“My Last Duchess”

• Originally Published: 1842
• Form/Meter: Dramatic monologue in rhymed couplets; iambic pentameter
• Literary Devices: Form; meter; narrative voice; enjambment
• Setting: Renaissance Italy
• Central Concern: A self-absorbed and controlling duke, in conversation with a representative of his potential new wife’s family, alludes to his last wife’s inadequacies as he shows her portrait. The poem is a dramatic monologue based loosely on a historical figure, the Duke of Ferrara, who is the speaker of the poem.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Murder; objectification of women

Robert Browning, Poet

• Bio: 1812-1889; Victorian-era English poet and playwright; known for his use of the dramatic monologue form; very popular in his lifetime; secretly married the poet Elizabeth Barrett despite her father’s disapproval; buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner
• Other Works: “Paracelsus” (1835); “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” (1842); The Ring and the Book (1868-1869), a novel in verse

THEMES

• The Interplay of Pride, Power, and a Need for Control
• The Exaggerated Importance of Social Status and Hierarchy
• Values and Perceptions Surrounding the Victorian Woman