{"id":86,"date":"2019-05-09T18:46:47","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T18:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/provincialenglish\/chapter\/my-last-duchess-by-robert-browning-dramatic-monologue\/"},"modified":"2019-08-29T15:55:30","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T15:55:30","slug":"my-last-duchess-by-robert-browning-dramatic-monologue","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/provincialenglish\/chapter\/my-last-duchess-by-robert-browning-dramatic-monologue\/","title":{"raw":"\u201cMy Last Duchess\u201d by Robert Browning (Dramatic Monologue)","rendered":"\u201cMy Last Duchess\u201d by Robert Browning (Dramatic Monologue)"},"content":{"raw":"\"Portrait\r\n

Biography<\/h1>\r\nRobert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell, England. His mother was an accomplished pianist and a devout evangelical Christian. His father worked as a bank clerk and was\u00a0also an artist, scholar, antiquarian, and collector of books and pictures. His rare book collection of more than 6,000 volumes included works in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. Much of Browning\u2019s education came from his well-read father. It is believed that he was already proficient at reading and writing by the age of five. A bright and anxious student, Browning learned Latin, Greek, and French by the time he was fourteen. From fourteen to sixteen, he was educated at home, attended to by various tutors in music, drawing, dancing, and horsemanship.\r\n\r\nAt the age of twelve, he wrote a volume of Byronic verse entitled\u00a0Incondita<\/em>, which his parents attempted, unsuccessfully, to have published. In 1825, a cousin gave Browning a collection of Shelley\u2019s poetry; Browning was so taken with the book that he asked for the rest of Shelley\u2019s works for his thirteenth birthday, and declared himself a vegetarian and an atheist in emulation of the poet. Despite this early passion, he apparently wrote no poems between the ages of thirteen and twenty. In 1828, Browning enrolled at the University of London, but he soon left, anxious to read and learn at his own pace. The random nature of his education later surfaced in his writing, leading to criticism of his poems\u2019 obscurities.\r\n\r\nIn 1833, Browning anonymously published his first major published work,\u00a0Pauline<\/em>, and in 1840, he published\u00a0Sordello<\/em>, which was widely regarded as a failure. He also tried his hand at drama, but his plays, including\u00a0Strafford<\/em>, which ran for five nights in 1837, and the\u00a0Bells and Pomegranates<\/em>\u00a0series, were for the most part unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the techniques he developed through his dramatic monologues\u2014especially his use of diction, rhythm, and symbol\u2014are regarded as his most important contribution to poetry, influencing such major poets of the twentieth century as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost.\r\n\r\nAfter reading Elizabeth Barrett\u2019s\u00a0Poems<\/em>\u00a0(1844) and corresponding with her for a few months, Browning met her in 1845. They were married in 1846, against the wishes of Barrett\u2019s father. The couple moved to Pisa and then Florence, where they continued to write. They had a son, Robert \u201cPen\u201d Browning, in 1849, the same year Browning\u2019s\u00a0Collected Poems<\/em>\u00a0was published. Elizabeth inspired Robert\u2019s collection of poems\u00a0Men and Women<\/em>\u00a0(1855), which he dedicated to her. Now regarded as one of Browning\u2019s best works, the book was received with little notice at the time; its author was then primarily known as Elizabeth Barrett\u2019s husband.\r\n\r\nElizabeth Barrett Browning died in 1861, and Robert and Pen Browning moved to London soon after. Browning went on to publish\u00a0Dramatis Personae<\/em>\u00a0(1864), and\u00a0The Ring and the Book<\/em>\u00a0(1868). The latter, based on a seventeenth century Italian murder trial, received wide critical acclaim, finally earning Browning renown and respect in the twilight of\u00a0his career. The Browning Society was founded in 1881, and he was awarded honorary degrees by Oxford University in 1882 and the University of Edinburgh in 1884. Robert Browning died on the same day that his final volume of verse,\u00a0Asolando<\/em>, was published, in 1889.\r\n

