My Last Duchess

Robert Brownings poem My Last Duchess is a splendid example of the irony that a poet can achieve
within the format of the dramatic monologue, a poetic form in which there is only one speaker. When
there is only one speaker, we necessarily have to weigh carefully what he or she is telling us, and we
often have to read between the lines in keeping an objective perspective on the story or incidents
that the speaker describes to us. We can gather from this poems setting, Ferrara, a town in Italy, as
well as from the speakers reference to his last Duchess, that the speaker in this poem is the Duke
of Ferrara. Twentieth-century scholars have found a viable prototype upon whom Browning may have
based this characterization in the figure of Alfonso II, fifth Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the sixteenth
century, and whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances. But what kind of person is this
Duke, and what exactly is the story of his last duchess? To find out, lets take a closer look at what he
tells us.
First of all, it is evident that the Duke is speaking to someone, and that he is showing his auditor a
painting. Thats my last Duchess painted on the wall, he says, and then explains that the painter,
Fra Pandolf, worked busily a day, and there she stands. The Duke then describes the usual reaction
that people have to viewing this painting a reaction specifically to the Duchess earnest glance. He
says that strangers often turn to him as if to ask How such a glance came there, and then tells his
auditor, so, not the first / Are you to turn and ask thus. But has his auditor actually asked the Duke
a question, or is the Duke simply making an assumption, based upon a look on his guests face, that
he is reacting to the painting as every other viewer has reacted to it? If he is jumping to a conclusion
in the case of this latest viewer, then how do we know that he is right about other peoples reactions
to the painting? Perhaps he sees in other peoples looks what he wants to see. We will need to
remember this possible aspect of the Dukes character as we continue to listen to his story.
Next the Duke elaborates on his last Duchess glance in the portrait, and calls it a spot of joy. But it
was not his presence only that caused her to smile in such a way, he says. The painter, Fr Pandolf,
may have said anything from the simple Her mantle laps / Over my ladys wrist too much, to the
much more flattering Paint / Must never hope to reproduce the faint / Half-flush that dies along her
throat, and the ladys reaction would be this same, blushing spot of joy. The Duke then tells us
more about his ladys likes. She had a heart too soon made glad, he says, and she was too easily
pleased by everything she looked on. Sir, twas all one! he says to his listener, listing the things that
pleased her: the Dukes own favor, a beautiful sunset in the west, a bough of ripe cherries from the
orchard, a white mule she loved to ride each of these things she enjoyed to the same degree, and
each brought the same blush of pleasure to her cheek.
Finally we get to the heart of the Dukes problem with his former wife. She thanked people who
pleased her, which was all well and good in theory, but she thanked them all with equal affection, as
if she ranked / My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name / With anybodys gift. The Duke seems to
have been offended that she did not single him out among the others who pleased her, and
underrated his gift of a well-established name and proud family heritage. She smiled, he says,
whenever he passed her, but who passed without / Much the same smile? And how did the Duke
react to this? Whod stoop to blame / This sort of trifling? he asks his auditor. The whole business is
beneath him. Even if he had skill / In speech, it would be stooping to address such a situation, and
he tells his listener that he indeed does not have skill in speech. This statement is ironic, for the Duke
actually seems to be quite a polished speaker, although he may be telling us a great deal about his
personality and history that he may not have intended to reveal. So what became of this seemingly

