My Last Duchess, R. Browning

Analysis

The title of "My Last Duchess," like the first few lines of the poem, gives us quite a bit of information about the dramatic scenario in the text. The word "My" clues us in to the fact that the poem is going to be in the first-person – so, before the poem even begins, we know from the title that we’re going to be hearing the voice of a character, not just of a general poetic speaker. The title "Duchess" makes it clear that we’re dealing with European nobility. And then there’s that adjective "last", that implies that the Duchess is only one of a sequence, preparing us for the fact that the poem might consider some of the other women who end up in that sequence.

The most engaging element of the poem is probably the speaker himself, the duke. It's easy to identify him as a monster, since he had his wife murdered for what comes across as fairly innocuous crimes. He is also impressively charming, both in his use of language and his affable address. The Duke is quite a performer: he mimics others’ voices, creates hypothetical situations, and uses the force of his personality to make horrifying information seem merely colorful. Indeed, the poem provides a classic example of a dramatic monologue: the speaking voice is clearly distinct from the poet; an audience is suggested but never appears in the poem and the revelation of the Duke’s character is the poem’s primary aim.

The last thing to point out in the duke's language is his use of euphemism. The way he explains that he had the duchess killed ("I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together") shows a facility for avoiding the truth through choice of language. There's certainly no explicit evidence of this, but at the same time, it's plausible that a man as arrogant as the duke, especially one so equipped with the power of euphemism, would avoid spelling out his disgrace to a lowly envoy and instead would speak around the issue.

The entire poem has a precisely controlled theatrical flair, from the unveiling of the curtain that is implied to precede the opening, to the way he slowly reveals the details of his tale, to his assuming of the envoy's interest in the tale ("strangers like you….would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there"), to his final shift in subject back to the issue of the impending marriage. He pretends to denigrate his speaking ability – "even had you skill in speech – (which I have not)” later revealing that he believes the opposite to be true, even at one point explicitly acknowledging how controlled his story is when he admits he "said 'Fra Pandolf' by design" to peak the envoy's interest.

Browning represents the duke's incessant control of story by using a regular meter but also enjambment (where the phrases do not end at the close of a line). The enjambment works against the otherwise orderly meter to remind us that the duke will control his world, including the rhyme scheme of his monologue.

Another element of the aristocratic life that Browning approaches in the poem is that of repetition. The duke's life seems to be made of repeated gestures. The most obvious is his marriage – the use of the word "last" in the title implies that there are several others, perhaps with curtain-covered paintings along the same hallway where this one stands. In the same way that the age of his name gives it credence, so does he seem fit with a life of repeated gestures, one of which he is ready to make again with the count's daughter.

The dramatic monologue calculatedly engages its readers on a psychological level, because the reader can hear only the Duke’s musings and he must piece the story together himself. Browning forces his readers to become involved in the poem in order to understand it, and this adds interest of reading his work. It also forces the reader to question his or her own response to the subject portrayed and the method of its portrayal: readers are forced to consider a lot of aspects of Browning's dramatic monologue.