My Last Duchess<\/h1>\r\n
\r\n
Published 1842<\/div>\r\nFERRARA<\/em>[footnote]Browning identifies the speaker, who delivers the lines which form the poem. He is Alfonso II, the Duke of Ferrara, a Province in northeast Italy.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s my last Duchess[footnote]In 1558, Ferrara married 14-year-old Lucrezia de Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke of another Italian province, Tuscany. She died in 1561. She may have died from tuberculosis, but Browning suggests in the poem she was murdered\u2014poisoned or strangled\u2014on the orders of her husband.[\/footnote] painted on the wall,\r\nLooking as if she were alive. I[footnote]The Duke is based upon Alfonso II, fifth Duke of Ferrara (1533\u201397). In 1558, he married 14-year-old Lucrezia de\u2019 Medici, who died in 1561 under suspicious circumstances.[\/footnote] call\r\nThat piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf\u2019s[footnote]Brother or Friar Pandolf, a fictitious painter from a monastic order.[\/footnote] hands\r\nWorked busily a day, and there she stands.\r\n5<\/sub>Will\u2019t please you sit and look at her? I said\r\n\u201cFra Pandolf\u201d by design, for never read\r\nStrangers like you that pictured countenance,\r\nThe depth and passion of its earnest glance,\r\nBut to myself they turned (since none puts by\r\n10<\/sub>The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)\r\nAnd seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,\r\nHow such a glance came there; so, not the first\r\nAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, \u2019twas not\r\nHer husband\u2019s presence only, called that spot\r\n15<\/sub>Of joy into the Duchess\u2019 cheek; perhaps\r\nFra Pandolf chanced to say, \u201cHer mantle[footnote]Her shawl.[\/footnote] laps\r\nOver my lady\u2019s wrist too much,\u201d or \u201cPaint\r\nMust never hope to reproduce the faint\r\nHalf-flush that dies along her throat.\u201d[footnote]Perhaps a hint, a foreshadowing, of the Duchess\u2019s death by strangulation.[\/footnote] Such stuff\r\n20<\/sub>Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough\r\nFor calling up that spot of joy. She had\r\nA heart\u2014how shall I say?\u2014 too soon made glad,\r\nToo easily impressed; she liked whate\u2019er\r\nShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.\r\n25<\/sub>Sir, \u2019twas all one! My favour at her breast,\r\nThe dropping of the daylight in the West,\r\nThe bough of cherries some officious fool\r\nBroke in the orchard for her, the white mule\r\nShe rode with round the terrace\u2014all and each\r\n30<\/sub>Would draw from her alike the approving speech,\r\nOr blush, at least. She thanked men\u2014good! but thanked\r\nSomehow\u2014I know not how\u2014as if she ranked\r\nMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name\r\nWith anybody\u2019s gift. Who\u2019d stoop to blame\r\n35<\/sub>This sort of trifling? Even had you skill\r\nIn speech\u2014which I have not\u2014to make your will\r\nQuite clear to such a one, and say, \u201cJust this\r\nOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,\r\nOr there exceed the mark\u201d\u2014and if she let\r\n40<\/sub>Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set\r\nHer wits to yours, forsooth,[footnote]Indeed.[\/footnote] and made excuse\u2014\r\nE\u2019en then would be some stooping; and I choose\r\nNever to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,\r\nWhene\u2019er I passed her; but who passed without\r\n45<\/sub>Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;\r\nThen all smiles stopped together. There she stands\r\nAs if alive. Will\u2019t please you rise? We\u2019ll meet\r\nThe company below, then. I repeat,\r\nThe Count your master\u2019s known munificence\r\n50<\/sub>Is ample warrant that no just pretense\r\nOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;[footnote]We learn now that the listener is the ambassador for another Duke or, in this case, a Count, whose daughter Ferrara wishes to marry, as long as the dowry is sufficient. (In the interest of historical accuracy, it was more likely Tyrol\u2019s niece whom Ferrara wished to marry.)[\/footnote]\r\nThough his fair daughter\u2019s self, as I avowed\r\nAt starting, is my object. Nay, we\u2019ll go\r\nTogether down, sir. Notice Neptune,[footnote]Roman sea god, here depicted as subduing a mythical beast, half horse, half fish.[\/footnote] though,\r\n55<\/sub>Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,\r\nWhich Claus of Innsbruck[footnote]An imaginary sculptor. The reference may be an indirect compliment to Ferdinand of Innsbruck, Count of Tyrol, whose daughter Alfonso married in 1565.[\/footnote] cast in bronze for me!\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Analysis<\/h1>\r\n

