The fact that a story is told by a single speaker does not necessarily make a poem a monologue. Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" is told by the old innkeeper, but the only indication of this is in the opening clause, "Listen, my children." There is hardly another word in the story that takes color from his individual character. The poem is simply a narrative, and the same is true of all "The Tales of a Wayside Inn."
Mr. Chesterton calls "Muléykeh" and "Clive," by Browning, "possibly the two best stories in poetry told in the best manner of story-telling." Now, are these poems stories or monologues? They are both of them monologues. The chief interest is not in the events, but in the characters portrayed. Every event, every word, and every phrase has the coloring of human motives and experience.
The events of "Muléykeh" from the narrative point of view are few. Muléykeh, or Pearl, is the name of a beautiful horse belonging to Hóseyn, a poor Arab. The rich Duhl offers the price of a thousand camels for Muléykeh, but his offer is rejected. He steals Pearl by night. Hóseyn is awakened and pursues on another horse. He sees that "dog, Duhl," does not know how to ride Muléykeh, and shouts to the fellow what to do to get better speed. The thief takes the hint, and touching the "right ear" and pressing with the foot Pearl's "left flank," escapes. His neighbors "jeered him" for not holding his tongue, when he might easily have had her.
"'And beaten in speed!' wept Hóseyn: 'You never have loved my Pearl.'"
This poem is in the form of a story, but it is colored not only by the character of the Arab and his well-known love of a horse, but by a narrator who can reveal the character and the peculiar love of the weeping Hóseyn.
Any one reading the poem aloud must feel that though Browning may have intended it as a story, he was so affected by the dramatic point of view, that it is in spirit, though not in form, essentially a monologue.
If there is any doubt about "Muléykeh," there can be none that "Clive" is a monologue.
"Clive" may seem to some to be involved. Why did not Browning make his hero tell his own story? Because it was better to take another person, one not so strong, and thus to reveal the impressions which Clive's deed makes upon the average man. Such a man's quotation of Clive's words can be made more exciting and dramatic in its expression.