Right from the title the reader can notice that the adjective ‘last’ adds additional meaning to the noun ‘Duchess’, which could refer to a female and noble character: ‘last’ means there will not be others after her. Then, the possessive adjective ‘my’ ,in key position, could suggest a possessive and dominant attitude of the person the adjective refers to, towards the Duchess. So, the poem is written in first person narrator. The subtitle ‘Ferrara’ would probably struck the Victorian readers’ attention, since Ferrara was quite exotic for them; anyway the expectation one could draw, before starting reading the dramatic monologue, could deal with a Reinassance setting at court in Ferrara.
From a metric point of view, the monologue is not organised in stanzas, there is an unusual used of the informal language, and the technique of the direct speech. a short followed by a long in quantitative meter, or an unstressed followed by a stressed in accentual meter. The poem provides an example of a dramatic monologue, in which the speaker is clearly distinct from the poet; an audience is suggested but never appears; and the revelation of the Duke’s character is the poem’s primary aim.
The first line provides the reader with the information the Duchess is ‘painted on the wall’: it follows that there’s a fresco, which somebody is glancing at (see you the deictic ‘that’).The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and he is speaking with a silent interlocutor, that is a messenger who wants to discuss about a marriage between his leader's daughter and the Duke himself.
The following line was characterization of the relationship between the Duchess and the Duke ( ‘husband’ , line 14). The speaking voice seems to remember her ‘earnest glance’ with annoyance and bother, because her happy and friendly attitude with others made the Duke feel uneasy and jealous.
It is important to note verbs refer always to the past: horrible prelude. In addition, from line 9 to 11, the high frequency of reflective references (‘myself’, ‘me’) introduces the Duke’s egocentrism: his ego pathology is a symptom of an unsolved weakness of being aware of his inability to totally dominate his wife’s emotions and desires. ‘depth and passion’, such a glance’, the ‘joy into the Duchess’ cheek’, ‘a heart too soon made glad’: the Duke negatively connotes the Duchess’ positive and shining behavior just because ‘twas not her husband’s presence only, called that spot of joy’. The Duke is manipulative, filled with family pride (‘a nine-hundreds-year-old name’) and a feeling of ownership. Till ‘twas all one’, the rage for her affront (‘She thanked men – Good!’). The powerful Duke can’t stand to stoop ‘to blame this sort of trifling’, he chose never to stoop. Nor he can face the issue with her (‘Even had you skill in speech – which I have not’), since he is too egocentric to focus on others’ perspectives.