MY LAST DUCHESS

 

Exercises

 

Pag 23, ex 1

 

The character is quite separated from the poem. The event told by the poet is based on history, on true dealings elaborating by Robert Browning. Very important is also the delineation of a precise setting in place (Ferrara) and in time (Alfonso II, his first wife died in 1561).

 

Ex 2

 

a)clues of the presence of a listener:

v 5:                  Will't please you sit and look at her?

V 7                  Strangers like you

Vv 47-48        Will't please you rise? We'll meet

                        The company below, then.

V 49                The Count your master's known munificence

Vv 53-54        Nay, we'll go

                        Together down, sir. Notice Neptune

 

b) the events the speaking voice hints in the poem are very important in his life. He is so bound to his dead wife that he has a beautiful picture, an hidden picture that only few persons can view. He is still jealous of his first wife.

 

c)         1. The point of relation between past and present in the told events is represented by the picture of the duchess. It is a “window in the past” remembering in every moment to the duke the actions he made..

            2. the duke is:

Brutal              because he decides to punish her wife with the death, without give her any possibility to redeem herself

                        Jealous                        because jealousy is the cause of the duchess murder

Possessive       because it is an element presenting already from the first line “that’s  last Duchess”

            3. the discrepancy between how the duke sees himself and how a man of our time sees him are a lots and are caused by the two different point of view. In the 21st century a murder is condemned in every case, but in the 16^th it was not the same, especially for the nobility class.

 

d)        more example of language characteristics listed:

            1.  vv 53-54    Nay, we'll go

Together down, sir

            2. v 49             The Count your master's known munificence

3. v 47             Will't please you rise?

            4. v 25             Sir, 'twas not

            5. v 36             - (which I have not) -

6. vv 32           - I know not how -

           

e) the tone of the monologue is cool and kind. The duke is quite helpful with the stranger and, in this way, he shows him the picture of the duchess

 

 

pag 27 ex 1

 

In My Last Duchess s the setting is the city of Ferrara during the Renaissance. The imaginary speaker is the Duke of Ferrara who addressing a diplomatic of the Court whose daughter he intends to marry. While negotiating the marriage, he shows him a portrait of his dead wife and talks about her. Two very different personalities emerge in the poem. The young wife flushes with joy at very simple things – the sunset, the cherries and the white mule; she is friendly to everybody including people of lower ranks. The Duke finds it unbearable that she puts the family value on, for example, a “bough of cherries” as on he 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 downstairs the Duke expresses his confidence that the Court 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 control.