The Virtual Coffeehouse

The speaker in “Fra LIppo Lippi” addresses his audience much more directly overall than Pip does as he narrates Great Expectations. Browning seems to write with a continuous colloquial tone or rather a tone that implies a direct conversation with the audience. The speaker exclaims in line 270 “you understand me: I’m a beast, I know. But see, now—why, I see as certainly as that the morning star’s about to shine, what will hap someday…”as an example of this. Furthermore, at the end of the poem the speaker says “your hand, sir, and good-by!” yet another direct address that is meant to close the poem. As an audience we are allowed into the Monk’s story through his continual acknowledgment of a clear specific individual (though we don't know exactly who that is). While, Pip’s narration in Great Expectations addresses an audience to a degree it is far less pervasive within the action or storytelling. He occasionally rhetorically and specifically addresses the audience but it is a different distance—it is more general than the specific person Browning’s Monk seems to be talking with.