kind and happy lady, who evidently enjoyed whatever she experienced? I gave commands, the Duke
says, Then all smiles stopped together. He says for a second time, There she stands / As if alive,
suggesting that the lady is no more. And yet, strangely, he shows no compunction for his actions.
As we make this discovery about the fate of his last wife, the Duke changes the direction of his speech
to his auditor. Willt please you rise? he asks, and suggests that they go below to meet other guests,
dismissing the difference in his and his guests ranks by stating generously, Nay, well go / Together
down, sir. The Duke then provides us with a hint as to the identity of his auditor. He speaks to the
man of the Count your master, and hints that this Counts reputed wealth will surely provide the
Duke with an ample dowry, a sum of money given by a brides father to her new husband. These
details indicate, ironically, that the Dukes guest is a messenger from a Count, and that his mission is
to arrange a marriage between the Duke and the Counts daughter. At this point, do we believe the
Duke when he assures us that it is not the money, but the Counts fair daughters self that is his
object? Or perhaps it is both, for the word object seems to be an important one in making a final
assessment of the Dukes character. He is a collector of art objects, after all, and he seems to enjoy
showing off his rich collection. After all, the whole occasion of his speech has been an explanation of
the origin of a portrait of his former wife. Moreover, on the way out of his art gallery, he takes the
time to point out one final art object to his guest: Notice Neptune, though / Taming a sea-horse,
thought a rarity, / Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! Once again the Duke takes the
opportunity to show off a piece of art that he is proud of and to drop the name of the artist, hoping to
impress his guest. The subject of the sculpture adds to our reaction to the Dukes story; here a
powerful god subdues a wild seahorse, much as the Duke has subdued his former Duchess. And as
Claus of Innsbruck has caught this image for him in bronze, he has had Fra Pandolf catch his wifes
spot of joy in a painting which can handily be hidden behind a curtain, at last giving the Duke
complete control over whom his wife smiles at (since none puts by / The curtain I have drawn for
you, but I). The final two words seem to say it all in summing up what the Duke values: after all, the
sculpture of Neptune was cast for me!
Ironically, despite the fact that the Duke simply tells us the story of his first wife and how her portrait
came to be painted, he manages to tell us a great deal more about his own personality. We can judge
that he is a vain man who is quite proud of his heritage and his nine-hundred-years-old name, and
that he is quite proud of his art collection. As Neptune tames the sea-horse, he has tamed a former
wife, transforming her uncontrollable spirit into an object of art and preserving her loveliness as if
she were alive into a medium over which he can exert complete control. He is no longer subject to
the trifling situation of her constant smiling, and he can now control whom she smiles at and who is
exposed to her beauty. Much of the dramatic irony in the poem, however, lies in the identity of the
auditor. The Duke has given all of this information about his personality and the history of his former
marriage to an envoy who has been sent to arrange a new marriage. Some critics have even
suggested that in this speech made to the man sent to negotiate his second marriage, the Duke is
cleverly indicating what kind of behavior he will expect in his new wife. Nevertheless, knowing what
we now know about this Duke, who would lead another unsuspecting young girl into such a situation?
Despite his wish to impress us with himself and to detract from his last Duchess qualities, Brownings
self-satisfied Duke ironically manages instead to paint her as a gentle and lovely person and himself
as somewhat of a monster. He is truly a paradoxical, yet not entirely unappealing, character despite
ones reaction to his morality by the end of the poem. It is hard not to be drawn into his skillful
speech, which is carefully designed to impress his guest with his name and possessions and flatter the
envoy into representing him favorably with his potential father-in-law. His pride in his painting, his
willingness to dwell on the loveliness and virtues of his earlier wife despite his feelings about her, his
generosity toward his guest, and his enthusiasm for his collection stopping to comment on one last

object before going down to collect one more wife keep the reader guessing throughout the poem
and constantly caught off guard by the revelation of one surprising personality trait after another.
Form
"My Last Duchess" comprises rhyming pentameter lines. The lines do not employ end-stops; rather, they
use enjambment--that is, sentences and other grammatical units do not necessarily conclude at the end of lines.
Consequently, the rhymes do not create a sense of closure when they come, but rather remain a subtle driving force
behind the Duke's compulsive revelations. The Duke is quite a performer: he mimics others' voices, creates
hypothetical situations, and uses the force of his personality to make horrifying information seem merely colorful.
Indeed, the poem provides a classic example of a dramatic monologue: the speaker is clearly distinct from the poet;
an audience is suggested but never appears in the poem; and the revelation of the Duke's character is the poem's
primary aim.

