My Last Duchess – Analysis

Right from the title the intelligent reader may suppose the text, which is a dramatic monologue, deals with a Duchess and that maybe the speaking voice is the Duke because of the adjective “My” which implies possession and a very close relationship with the lady.
Anyway the most important word in the title is “Last”, which is different from saying “latest” since the first implies that there cannot be another duchess, while the second suggests that there might be another one in future. The choice of the word “last” seems to suggest that the Duke loved so much his lady he cannot even imagine to marry another woman making her his new Duchess.
It follows a reference to space, “Ferrara”, which may make the reader question why an English poet should set his poem in Ferrara and how the Italian city and the duchess may be connected.
The intelligent reader could understand that it is a text referred to Alfonso II, who was duke of Ferrara during the Renaissance.
From the very beginning of the text the reader understands that the speaking voice is different from the poet’s one and that is the one of the Duke who is showing a fresco to an unidentified self who doesn’t answer during the whole text as stated by the rules of the dramatic monologue.
The speaking voice is showing the fresco to somebody and it is about his last duchess “looking as is she were alive”. From these words the reader understands the Duchess is dead.
Commenting about the fresco the speaking voice informs the reader he considers it “a piece of wander”. The deictic “now” implies an additional meaning: that before he didn’t considered the fresco in the same way than in the present of the narration. In fact the artist, “Fra’ Pandolf”, had to work “busily a day” to finish it, indeed it isn’t properly a piece of wander.
Follows another deictic (“And there she stands”), which implies distance and conveys with the verb “to stand” a sense of stability.
The Duke invites his addressee to sit and contemplate the fresco, making another reference to Fra’ Pandolf, who is the only other person who had seen the painting, to make his interlocutor aware of the great privilege he is giving him. The assertive tone of the speaking voice underlines his power on the fresco: he is the one who can decide who can see it and who cannot. It becomes clear that never ever before “strangers” have had the possibility to see the fresco.
What comes to surface from these lines is the personality of the Duke who is clearly possessive and obsessed with the fresco and really jealous of that work of art.
This explains why he doesn’t even leave his interlocutor free to analyse the fresco, actually he guides his gaze with his words inviting him to focus on the facial expression of the Duchess and on “the depth and passion of its earnest glance”. He wants to focus on the way the Duchess looks at the world, because the way she looked at the Duke was exactly the same she looked at anybody else and that is actually what disturbs the Duke himself. This is the reason why the fresco is hidden.
The Duke is patronising the fresco in the same way he wanted to patronise his Duchess when she was still alive. This suggests a possessive relationship.
At this point the intelligent reader should have understood that, even if the dramatic monologue uses the pretext of talking about the Duchess, you can discover much more of the Duke’s personality than of the lady’s. In fact the repetitive sound of “I”, with returns over and over again, focuses totally the attention on the speaker and not on the object of speaking.
The text unveils aspects of his personality without making a narration of it and using the technique of showing instead of the technique of telling.
The Duke supposes his interlocutor is intrigued by the Duchess’ passionate glance in the fresco. Actually the reason of such a glance is just his obsession so he images that everybody wonders why she looks that way. He is trying to give an explanation for the reason why she smiled in that way, because he couldn't bear his duchess could smile to everybody in the same way she smiled at him.
Between the discourse he reports the words of Fra Pandolf: “paint must never hope to reproduce the faint half-flush that dies along her throat”. Between the lines the speaking voice makes the reader understand that he himself is behind the death of the Duchess. He ordered her murder because of jealousy, so she could become a work of art for his own use and so that she couldn't smile any other than him anymore. The words “I gave commands, then her smiles all stopped together” make his guilty loud and clear.
In the end the speaking voice clarifies the reason why he had decided to show the fresco to his silent interlocutor: it’s a warning. Since the Duke is going to marry another woman he wants his interlocutor to warn the Count and his daughter, that is maybe going to become the new duchess, of what may happen to her if she didn’t behave as he, the Duke, wants.