My Last Duchess: Reading the Duke

My Last Duchess

Robert Browning, 1842. One voice from first line to last: a Duke of Ferrara in Renaissance Italy. • He is showing a visitor round his palace and stops at a portrait of his first wife, who has died. • The visitor never speaks. We hear only the Duke, and we work out the rest. • By the end it is clear why the visitor has come, and the Duke moves on to show off another work of art. The question that drives the poem: how much does a powerful man reveal about himself when he thinks he is in control?

The Duke talks

Put the stages of the monologue in the order the Duke goes through them.

• He invites the visitor to sit and look at the portrait of his late wife
• He explains that no one but he draws back the curtain in front of it
• He complains that she smiled at everyone and valued his gifts no more than anyone else
• He says he gave commands, and then her smiles stopped
• He turns to the dowry and the daughter of the Count, whom he now plans to marry
• On the way downstairs he points out a bronze statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse

Browning at work

Five terms explain how the poem lets the Duke give himself away:

A proud man

The Duke explains what annoyed him about his wife. Tap the TWO phrases that show his pride in his own status.

• as if she ranked
• /
• My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
• /
• With anybody's gift.
• ...
• Who'd stoop to blame / This sort of trifling?
• ...

Order and overflow

The poem is written in neat rhyming couplets, yet its sentences keep running on past the ends of lines. What is the best reading of that combination?

• The rhyme shows the control the Duke wants to project, while the run-on sentences let his jealousy spill out
• The rhyme makes the poem easy to set to music, and the long sentences fill out the tune
• The Duke is nervous about speaking to a stranger, so he rushes and stumbles over his words
• Browning could not fit his sentences into single lines, so they run on by accident

Then the smiles stopped

Here the Duke reaches the end of his complaint. Tap the phrase that most strongly suggests he had his wife killed.

• Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
• /
• Whene'er I passed her;
• This grew;
• I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.
• There she stands / As if alive.

Read between the lines

You are the silent visitor. At each moment, decide what the Duke is really giving away.

• He says that none puts by "The curtain I have drawn for you, but I". What does this reveal?
• He says "she liked whate'er / She looked on, and her looks went everywhere." What does this reveal?
• He says the Count's "fair daughter's self ... is my object." What does this reveal?
• Leaving, he points out "Neptune, though, / Taming a sea-horse". What does this reveal?

Behind the poem

Robert Browning was a Victorian poet, writing in an age when a wife had few legal rights of her own. He set this poem in sixteenth-century Italy. The Duke is usually identified with Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. His first wife, Lucrezia de Medici, married him as a young teenager and was dead less than three years later, amid rumours that she had been poisoned. Afterwards the real Duke negotiated a second marriage through an envoy, just as the poem shows.

Make context count

Which sentence uses context to sharpen a point about the Duke, rather than just reporting a fact?

• Writing when wives had few rights, Browning lets the Duke treat his wife as a possession, so his calm voice exposes how much power a husband could hold
• The real Duke of Ferrara married a teenage bride in the sixteenth century
• Browning lived from 1812 to 1889 and was married to the poet Elizabeth Barrett
• My Last Duchess was published in 1842, early in the reign of Queen Victoria

Partners from the cluster

Settle on partners for My Last Duchess before the exam. Two public-domain poems that pair well are below. Tissue is a strong partner too.

Partner and reason

The exam prints My Last Duchess and asks how poets present the ABUSE of power. Which choice of partner, with its reason, is strongest?

• London: both show the powerful harming the powerless, but the Duke is one man in his own words, whereas Blake accuses whole institutions
• Ozymandias: both are short poems that rhyme, so they are easy to compare
• The Prelude extract: both are about a man rowing alone at night
• The Charge of the Light Brigade: both are spoken by a single Duke

Compare the abuse of power

Exam practice. Compare how poets present the abuse of power in My Last Duchess and in ONE other poem from Power and Conflict. Write at least 150 words.

• A shared point covering both poems
• A short quotation and a named method from each
• The effect of each method
• How the two attitudes differ
• Context only where it explains

Lines to know by heart

Complete these lines from My Last Duchess. That's my last Duchess _____ on the wall, Looking as if she were _____. and I choose Never to _____. I gave commands; Then all smiles _____ together.