is an amazing poet—he writes with a tone similar to that used by the more vociferous of Victorian essayists, yet with his outstanding use of language reaches all audiences.  “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” is not based on a specific historical fact, unlike many of this other dramatic monologues.  Nevertheless, it portrays life in the Victorian period.  It’s ironic how we could apply the same kind of paradox to today’s society.  Perhaps this timelessness is what makes Browning the “rival or equivalent of Tennyson,” and such a great poet.