This poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke
of Ferrara, the speaker of the poem: he is entertaining an emissary come to
negotiate the Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of
another powerful family. The Duke stops before a portrait of the late Duchess,
a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins talking about the portrait sessions,
then about the Duchess herself. His musings depicts her disgraceful behavior: apparently
she flirted with everyone and did not
appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.” The reader realizes
with chilling certainty that the Duke caused the Duchess’s early death: when
her behavior escalated, the Duke ordered her death. Having made this
disclosure, the Duke returns to arranging for another marriage, with another
young girl. As the Duke and the emissary leave the painting behind, the Duke
points out other notable artworks in his collection.
Form
“My Last Duchess” is made rhyming pentameter lines, without end-stops but
with enjambment—that is, sentences and other grammatical units do not
necessarily conclude at the end of lines. The rhymes do not create a sense of
closure. The Duke uses the force of his personality to make horrifying
information seem merely colorful. The poem provides a classic example of a
dramatic monologue: the speaker is distinct from the poet; an audience is
suggested but never appears in the poem; the revelation of the Duke’s character
is the poem’s primary aim.
Commentary
The specific historical setting of the poem has great significance: the
Italian Renaissance represented the flowering of the aesthetic and the human
alongside. Thus the temporal setting allows Browning to explore sex, violence,
and aesthetics as all entangled: the
language belies the fact that the Duchess was punished for her natural
sexuality, though the Duke’s ravings suggest that the supposed transgressions
took place in his mind, as he sees sin in every corner.
For people confronted with an increasingly complex and anonymous modern
world, the impulse to control comes naturally: to control would seem to be to
conserve and stabilize. The Renaissance was a time when morally dissolute men
like the Duke exercised absolute power, and as such it is a fascinating study
for the Victorians.
The poem engages its readers on a psychological level: we hear only the
Duke’s musings, so we must piece the story together ourselves. Browning forces
his reader to become involved in the poem in order to understand it, it also
forces the reader to question his or her own response to the subject portrayed
and the method of its portrayal.
