My Last Duchess

Robert Browning introduced the dramatic monologue, a form of poetry where the poet adopts a mask to speak, there is another person who listens the speaker but does not speak. It is not a metaphorical and rhetorical language, it is less elaborate than romantic language.

My Last Duchess is a poem written by Robert Browning. The poem provides a classic example of a dramatic monologue, the speaker is clearly distinct from the poet; an audience is suggested but never appears in the poem, the reader can have the same point of view of the audience. Therefore the speaking voice is in first person and the language used records the language of speech. Indeed words like “Sir” in the line 13 reminds to the language of everyday conversation. There are some assonances like in the lines 9-10 “By-I”. “My Last Duchess” comprises rhyming pentameter lines. The lines do not employ end-stops indeed they use enjambment. It follows that the rhymes do not create a sense of closure.

Starting from the title, the reader’s attention is caught by the word “last”, which hints at the final element of a series, there are not other to come, so it raises curiosity to discover why a duchess should be considered “last”. The adjective “my” expresses the sense of possession refer to the duchess. In addition the subtitle gives an information: the poem is set in the Italian city of Ferrara. Indeed the poem is based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the 16th century.

The Duke is the speaker of the poem. He speaks to an agent representing the count. The duke begins by referring to “my last Duchess,” his first wife, as he draws open a curtain to display a portrait of her which is hanging on the wall. She looks “alive,” apparently a young and lovely girl and the duke attributes this to the skill of the painter, Frà Pandolf.

The Duke recalls her lady’s happy and light-hearted countenance; however, he describes it in a very jealous and resentful way, as it is suggested by the anaphoric repetition of “too” in the lines 22-23. In addition, there are frequent false starts that interrupt his speech (“now” in the line 3). The Duke claims that she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.” In the line 31 the Duke says that the woman thanked every one in the same way. The Duke does not accept this because he considers his wives as his property, his possession. The final characterization the duke gives of his duchess reveals his obsessive jealousy. He acknowledges that she smiled when she saw him, but complains that she gave much the same smile to anyone else she saw.

The description of the Duchess’ manners occupies more than half poem, but the central event is her murder, which is just slightly hinted at in the lines 45-46. The intelligent reader realizes that the Duke caused the Duchess’s death. He reveals that he caused her to be killed: “I gave commands;/ Then all smiles stopped together.” 

After this terrifying revelation, the Duke returns to arrange another marriage, with another young girl and he points out other notable artworks in his collection, like a statue of Neptune, another image of domination and control, the only things that can satisfy the Duke’s mad mind.

By reading the poem the intelligent reader can understand that the woman is the victim of a male desire to inscribe female sexuality.