Theme<\/h2>\r\nThe Duke\u2019s speech reveals his character, and from his character emerges the theme of the poem. The Duke\u2019s late wife displeased him, because he thinks she took joy in the simple pleasures of life at the expense of the attention and reverence she should have granted exclusively to him and to his \u201cnine-hundred-years-old name.\u201d His last Duchess chatted with Fra Pandolf, who painted her portrait; she loved the sunset; she loved the bough of cherries the gardener brought her; she loved riding around the estate on her white mule. The Duke believes, on the basis of no evidence, that his Duchess flirted with men. And so he \u201cgave commands \/ Then all smiles stopped together.\u201d He has her executed. The Duke reveals himself to be pathologically jealous, a product of his own deep-seated insecurities. And herein lies the main theme of the poem: the destructive power of jealousy arising from an arrogance that masks low self-esteem.\r\n

Form<\/h2>\r\n\u201cMy Last Duchess\u201d is a dramatic monologue. It is a monologue in the sense that it consists of words spoken by one person. It is dramatic in the sense that another person is present, listening to the speaker\u2019s words, which are shared with a wider audience, the poem\u2019s readers. A dramatic monologue is, in a sense, a very short one-act play.\r\n\r\nThis is a regular verse dramatic monologue, in rhyming couplet iambic pentameter.\r\n

Figurative Language<\/h2>\r\nThe Duke comes across as a blunt, plain-spoken man, not one to use imagery or metaphor. The striking image of lines 18\u201319, noting that a painter would have trouble reproducing \u201cthe faint \/ Half-flush that dies along [the Duchess\u2019s] throat,\u201d is in the voice of the artist. It does foreshadow the Duchess\u2019s fate.\r\n\r\nThe bronze sculpture of Neptune taming a sea horse, which the Duke points out to the Count\u2019s ambassador before they rejoin the other guests, is a symbol of the control the Duke intends to exert upon his new bride. He has an ulterior motive in pointing out the statue.\r\n\r\nIrony, as an element of literature, is a behaviour or an event which is contrary to readers\u2019 or audience expectations. We say it is \u201cironic\u201d when the Chief of Police is convicted of a crime. \u201cMy Last Duchess\u201d rings with irony. The Duke condemns his wife\u2019s behaviour but reveals her to be an innocent free spirit. He believes he is an honourable man, acting appropriately in the interest of preserving the integrity of his \u201cnine-hundred-years-old name.\u201d Readers soon understand the truth: the Duke is an insecure control freak and a murderer.\r\n

Context<\/h2>\r\n\u201cMy Last Duchess\u201d was published in 1842, in Browning\u2019s poetry collection Dramatic Lyrics<\/em>. Browning was a student of the history, literature, and culture of Renaissance Italy, which is the poem's setting, though he had not yet eloped with Elizabeth and settled with her in Italy.\r\n

Related Activities and Questions for Study and Discussion<\/h1>\r\n
\r\n

Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

\r\n
    \r\n \t
  1. \u201cMy Last Duchess\u201d was published in 1842 and is set in Italy in 1561. Consider how, if at all, the story it tells and the character of the Duke continue to be relevant today.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Watch a dramatic reading of \"My Last Duchess\" by Robert Pennant Jones<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Watch a dramatic reading of \"My Last Duchess\" by Ed Peed<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

    Text Attributions<\/h3>\r\n