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Another characteristic of a dramatic monologue is that a single speaker is addressing an audience. This audience could be one person or a group of people. Ulysses addresses his audience directly at line 49 when he says, "you and I are old. " A dramatic monologue is also classified in that it resembles a conversation in which you can only hear one person talking. .
The specific event that this speech arises out of is Ulysses' immediate need to continue traveling. This need comes from his want to get the most out of the time he has left. Ulysses had traveled a lot in the days when he was a soldier. His return from the Trojan War took him an entire decade of roaming the seas before he makes it back to Ithaca. This is where the poem begins. Ulysses is saying that a decorated king such as himself accomplishes nothing in sitting by a fire with his wife. He claims that all he does now is make laws for people who do not know him and simply sitting around and giving out punishment bores him. He comes off as a very impatient person who does not just want to watch life pass him by. He says he wants to "drink life to the lees, " and go back to adventuring the ocean (6-7).
Ulysses then progresses to explaining that he has visited many different places and has had many good and bad times in his travels. He claims that because he has traveled to so many distant lands that he has become a household name of sorts. He also reflects on the Trojan War and his travel back and says that he "is part of all that (he) has met " (18). This is meaning to say that he is now a part of everywhere he went and that Ithaca is no longer truly his home. .
Ulysses declares that not even if he had multiple lifetimes would he be able to travel to all the places that he would like. He says that even in his old age, life is about adventure, not just simply waiting to die. At this point, Ulysses compares himself to a metal instrument (22-3).