Super Glossary

Implied Audience

Entertainment / Literature / Implied Audience: The 'you' a writer or poet refers to or implies when creating a dramatic monologue. This implied audience might be (but is not necessarily) the reader of the poem, or it might be the vague outline or suggestion of an extra character who is not described or detailed explicitly in the text itself. Instead, the reader gradually learns who the speaker addresses by garnering clues from the words of the speaker. For instance, Browning's 'Porphyria's Lover' and Poe's 'The Cask of Amontillado' raise some intriguing questions. To whom are these speakers confessing their murders? Likewise, Browning's 'My Last Duchess' contains an implied audience who appears to be a messenger or diplomat sent to make marriage arrangements between the poem's speaker and some unknown young girl. From context, the speaker is taking this messenger on a tour of his castle and showing off portraits and paintings. Likewise, in T. S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' the speaker begins by saying, 'Let us go then, you and I . . .' The 'you' might be the actual reader of the poem, or it might be an implied audience (some unknown dinner companion) accompanying Prufrock, or it might be that the implied audience is the speaker himself, i.e., Prufrock is talking to himself, trying to build up his courage to make a declaration of love. Contrast with audience and ideal reader. This term is often used interchangeably with internal audience.
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