Setting and Background

The setting of "My Last Duchess," a highly acclaimed 1842 poem by Robert Browning, is the palace of the Duke of Ferrara on a day in October 1564. Ferrara is in northern Italy, between Bologna and Padua, on a branch of the Po River. The city was the seat of an important principality ruled by the House of Este from 1208 to 1598. The Este family constructed an imposing castle in Ferrara beginning in 1385 and, over the years, made Ferrara an important center of arts and learning. Two members of the family, Beatrice and Isabella, supported the work of such painters as Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. In Browning’s poem, the Duke of Ferrara is modeled after Alfonso II, the fifth and last duke of the principality, who ruled Ferrara from 1559 to 1597 but in three marriages fathered no heir to succeed him. The deceased duchess in the poem was his first wife, Lucrezia de’ Medici, a daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici (1519-1574), Duke of Florence from 1537 to 1574 and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569 to 1574. Lucrezia died in 1561 at age 17. In 1598, Ferrara became part of the Papal States.

Characters

Speaker (or Narrator): The speaker is the Duke of Ferrara. Browning appears to have modeled him after Alfonso II, who ruled Ferrara from 1559 to 1597. Alfonso was married three times but had no children. The poem reveals him as a proud, possessive, and selfish man and a lover of the arts. He regarded his late wife as a mere object who existed only to please him and do his bidding. He likes the portrait of her (the subject of his monologue) because, unlike the duchess when she was alive, it reveals only her beauty and none of the qualities in her that annoyed the duke when she was alive. Morever, he now has complete control of the portrait as a pretty art object that he can show to visitors.
Duchess: The late wife of the duke. Browning appears to have modeled her after Lucrezia de’ Medici, a daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici (1519-1574), Duke of Florence from 1537 to 1574 and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569 to 1574. The duke says the duchess enjoyed the company of other men and implies that she was unfaithful. Whether his accusation is a fabrication is uncertain. The duchess died under suspicious circumstances on April 21, 1561, just two years after he married her. She may have been poisoned.
Emissary of the Count of Tyrol: The emissary has no speaking role; he simply listens as the Duke of Ferrara tells him about the late Duchess of Ferrara and the fresco of her on the wall. Historically, the emissary is identified with Nikolaus Madruz, of Innsbruck, Austria. 
Count of Tyrol: The duke's of the duke's bride-to-be. The duke mentions him in connection with a dowry the count is expected to provide.
Daughter of the Count of Tyrol. The duke's bride-to-be is the daughter of the count but appears to be modeled historically on the count's niece, Barbara. 
Frà Pandolph: The duke mentions him as the artist who painted the fresco. No one has identified a real-life counterpart on whom he was based. He may have been a fictional creation of Browning. Frà was a title of Italian friars of the Roman Catholic Church. 
Claus of Innsbruck: The duke mentions him as the artist who created "Neptune Taming a Sea-Horse." Like Pandolph, he may have been a fictional creation. 

The Portrait of the Duchess

The portrait of the late Duchess of Ferrara is a fresco, a type of work painted in watercolors directly on a plaster wall. The portrait symbolizes the duke's possessive and controlling nature inasmuch as the duchess has become an art object which he owns and controls.

Meter

"My Last Duchess" is in iambic pentameter (10 syllables, or five feet, per line with five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables), as Lines 1 and 2 of the poem demonstrate. 

That's MY..|..last DUCH..|..ess PAINT..|..ed ON..|..the WALL,
Look ING..|..as IF..|..she WERE..|..a ALIVE...|..I CALL

Line 1 rhymes with Line 2, Line 3 with 4, Line 5 with 6, and so on. Pairs of rhyming lines are called couplets. When the lines are written in iambic pentameter, as are the lines of "My Last Duchess," the rhyming pairs are called heroic couplets. 

Theme

The theme is the arrogant, authoritarian mindset of a proud Renaissance duke. In this respect, the more important portrait in the poem is the one the duke "paints" of himself with his words. 

Summary and Commentary

.......Upstairs at his palace in October of 1564, the Duke of Ferrara–a city in northeast Italy on a branch of the Po River–shows a portrait of his late wife, who died in 1561, to a representative of the Count of Tyrol, an Austrian nobleman. The duke plans to marry the count’s daughter after he negotiates for a handsome dowry from the count. 
.......While discussing the portrait, the duke also discusses his relationship with the late countess, revealing himself–wittingly or unwittingly–as a domineering husband who regarded his beautiful wife as a mere object, a possession whose sole mission was to please him. His comments are sometimes straightforward and frank and sometimes subtle and ambiguous. Several remarks hint that he may have murdered his wife, just a teenager at the time of her death two years after she married him, but the oblique and roundabout language in which he couches these remarks falls short of an open confession. 
.......The duke tells the Austrian emissary that he admires the portrait of the duchess but was exasperated with his wife while she was alive, for she devoted as much attention to trivialities–and other men–as she did to him. He even implies that she had affairs. In response to these affairs, he says, “I gave commands; / “Then all [of her] smiles stopped together.” 
.......Does commands mean that he ordered someone to kill her?
.......Does it mean he reprimanded her?
.......Does it mean he ordered some other action? 
.......The poem does not provide enough information to answer these questions. Nor does it provide enough information to determine whether the duke is lying about his wife or exaggerating her faults. Whatever the case, research into her life has resulted in speculation that she was poisoned. Browning himself says the duke either ordered her murder or sent her off to a convent.
.......That the duke regarded his wife as a mere object, a possession, is clear. For example, in Lines 2 and 3, while he and the emissary are looking at the painting, he says, “I call that piece a wonder, now.” Piece explicitly refers to the portrait but implicitly refers to the duchess when she was alive. Now is a telling word in his statement: It reveals that the duchess is a wonder in the portrait, because of the charming pose she strikes, but implies that she was far less than a wonder when she was alive. 
.......Of course, the engaging pose the duchess strikes is not the only reason the duke prizes the portrait. He prizes it also because the duchess is under his full control as an image on the wall. She cannot play the coquette; she cannot protest or disobey his commands; she cannot do anything except smile out at the duke and to anyone else the duke allows to view the portrait. 
.......As the duke and the emissary turn to go downstairs, the duke points out another art object–a bronze art object showing Neptune taming a sea horse. The emissary might well have wondered whether the duke regarded himself as Neptune and the sea horse as the duchess. 
 What the emissary plans to tell the count about the duke is open to question. But in real life, the duke did marry the woman he discussed with the emissary.

Type of Work: Poem as Dramatic Monologue

......."My Last Duchess" is a poem in the form of a dramatic monologue. A dramatic monologue presents a moment in which the main character of the poem discusses a topic and, in so doing, also reveals his personal feelings to a listener. Only the main character, called the speaker, talks–hence the term monologue, meaning single (mono) speaker who presents spoken or written discourse (logue). During his discourse, the speaker makes comments that reveal information about his personality and psyche, knowingly or unknowingly. The main focus of a dramatic monologue is this personal information, not the topic which the speaker happens to be discussing. 
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