ABSTRACT
At the time of writing Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth was in fact as much a dramatist as a poet. The lyrical ballad differs both from straightforward narrative, such as that of Crabbe, for example, and from dramatic monologue after the manner of Browning. The mixed mode of the dramatic-narrative poem allows for a range of voices, and each voice for an ironic shift in point of view. Straight narrative will have its organizing controls somewhere in 'plot'. Dramatic monologue, on the other hand, finds its organizing centre somewhere in 'psychology' or 'character'. Wordsworth experiments with various mixtures of method in Lyrical Ballads. 'The Mad Mother' and 'The Complaint of the Forsaken Indian Woman' are first-person monologues, though not in any Browning sense dramatic. Wordsworth frames the personal tragedy of infirmity and poverty in the larger social tragedy of the decaying countryside. The humour and pathos of The Idiot Boy are sadly marred by his clumsy attempts at mirth.
