My Last Duchess - Exercises

1. The speaker is a character separate from the poet and the reader can understand that for the precise setting, Ferrara, and because the story has been drawn from the history of the Duke of Ferrara, probably Alfonso II of Este.

2. a) The listener.

"That's my last Duchess", "Will't please you sit and look at her?", "Strangers like you", "not the first are you to turn..." "Sir, ‘twas not...", "Sir, ‘twas all one!", "Oh sir, she smiled...", "Will't please you rise?", "We'll meet...", "The Count you master's know...", "Nay, we'll go together down, sir.", "Notice Neptune...".

b) The present situation.

The situation the Duke hints at is of crucial importance for his life: he mentions that he killed his wife for his behavior, which according to him were not responsive to a woman of a court and especially to a wife.

c) The subject matter.

-The relationship between the past and the present situation is that the Duke treats women as objects, prefers to see his dead wife hanging on the wall rather than when she was alive. And now is about to marry another girl who's destiny probably will be the same.

-The Duke is a man megalomaniac, egocentric and selfish, who wants everything revolves around him and especially his wife has eyes only for him.

Adjectives: brutal, jealous, possessive, proud.

-There is a discrepancy between how the Duke sees himself and how I see him: he perceives himself as the best, according to him all he does is right and honest and he has no regrets for the murder of the Duchess, indeed it is a pride for him. In my opinion, however, the duke is a despicable man, who thinks only of himself and of his stupid whims.

d) The language.

-References to the place in which both the speaker and listener are: "That's my last Duchess...", "Nay, we'll go together down, sir."

-References to the situation in which the speaker and listener find themselves: "The company below...", "Thought his fair daughter's self, as I avowed as starting, is my object."

-Direct address: "Will't please you sit and look at her?", "Will't please you rise?"

-Contracted forms: "That's my last...", "she liked whate'er..."

-Pauses, signalled by dashes: line 22, line 29-31, line 36, line 39-42.

-Fillers when searching for the right expression: "how shall I say?"

e) The tone.

The tone of the monologue is: reflective, superior, egocentric.

1. In My Last Duchess the setting is the city of Ferrara during the 15^th-18^th centuries. The imaginary speaker is the Duke of Ferrara who is addressing a visit 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 very simple things- the sunset, the cherries and the white mule; she is kind to everybody including people of lower ranks. The Duke finds it unbearable that she puts the others 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.

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