AQA Power and Conflict: Understanding 'My Last Duchess'

This poem is one of Browning's most famous Dramatic Monologues, and typically revealing of its subject. Browning pioneered this kind of poem, which reflects his interest in human character, and in the nature of good and evil. A dramatic monologue is a poem which is in the first person, and is constructed as though it was a speech from a play. It is written in couplets of iambic pentameter, which reinforces this impression, though the subtlety of the rhyme at times makes it draw near to blank verse. It is not, however, like a soliloquy, where the speaker is speaking their private thoughts, it is a speech which is aimed at someone else--an unseen auditor. Understanding the nature of the auditor is key to reading a dramatic monologue effectively.

Alfonso II D'Este, Duke of Ferrara

In a soliloquy, the speaker may be explaining something to the audience, but he affects to be unaware of them, and acts as though he is alone. In  the soliloquy ‘is this a dagger which I see before me’ for instance, Macbeth seems to be thinking through his thoughts by himself. He is not thinking about the impression he might make on someone listening, and therefore there is no difference between what he actually conveys to the listener and what he intends to say. In ‘My Last Duchess’, on the other hand, the speaker is clearly both conscious of his auditor (the envoy) and also trying to send him a message, and make a particular impression. As readers, we see both the impression he intends to make, and infer other, more negative things about his character; the net result is that the speaker reveals himself inadvertently and 'says' more than he means. In short, the idea behind the dramatic monologue is that the speaker is putting forward their public, not their private self, but that nonetheless, we (as perceptive readers) can see past the mechanisms whereby that speaker tries to put across a certain impression of themselves, and understand something about the speaker that he or she did not intend to reveal. It is this difference between the intention of the poet and the intention of the speaker that creates the irony that is of key importance in the monologue.

It is important when reading a dramatic monologue to realise that the thoughts and feelings put forward, though they are in the first person, are not those of the poet. Browning is creating a character just as artfully as Fra Pandolf created a painting, and although the Duke is realistic in many respects, he remains a construct. Don't fall into the error, when writing about the poem, to ventriloquise the Duke's thoughts and feelings. Instead, focus on how Browning creates the impression of those thoughts and feelings. In this poem, the  epigraph 'Ferrara' gives us the clue about who is speaking. Browning put the monologue into the voice of the sixteenth century Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso D'Este, who was married three times. His first wife died two years after their marriage, and was at the time suspected to have been poisoned (later authorities think that she may have died of tuberculosis). Browning imagines the Duke speaking to an envoy who is about to negotiate his second marriage. The Duke decides to discuss his dead wife 'my last duchess' with the man who is responsible for carrying back a message to the father of his prospective new wife. The poem is therefore a message, a warning, and a valuable insight into the Duke's character. The irony comes in as the Duke clearly imagines that he is 'teaching a lesson' to the envoy about his expectations--as audience, on the other hand, we imagine the envoy's horror at what he learns about the Duke's behaviour. The Duke intends to give an impressive sense of his power and his aristocratic pride, but simply gives us a sense that he is an insecure and sadistic man.

The first line of the poem immediately throws us into the middle of a conversation—as though we had just stepped into a scene that was already underway. Although the auditor never speaks, the Duke's constant references to him give us a keen sense of his presence, as he is instructed to sit, look and stand. The Duke also comments on the auditor's facial expressions and interprets them for us, adding to the impression that he is a controlling and dominant person; we get a sense that either the envoy can literally not get a word in edgeways in the face of the Duke's narrative, or perhaps a sense that he is unable to respond through shock or fear of the Duke's reaction.

The contrast between the statement 'That's my last duchess' and 'looking as if she were alive' gives us an immediate frisson as we realise that the duke is coldly discussing his dead wife through the medium of her portrait. Immediately, the words ‘last duchess’ imply that something has happened to the woman—that the speaker has, or will have, a ‘next duchess’. The Duke is actually referring to a fresco—a painting made on wet plaster, highly regarded by aristocrats of the renaissance as a symbol of wealth—a symbol also of the taste and discernment that the time valued in its nobility. The phrase ‘looking as she were alive’ implies the duchess is dead—but that her portrait is realistic. In fact it is so realistic that she is also (punningly) 'looking' (i.e. regarding the speaker) 'as if she were alive', and the Duke explicitly mentions  the 'depth and passion' of her 'gaze' at the onlooker. It is telling that this active, 'lively' portrait is, most of the time, hidden behind a curtain, controlled in just the same way as the Duke tried to control the living woman.

There is a suggestion  throughout the Duke's speech that the portrait is an adequate replacement for the presence of the real woman it represents (speaking of the painting, he calls it 'she' and 'her'). This impression is reinforced by the idea that 'the piece'—the work of art—is 'a wonder'. This very clearly makes evident the Duke's priorities—he admires the art, but not the woman, he is fascinated by the process by which it was created (the painter, Fra Pandolf, painted rapidly on wet plaster to create the fresco within a day), but less interested in his wife's thoughts and feelings. There is little sense that he mourns her. The speed of the painting's creating, incidentally, is not only an accurate reflection of the process of creating a fresco, but also may reflect the idea of creation in the Bible, where the creation of humankind took only a day. The Duke is in the position of God, but has delegated the creation to 'Fra Pandolf's hands'.