Telephone Conversation
The speaker of the poem, a dark West African man searching for a new apartment, tells the
story of a telephone call he made to a potential landlady. Instead of discussing price,
location, amenities, and other information significant to the apartment, they discussed the
speaker's skin color.
The landlady is described as a polite, well-bred woman, even though she is shown to be
shallowly racist. The speaker is described as being genuinely apologetic for his skin color,
even though he has no reason to be sorry for something which he was born with and has no
control over.
In this short poem, we can see that the speaker is an intelligent person by his use of high
diction and quick wit, not the savage that the landlady assumes he is because of his skin
color. All of these discrepancies between what appears to be and what really is create a
sense of verbal irony that helps the poem display the ridiculousness of racism.
"The price seemed reasonable, location / Indifferent"
The first sentence of the poem includes a pun that introduces the theme of the following
poem and also informs us that things are not going to be as straightforward as they appear.
"The price seemed reasonable, location / Indifferent"
If we read over these lines quickly, we would assume that the speaker meant "Being neither
good nor bad" by the use of the word indifferent . But, indifferent is also defined as
"Characterized by a lack of partiality; unbiased." This other definition gives the sentence an
entirely different meaning. Instead of the apartment's location being neither good or bad,
we read that the apartment's location is unbiased and impartial.

However, we quickly learn in the following lines of the poem that the location of the
apartment is the exact opposite of unbiased and impartial.
The speaker is rudely denied the ability to rent the property because of bias towards his
skin color. This opening pun quickly grabs our attention and suggests that we as readers be
on the lookout for more subtle uses of language that will alter the meaning of the poem.
"Caught I was, foully"
After this introduction, the speaker begins his "self-confession" about his skin color (line 4).
It is ironic that this is called a self-confession since the speaker has nothing that he should
have to confess since he has done nothing wrong. He warns the landlady that he is African,
instead of just informing her. "Caught I was, foully" he says after listening to the silence the
landlady had responded with.
I hate a wasted journeyI am African
Again, the word caught connotes that some wrong had been done, that the speaker was a
criminal caught committing his crime. By making the speaker actually seem sorry for his
skin color, Soyinka shows how ridiculous it really is for someone to apologize for his race. To
modern Western thinkers, it seems almost comical that anyone should be so submissive
when he has committed no wrongdoing.
ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?
Her goodness is seemingly confirmed later on when the speaker says that she was
"considerate" in rephrasing her question (line 17). Her response to the caller's question
included only "light / Impersonality" (lines 20-21). Although she was described as being a
wealthy woman, she was seemingly considerate and only slightly impersonal. The speaker
seems almost grateful for her demeanor. Of course, these kind descriptions of the woman
are teeming with verbal irony. We know that she is being very shallowly judgmental even
while she is seeming to be so pleasant.
The landlady, on the other hand, is described with nothing but positive terms. The speaker
mentions her "good-breeding," "lipstick coated" voice, "long gold-rolled/Cigarette holder,"
all possessions that should make her a respectable lady (lines 7-9). These words describing
her wealth are neutral in regard to her personal character, but allow that she could be a
good person.
"How dark?,"
After recording the all-important question, "How dark?," the poem pauses for a moment and
describes the surroundings to give a sense of reality that shows that the ridiculous question
had really been asked (line 10). The speaker describes the buttons in the phone booth, the
foul smell that seems to always coexist with public spaces, and a bus driving by outside. His
description gives us an image of where the speaker is located: a public phone booth,

probably somewhere in the United Kingdom.

