as "love":

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another!

In addressing his beloved, the speaker sets the scene, describing the sea lit by moonlight. The setting is tranquil and yet sad as the surf pounds the pebbles over and over again.

In the following two stanzas, the speaker mentions that Sophocles, in ancient Greece, also found a sadness or melancholy in the sound of the sea. Now, however, that sadness is amplified because the "Sea of Faith" that upheld past ages seems to the speaker to be receding.

In the final stanza, the speaker asks his beloved to stay "true" to him. He says they must cling together because the modern world is such an uncertain place.

This is a famous poem because it expresses Victorian anxiety about progress, depicting a world that is being shaken by new theories, such as Darwinism.

A dramatic monologue is one that gives us an insight into the speaker's thoughts. Dover Beachis an extended meditation by Arnold on the status of religion in mid-Victorian society, but his thoughts are fragmented, diffuse, and not altogether coherent. This places Arnold's thoughts, though expressed in poetic language, on the same level as our own. When most people think, they don't do so in neat, polished sentences, and Arnold is no different.

Arnold's ruminations are also brought down to earth by their close connection to his immediate natural environment: in this case, a shingle beach at night. It's instructive that Arnold chooses to express his thoughts not through a traditional poetic structure but by using an experimental form. It's as if he's floating a potentially dangerous idea, one with truly alarming repercussions, which the usual rhythms, rhymes, and stanzaic forms of classical poetry are inadequate to contain.

Arnold's use of dramatic monologue represents a complete symbiosis of form and substance. This means that the experimental nature of the poem's construction is directly reflected in the air of uncertainty and apprehension conveyed by the lyrics. The light, both natural and artificial, has gone out, leaving us shrouded in darkness. At the start of the poem, the moon provided us with solace, but it no longer does so. Now nature is no more a source of beauty, but a metaphor for a darkening world from which the old uncertainties of the Christian faith are slowly retreating.

Arnold's gloomy prognosis hints at profound implications for poetry too. Perhaps poetry in its more traditional forms is no longer able to give voice to modern man's inner voice, a voice increasingly skeptical and uncertain. As the subject of the poem changes so too must its means of expression. After Dover Beach, dramatic monologue in English language poetry was destined never to be the same again.

Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" is a dramatic monologue because the poet is addressing a silent audience. The effect is of one person directly addressing another, while the reader listens in. For example, tradition has it that Arnold composed "Dover Beach" during his honeymoon, and that the silent audience is his bride. This differentiates the dramatic monologue from the soliloquy, in which the speaker only addresses himself. Hamlet, for instance, when brooding about suicide, does so before an audience, but really he is alone with his thoughts. Arnold writes, "Listen! you hear the grating roar," etc., and by this and other means implies that he is not alone, and is passionately unburdening himself to another party.

Dover Beach is not a dramatic monologue, although it shares certain traits and tendencies with the form. A dramatic monologue is a poem centered around a character’s extended meditation on a subject. Crucially, the speaker is a distinctive character who is understood to be separate from the poet. The speaker is the focus of the poem’s interest, often more than the subject itself. Dramatic monologues tend to use irony, allowing the speaker’s thoughts and observations to inadvertently reveal aspects of their own psychology.

“Dover Beach” does present an extended meditation on a subject, but it diverges from the dramatic monologue form in that Arnold’s speaker does not represent a distinctive character or voice. The speaker is often understood to represent Arnold’s genuine concerns and even the concerns of Arnold’s contemporaries more broadly. Thus, the poem’s focus is not on the particularities of the speaker but on the speaker’s perceptions and thoughts. In this way, “Dover Beach” is best categorized as a lyric poem, wherein the speaker serves as a proxy for the poet and the reader.

A helpful counterexample would be one of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, such as “My Last Duchess.” Although the dramatic monologue form is old, Browning, a Victorian poet and a contemporary of Arnold’s, revived and popularized the form in the nineteenth century. “My Last Duchess” is told from the perspective of an Italian duke. The duke is speaking to the courtier of a potential bride, and his remarks inadvertently reveal his sinister and envious nature. This poem is typical of the dramatic monologue form because of how distinctive the speaker’s character is and how the poem’s tension is built on the slow revelation of that character.

In literature, a dramatic monologue refers to a character presenting their inner thoughts and motivations aloud. In poetry, the definition is much the same, except the speaker is generally an invented persona separate from the poet themselves. The speaker's ideas are addressed to an imagined listener, often dramatically or eloquently. The goal of most dramatic monologues is to reveal important information about a character and their state of mind.

Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” is often classified as a poetic dramatic monologue because the speaker of the poem addresses an unseen audience and confides his existential sadness. While viewing the moonlit cliffs and listening to the roar of the waves at Dover Beach, the speaker uses the first fourteen lines of the poem to describe the setting. Despite the natural beauty of his surroundings, the speaker of the dramatic monologue shifts his thoughts to the “eternal note of sadness” that he hears in the grinding rocks. This existential angst is the true topic of the dramatic monologue.

The remainder of the poem explores the speaker’s loss of faith and the existential hole this leaves. The calm, peaceful atmosphere of the opening stanza shifts into an exploration of the chaotic, dark, meaningless reality of human existence.

Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” could be considered a dramatic monologue because the speaker confides a deep sadness over his loss of faith and his realization of the futility of human existence to the silent listener.