The early examples of dramatic monologue created strong expectations about the genre. This unique type of poetry offers a refreshing change from other types of poetry and intrigues the reader, beckoning an analysis and interpretation of the speaker and his or her character. Two defining early dramatic monologues are; Robert Browning"s "My Last Duchess" and Lord Alfred Tennyson"s "Ulysses". These two poems, both written mid-nineteenth century, share many characteristics. Both speak through the voice of a single speaker, to an audience, about a specific situation in a realistic format. These words, in essence, reveal the character of the poetic speaker. The two poems also have notable speakers who hold an important position in the world and are attempting to persuade their listeners. By the time T.S. Eliot arrived on the scene, these conventions of the dramatic monologue were all but set in stone. With "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", written in the twentieth century, Eliot alters the tradition. Eliot redefines the form and expectations of the dramatic monologue set by poets such as Tennyson and Browning. His speaker is average, and there is no audience to persuade. The format is circular as opposed to linear. Eliot uses the subversion of two aspects of dramatic monologue (i.e. the speaker and the audience) to support the third aspect of the poem (i.e. the character). Eliot offers this subverted format in order to emphasize the solitude of the speaker and the isolation of his message from an audience. .

             The main focus of the dramatic monologue is the speaker. The speaker represents one of the three traditional conventions for the genre. The poem should be uttered by a single speaker who is clearly not the poet, and the utterance [should take] place in a specific situation at a critical moment" (RP 175). This criteria can be easily seen as the most distinctive feature of the dramatic monologue.