The "Red booth," "Red pillar-box," and "Red double-tiered / Omnibus" are all things that one
might find in Leeds, the British city in which Soyinka had been studying prior to writing this
poem). In addition to the literal images that this description creates, a sense of the anger
running through the speaker's mind is portrayed by the repeated use of the word red. This
technique is the closest that that the speaker ever comes to openly showing anger in the
poem. Although it is hidden with seemingly polite language, a glimpse of the speaker's
anger appears in this quick pause in the conversation.
In the end, the landlady repeats her question and the speaker is forced to reveal how dark
he is. "West African sepia," he says, citing his passport . She claims not to know what that
means. She wants a quantifiable expression of his darkness. His response, feigning
simplicity is that his face is "brunette," his hands and feet "peroxide blonde" and his bottom
"raven black". He knows that she just wants a measure of his overall skin-color so that she
can categorize him, but he refuses to give it to her. Instead he details the different colors of
different parts of his body.
"wouldn't you rather / See for yourself?"
As it was meant to, this greatly annoys the landlady and she hangs up on him. In closing,
he asks the then empty telephone line, "wouldn't you rather / See for yourself?" The
speaker, still playing his ignorance of what the lady was truly asking, sounds as though he
is asking whether the landlady would like to meet him in person to judge his skin color for
herself. The irony in this question, though, lies in the fact that we know the speaker is
actually referring to his black bottom when he asks the woman if she wants to see it for
herself. Still feigning politeness, the speaker offers to show his backside to the racist
landlady.
Throughout the poem, yet another form of irony is created by the speaker's use of high
diction, which shows his education. Although the landlady refuses to rent an apartment to
him because of his African heritage and the supposed savagery that accompanies it, the
speaker is clearly a well educated individual.
Words like "pipped," "rancid," and "spectroscopic" are not words that a savage brute would
have in his vocabulary (lines 9, 12, 23). The speaker's intelligence is further shown through
his use of sarcasm and wit in response to the landlady's questions. Although he pretends
politeness the entire time, he includes subtle meanings in his speech. The fact that a black
man could outwit and make a white woman seem foolish shows the irony in judging people
based on their skin color.
Wole Soyinka's "Telephone Conversation" is packed with subtleties. The puns, irony, and
sarcasm employed help him to show the ridiculousness of racism. The conversation we
observe is comical, as is the entire notion that a man can be judged based on the color of
his skin.

The Negro Speaks of the Rivers.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers was the first poem published in Langston Hughess long writing career.
The poem first appeared in the magazine Crisis in June of 1921 and was subsequently published in
Hughess first volume of poetry, The Weary Blues, in 1926. Written when he was only 19, The Negro
Speaks of Rivers treats themes Hughes explored all his life: the experiences of African Americans in
history and black identity and pride. Hughes claimed that 90 percent of his work attempted to explain
and illuminate the Negro condition in America. Through images of rivers, African civilizations, and an
I who speaks for the race, Hughes argues for the depth, wisdom, and endurance of the African soul.
The form of the poem reinforces these themes. Using a collective, mythic I, long lines, and repeated
phrases, Hughes invokes the poetry of Walt Whitman, another bard who sang America. Onwuchekwa
Jemie notes in his book Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry, however, that unlike
Whitman, Hughes celebrates not the America that is but the America that is to come.

Themes
Heritage
The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Hughes first published poem, introduces a theme which would recur in
several other works throughout his career. Many critics have classified this group as the heritage
poems. Amazingly, although it was composed very quickly when he was only seventeen, it is both
polished and powerful. In fact, in Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry, Onwuchekwa Jemie
labels it the most profound of this group.
The poem utilizes four of the worlds largest and most historically prominent rivers as a metaphor to
present a view, almost a timeline in miniature, of the African-American experience throughout history.
The opening lines of the poem introduce the ancient and powerful cultural history of Africa and West
Asia, with the mention of the Euphrates and the dawn of time. Next the Congo, mother to Central
Africa, lulls the speaker, to sleep. The worlds longest river, the powerful and complex Nile with its
great pyramids, follows. Last, the poem moves to more recent times, with the introduction of the
Mississippi. Even though the Mississippi and Congo both hold bitter connotations of the slave trade,
each of the four has contributed to the depth of the speakers soul. The poem stresses triumph over
adversity as the muddy bosom of the Mississippi turns golden.
The speaker clearly represents more than Langston Hughes, the individual. In fact, the I of the
poem becomes even more than the embodiment of a racial identity. The poem describes, underlying
that identity, an eternal spirit, existing before the dawn of time and present still in the twentieth
century. The different sections of the poem emphasize this: the speaker actually functions on two
levels. One is the human level. The first words of lines five through eight create a picture of the
speakers ancestors: bathing, building, looking, hearing. However, the poem also discusses a spiritual
level where the soul of the speaker has been and continues to be enriched by the spirit of the river,
even before the creation of humanity. Thus, the second and third lines of the poem develop an
eternal, or cosmic, dimension in the poem.