Paranoia is rapidly suggested by the Duke's response to the envoy's implicit obedience to his command to sit and look at the picture. He imagines that the envoy must be asking himself why the Duchess looks so happy in her picture, and that he might think that she was enamoured of the artist. Hence he mentions 'by design' (another example of wordplay) that the painter was a monk, so as to explain that this was not the case. He interprets the envoy's glance at him as a criticism of his wife, implying that there is something wrong with her expression in the painting, and he imagines that everyone who looks at the painting feels the same way: 'not the first /Are you to turn and ask thus'. When he says 'ask thus' here he is referring not to a verbal interaction but to a 'look' which he interprets as a criticism of his wife. This immediately suggests that he is prone to making such judgements, and builds on the sense that the Duke is fascinated by 'looks' (in every sense of the word) and by the implications that lie behind speech. What is ironic here is that the audience of the poem can see that the Duke may, in fact, be reading these imagined looks and glances wrongly. He tries so hard to justify his own reading of the Duchess's behaviour that he paradoxically convinces the audience of her essential innocence. 

His rapid explanation of the 'spot of joy' (that is the blush on the Duchess's cheek) immediately gives us the impression that he is suspicious and controlling. His reference to 'a heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad' implies that he is unhappy about his wife's pleasure, the positive connotations of 'glad' undermined by the negative 'too soon'. It becomes clear that the Duke is critical, not of imagined infidelity, but of what he sees as a lack of discrimination and pride: 'she liked whate'er she looked on /And her looks went everywhere'. The chime between 'what're' and 'everywhere' creates the effect of epanalepsis in these lines which enfolds the statement in a continuing circle of blame, reinforcing the confused sense that the Duke has of 'everyone' looking at the Duchess and judging her glances as flirtatious or unfitting. 

The Duke’s insistence that he is right in his behaviour and in his suspicions inevitably leads the reader to suspect his motives. His description of his wife’s delight in small things: ‘all and each /would draw from her alike the approving speech / or blush, at least’ suggests someone innocent and modest to the reader, and his list of her offences—thanking people, smiling at them—tempts us to believe that he has been unjust to her. The Duke’s difficulty in communicating her offence suggests how subtle it is, while his failure to communicate with her emphasises his harsh pride: ‘I choose / Never to stoop’.  The caesura here emphasises the ways in which the Duke 'breaks up' his speech, and the repeated use of such caesuras also breaks up the natural flow of the couplets so as to create speech which has less emphasis on the rhyme-words and so sounds more conversational (and more like blank verse). Throughout the poem, enjambement means that we read rapidly over the rhyme-words, so that they are not emphasised as strongly as they would be if they came at the end of a clause. This embeds the rhymes within speech which creates a more natural effect, whilst still demonstrating the poet's craft. It is tempting to think that there is an analogy between this artfulness of the poet and the way in which the Duke conceals his purposes and feelings through his manipulative speech.

In a dramatic monologue, the reader has to do a great deal of the work. You need to think constantly beyond the surface meaning so as to see what the writer wishes to imply. In 'My Last Duchess' even subtle details of punctuation give us ideas about performance and tone.
For instance, look at the way the short sentences imply tone in a section such as: ‘This grew. I gave commands. Then all smiles stopped together’. Parenthesis also adds clues about tone: ‘Even if you had skill in words—which I have not—to make your will quite clear…’ while direct address to the silent auditor also implies something about performance: ‘Sir, ‘twas all one!’ Even commas can be rich in implication: ‘the approving speech, or glance, at least…’

Lucrezia de'Medici, Duchess of Ferrara

Subtle details of expression give you an impression of character throughout. For instance the Duke repeatedly denies that he has ‘skill in words’ even while he speaks fluently and persuasively. His hesitancy 'how shall I say' seems to imply not uncertainty about what he want to to say but a delicacy in naming his Bride's offence which is subtly threatening. This might make us mistrust other things that he says. The Duke’s emphasis on his rank is made clear throughout, which suggests his pride in his ‘nine-hundred-year’s-old name’, and his final resolve 'I choose / Never to stoop' indicates how relentless his pride has become. 

The Duke comes across as a ruthless autocrat who is prepared to kill someone rather than try to talk to them: ‘this grew. I gave commands. Then all smiles stopped together’. The duchess's failure to instinctively read what he wants from her, and to intuit  his unexpressed feelings about her behaviour means that she has failed utterly in his eyes. The context suggests that he is trying to give the envoy a warning about how his master’s daughter should behave, weighing out the expected behaviour as he weighs out the dowry: ‘though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed / At starting, is my object’. We share in the horror of the envoy as he realises what the Duke threatens, and wonder about his response. We have to supply this—Browning gives us no clues beyond what the Duke says.

The taming of a seahorse from the Trevi fountain in Rome. 

The final juxtaposition of 'There she stands /As if alive. Will't please you rise?' brings us back abruptly from the world of the duchess, so vividly recreated in words, to the initial situation. We get little sense of the envoy's reaction, though it may be implied that he seeks to stay and stare at the painting a little longer without the Duke watching him, as the Duke insists 'Nay, we'll go / Together down, sir.' The Duke finally changes the subject (or does he?) by mentioning another beautiful work of art 'thought a rarity' that has been especially created for him. It is a statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse, a mythical beast created out of the sea-foam, and the evocation of this image may also suggest the taming of the delicate duchess by the brutal masculinity of her husband. It is another veiled threat—or boast, perhaps—that what the Duke wants, the Duke gets, no matter how rare or unusual, and suggests that, like Neptune, the Duke has ultimate power over everything that he owns—including his duchess.