In The Dramatic Monologue, Elisabeth A. Howe defines the characteristics of the subject as a genre, clearly differentiating it from the lyric poem. One feature she discusses is the double voice of the dramatic monologue - the reader hears simultaneously the voices of the poet and the speaker. This dialogical effect distinguishes the dramatic monologue both from lyric poetry and from narrative poems written in the first person.

The use of a persona allows the poet to distance himself or herself from the poem. Howe investigates the origins of the dramatic monologue before examining poems by Browning and Tennyson, both masters of the form and both largely responsible for its popularity with late-nineteenth-century readers and poets. She offers close readings of Browning's "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church" and Tennyson's "Tithonus.".

Later chapters include detailed analyses of dramatic monologues by twentieth-century poets, including Ezra Pound's "Marvoil," T.S. Eliot's "Portrait of a Lady," and poems by Robert Frost, Randall Jarrell, and the contemporary poet Richard Howard.