Robert Browning’s “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” is a dramatic monologue in which Karshish writes to Abib about his experiencing the miracle of Jesus, when he raises Lazarus from the dead. “Karshish” is a dramatic monologue containing most of the tenets of Browning.
Although “Karshish” is in the form of a letter, it is still an excellent example of a dramatic monologue. There is a speaker, Karshish, who is not the poet. There is a silent audience, Abib the reader of the letter. There is a mental exchange between the speaker and the audience: Karshish writes as if Abib were right in front of him listening to everything. This can be seen in the hang between “here I end” and “yet stay;” it is as if Abib were getting up to leave (61-2). There is a distinct critical moment, when Karshish decides to write about his original concern: “Yet stay. . . I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush/ What set me off a-writing first of all”......
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