Robert Browning "The Laboratory"

The Laboratory'

'The Laboratory' by Robert Browning is a dramatic monologue that tells the story of a woman's plot to murder her romantic rival. The form in which Browning has written this poem subtly reveal aspects of the female speaker whilst allowing the reader to make their own personal judgement on her behaviour and character, which would commonly be that she is a jealous, obsessed, blood-thirsty and sadistic woman. The speaker in the poem demonstrates signs of insanity and instability throughout as she becomes obsessed with poison, and the power and possibilities that come with it. The main objective for the speaker is to have the scientist in the laboratory create her a poison that will effectively help her to kill her ex lover's new woman. Most of the poem is centred around the speaker's feelings, desires, plans and fantasies which brings about several themes in the poem such as revenge, jealousy, death and science. The theme of jealousy demonstrates the extreme measures a woman goes to when faced with jealousy and what drives this speaker in particular, on her bloody quest to kill her romantic rival. Revenge exists as an obvious theme as the poem is all about the speaker plotting revenge and we also learn that revenge is often sought as an effect of romantic betrayal. The theme of death is brought about through the effects of poison whilst unveiling the violent reality of it. Science is also another major theme as the title would suggest, it is set in a laboratory and the description of it is told through the speaker's eyes. Browning has divided the poem in to 12 quatrains which is a fairly spaced out structure that suggests that it is a calm and gentle poem which in fact is the complete opposite, also within the poem there is an anapaestic metre, creating a jaunty, nervous rhythm, again contrasting with the suggestive calm structure. There is also an element of control from the absence of enjambment, hinting that the speaker's thoughts are