This poem was composed by Robert Browing, a poet of Victorian Age.

Right from the layout, the intelligent reader may suppose that the poem will be about a lady’s picture, which lived many years ago in Ferrara.

The title gives to the reader a lot of question to himself that he would find in the poetry. That because there are a lot of relevant words in the title.

 The first one is “My”: it underlines that something belongs to the speaker, the Duchess in this case. But who is the speaker? Why he adopts “My”?

The second one is “Last”: it is some that don’t have a follow. Why she is the last?

The last one is “Duchess”: it gives the curiosity to find the identity of this character.

The poem is a dramatic monologue where the speaking voice is the Duke of Ferrara. The monologue is a speech to a messenger of a king from other lands.

Right from the first line the reader understands that he is talking about the picture of the Duchess, but the following line shows that she is represented as if she was alive, so the reader understands that she id dead: it explains the use of “Last”. The reader may presume that she was painted to give a remembrance of his wife. But the reader is immediately denied. The painter, Fra Pandolf, represented her in her own personality of a teenager: she had sweet glance and spot of joy not only with her husband, but even with the painter or someone else. This gives many troubles to the Duke: he would have a wife only for him and she should be as serious as a perfect wife in medieval society. Moreover, the reader understands that the Duke was a bossy person from the many verbs of command in these lines as “Must”.

Her heart too soon made glad, her easy impressionability were hit as an absence of respect and not courtesy. These were the causes of the Duchess’ death ordered by the Duke. The interlocutor understands that he would represent the qualities that his new wife should have. He continues to show to the ambassador every Duchess’ behaviour, which is retain as a trifiling for him, because he can’t blame that a gift of nature, as a sunset, or a common gift makes her happy would be ranked with a Duke’s present or even the possibility to be the wife of a hundred old named man.