PAG . 23

ES. 1

The speaker is a character quite separate from the poet. The speaking voice is identified with the Duke who married the Count of Ferrara's daughter. So, the character has been drawn from history and he can be recognized as Alfonso II of Este thanks to the informations about the setting (Ferrara) and the description of the circumstances which let the reader collocate the action in the period of Reinassence.

ES. 2

• a) The clues which enable the reader to infer the listener's presence are the Duke's direct addresses to him: Will't please you sit?, Strangers like you, I have drawn for you, not the first are you to turn, Sir, Oh sir, Will't please you rise?, We'll meet the company below, We'll go together down, sir, Notice Neptune.
• b) The hint to his wife's death is of crucial importance for the Duke's life: now he feels satisfied since he is able to tame that woman who was uncontrollable for him when she was alive.
• c) 1. In the past, the Duke tried to control his wife but he just could not. Now the Duchess is dead and he belives that he has been able to tame her. The same will of possession is going to be present again toward his next wife.

               2. The Duke is:

brutal           (he has ordered to kill the Duchess)

jealous          (he does not want his wife to look at the other people)

possessive    (he considers women as objects)

proud            (he shows with pride and satisfaction his wife's portrait and the Neptune's sculpture)

class-conscious ( he praise the old name of his family)

3. The Duke belives to deserve to inherit his wife's fortune while it is quite clear he                    have committed the murder.

Furthermore, the Duke thinks he was put aside and ignored by the Duchess, not treated with the right consideration.

The reader could believe the Duke's thoughts were to be reconnected to his egotism and not to the woman's failure.

d)     1. References to the place in which both the speaker and the listener are:

            That's (line 1); There she stands (line 46)

   2. References to the situation in which the speaker and listener find themselves:

       The company below (line 48); We'll go together dow (line 53)

• 3. Direct address:

Will't please you sit.. (line 5); Will't please you rise? (line 47)

• 4. Contracted forms:

That's (line 1); ‘twas (line 25)

• 5. Pauses, signalled by dashes:

Line 29; line 36

• 6. Fillers when searching for the right expression:

How shall I say? (line 22); I know not how (line 32)

• e) The tone of the monologue is menacing and reflective.

PAG. 27

ES. 1

In My Last Duchess the setting is the city of Ferrara during the Renaissence. The imaginery speaker is the Duke of Ferrara who is addressing a niece of the Count whose daughter he intends to marry. While negotiating the marriage, he shows him a portrait of his last wife and talks about her. Two very different personalities emerge in the poem. The young wife flushes with joy at vey simple things - the sunset, the cherries and the white mule; she is thankful to everybody including people of lower ranks. The Duke finds it unbearable that she puts the same value on, for example, a "bough of cherries" as on the gift of his nine.hundred-year-old name. He is proud, class-conscious and possessive. He reveals himself as a tyrant who wants to have absolute control over his wife. As he was unable to, he "gave commands; then all smiles stopped together". As the men are going down the Duke expresses his confidence that the Count will grant his reasonable request for an ample "dowry", quickly adding "though his fair daughter's self is my object". His last remark is about a sculpture of Neptune "taming a sea-horse" which is a visual metaphor for the Duke's wish to tame those under his control.

ES. 2

It has been argued that the attention given to the dramatic monologue in the Victorian Ahe represents a reaction against the inward looking tendency of Romantic poetry, a wish to move away from the poet's own insights and truths into a more objective/historical form. In other words, the use of the dramatic monologue undermined the Romantic relation between the speaker and the poet and allowed the Victorian poet to widen his range of themes and tones, while achieving oblique self-expression.

What idea does the reader receive of the Duchess?

The idea of the Duchess is built in the reader's mind through the filter of the Duke's speech.

Just from the title, the Duke's possessive attitude, underlined by the word "my",  let the reader believe he considered people as if they were his properties. The adjective "last" expresses that the Duchess was the last of a long series of women he had had.

The expression "There she stands" is repeated also at the close of the poem establishing a frame for the woman's description. The Duke made the woman become his property in the form of an artwork.

The Duke has not been able to endure the relationship: the sentence "The faint half-flush that dies along her throat" makes clear the Duke gave the command to murder his wife. A sea-horse is a visual metaphor for the Duchess since the Duke tamed her by killing her.

Also the similitude "Looking as if she were alive" let the reader understand the woman is dead; the Duke prefers such kind of vitality.

The Duke liked the Duchess very much if only physically since he said he called his wife's portrait a piece of a wonder so the Duchess was possibly a beautiful woman. She was also very shy since she blushed very often (spot of joy).

The depth and passion of its earnest glance: the adjective "earnest" let the reader understand her glance was honest and it made perceive a strong passion, a sort of betrayal; she was looking at people in a spontaneous manner.

The Duchess was not a free woman (if they durst); her husband could not stand her way of looking at everybody. He would like her to look only at himself not at the others.

Using the expression "such stuff" the Duke reveals himself to be disrespectful. The use of the word "such" reveals the Duke's disdain for his wife's characteristics and way of behave while the woman acted like that because she thought it was courtesy.

The qualifier "too" explains that everything the woman did was too much for the Duke; the qualifiers "that" or "there" express the physical but also affective and mental distance between the Duke and the woman.