PAG.23 EX.1

The duke is quite separated from the poem because he has been drawn from history by the poet, right from Renaissance during the 16th century in Ferrara.

PAG.25 EX.2

a)-Will't please you sit and look at her?

   -Strangers like you

   -Will't please you rise? We'll meet the company below

   -We'll go together down, sir

   -Notice Neptune

b)The speaker hints at the duke's bride-to-be.

c2) possessive, brutal and jealous- The duke is possessive, brutal and jealous because he cannot stand the fact of her wife smiling      and being nice to everyone else, he does not want her to act that way so he makes her killed by someone else.

c3) The duke thinks he is acting correctly because nobility were used to have such behaviour, so he sees himself as a fair man.        Nowadays the mentality is totally changed from that epoch so it is normal I see him with a different point of view which is the one of a cruel man.

d)

1. There she stands

2. The Count your master's known munificence

3. Will't please you rise?

4. We'll

5. -(which I have not)-

6. -I know not how-

e) I think the tone of the monologue is reflective and nostalgic because the duke is telling about his past, about one of his stories which did end in not a good way so that makes him think of how the whole thing happened leaving in him a sense of nostalgia.

PAG.27 EX.1

In My Last Duchess the setting is the city of Ferrara during the Renaissance. The imaginary speaker is the Duke of Ferrara who is addressing a noble of the Count 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 nice 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 the gift of his nine-hundred-years-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      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.