My Last Duchess Analysis

My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue written in 1842 by Robert Browning. It is about the Duke’s wife: the Duchess Lucrezia De Medici.

The monologue is written with a first person narrator and the speaker is the Duke Alfonso II, who had been the last Duke of Ferrara, that’s because the monologue is intitled My Last Duchess. The duke’s audience is an ambassador, who is there to talk with the duke about his next marriage.

The Duke is talking to the ambassador about his new marriage after the death of the Duchess Lucrezia. Talking to the ambassador, the Duke speaks about the portrait of his dead wife. In the firs two lines we can see how the word “alive” conveys to the idea that the Duchess is not really alive. The Duchess had married the Duke when she was 14 years old and she died in 1561 when she was 17 years old. The idea of no more life gets back some lines later with the expression “she stands”.

Reading the first lines the duke seems to be compassionate, but early he demonstrates his jealousy towards the duchess. She was always polite with every man or woman she met, and so she was as kind with other people as with the duke. But the duke wanted her to be more lovely towards him than to all the other people. The duke interpreted the kindness of the duchess as a sexual crime, because no other man than him could make her blush. The duke’ excessive demand of control of his wife flows into the most horrible action the duke does towards the duchess. As matter of a fact, almost at the end of the monologue, the Duke reveals to the ambassador that he ordered the murder of the Duchess: he now identifies with an horrible man without any empathy for people. Indeed some time after the real and historical event of the murder of the duchess, it came out that the murderer was his husband the duke.

The language used reveals the real nature of the character who is an egoistic man. Describing the duchess the duke is revealing his most horrible features.