R.BROWNING, MY LAST DUCHESS

My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue by R.Browning.
Just considering the title, the intelligent reader should focus his attention on two key words: the possessive adjective "my" refers to the substantive "Duchess" and reveals the speaker's love interest towards the lady. Moreover, the adjective "last" makes the reader understand that there will not be other Duchesses after her. Summing up, the reader expects the dramatic monologue to be about love affairs.
The monologue consists of a single verse and 28 rhyming couplets.
The speaker is a Duke addressing to a silent interlocutor, that is, a messenger who visited him in order to discuss about a marriage between his leader's daughter and the Duke himself.
The Duke wants the guest to look at his Duchess' fresco that he commissioned to a certain Fra Pandolf. The speaker seems to be really proud of the representation (he calls it "that piece a wonder") since the subject looks as if alive but, to tell the truth, the messenger is the first person who is allowed to admire it, maybe because he is a "stranger" and he did never happen to meet the Duchess. The reader gets numerous pieces of information about her, through the Duke's words: she often blushes, her face suggests passion and depth and her eyes unveil devotion to the Duke. Indeed, even if the poem seems to be about the Duchess, as even the title suggests, the Duke reveals more about himself than the relationship with his wife. He is a weak and jealous man, whose individualism, as the insistent presence of the personal I confirms.
An allusion to the Duchess' murder figures at line 19, in which Fra Pandolf focuses his attention on the red throat of the lady. What makes the poem in some way ironic is that the Duchess did not do anything wrong. Her "faults" were her courtesy to those who served her (" She thanked men") and her delight in simple pleasures (" too soon made glad, too easily impressed") that the Duke could not understand ("I know not how").
The monologue closes with an invitation to reach the other guests downstairs and the duke cannot get along without showing the messenger his exclusive sculpture in bronze. In conclusion the intelligent reader will comprehend that the dramatic monologue is not about the "last Duchess" as he could aspect from the title but it is focused on the Duke.