Wisdom and Strength

The poems cosmic dimension adds an additional theme making the poem more than a tribute to the
heritage of the past. It honors the wisdom and strength which allowed African-Americans to survive
and flourish in the face of all adversity, most particularly the last few centuries of slavery. Hughes
associates this strength with the spirit of these rivers which Jemie describes in Langston Hughes: An
Introduction to the Poetry as transcendent essences so ancient as to appear timeless, predating
human existence, longer than human memory. Jemie continues by noting that as the black man
drank of these essences, he became endowed with the strength, the power and the wisdom of the
river spirit. Thus Hughes stresses the ancient cultural heritage of the African-American, the soul which
existed even before the dawns were young. The poem then makes clear that through all of the
centuries, the speaker or in other words, the collective soul has survived indomitable, like the
rivers. The poem exalts the force of character, the wisdom and strength, which created this survival.
This tribute developed out of Hughes personal life. He describes the inspiration for the poem in his
autobiography, The Big Sea. While he was crossing the Mississippi on a visit to his father, a man who
baffled and frustrated Hughes because of his prejudice, he began thinking about my father and his
strange dislike of his own people. Hughes contrasts this attitude with his own admiration for the
bravest people possible the Negroes from the Southern ghettoes facing tremendous odds. The
Mississippi suddenly seemed to be a graphic symbol of that bravery. He notes that being sold down
the river literally meant being torn violently from ones own family. Yet even after centuries of brutal
inhumanity in bondage, the African-American spirit has emerged triumphant. This poem became
Hughes tribute to the strength and the wisdom of his people.

Rivers
Rivers have been a powerful force throughout human history. Many early mythologies made the river
or the river god a symbol of both life and death. It is easy to understand the reason for this since
most of the great early civilizations grew up in river valleys. The Euphrates, which is the first of the
rivers mentioned in the poem, helps to form Mesopotamia. Even today, world history textbooks refer
to the area using the symbolic phrase, the cradle of civilization, because of the number of ancient
kingdoms which flourished there: Ur, Sumer, Babylon. The Nile, too, played a central role in early
civilization. It ensured Egyptian prosperity. Thus the river was worshipped as the god, Khnum, who
made the earth fruitful. Central African tribes also believed in the powerful river spirits who were
sources of life, wisdom, and purification. Even, today, Christian baptism, which originated when John
the Baptist anointed Jesus Christ in the River Jordan, represents both a symbol of purification and the
entrance to new life.

Poem Summary
Lines 1 4
Speaking for the African race (negro was the preferred term in 1921), the I of this poem links
people of African descent to an ancient, natural, life-giving force: rivers. By asserting that he has
known rivers ancient as the world, the speaker asserts that he, and people of African descent, have
an understanding of elemental forces in nature that precede civilization. The repetition of rivers and
human lends these lines a wise, resonant tone, like that found in Biblical passages. In the first two
lines, the speaker refers to rivers as a natural force outside himself. Line 3 likens the human body to
earth by comparing rivers to human blood in human veins. Line 4 personalizes that comparison as
the speaker compares the depth of his soul to the depth of rivers. In the space of four lines the
speaker moves from historically and symbolically associating himself and his people with rivers to

metaphorically imagining rivers as part of his blood and soul. Rather than one human relationship to
rivers emerging as true or primary, each of these associations intertwine.

Lines 5 7
Line 5 lets the reader know that the I is no mortal human speaker, but the mythic, timeless voice of
a race. To have bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young, in prehistory, the speaker must
be millions of years old. In lines 5 through 7, the speaker establishes the races ties to great, culturally
rich civilizations along famous rivers in the Middle East and Africa. The Euphrates River was the cradle
of ancient Babylonia. It flows from Turkey through Syria and modern Iraq. The Congo originates in
central Africa and flows into the Atlantic. The Nile, which runs from Lake Victoria in Uganda in Africa
through Egypt to the Mediterranean, was the site of ancient Egyptian civilization. The speakers
actions show that he reveres the river and depends on it for multiple purposes. He bathes in the
water, builds his hut next to it, listens to its music as he falls asleep, and is consoled or inspired by
the river when, as a slave in Egypt, he builds the great pyramids.
These actions reinforce the notion (from lines 1-3) that peoples of African descent have ancient
spiritual and physical ties to nature. When Hughes wrote this poem in 1921, ideas and images of
primitive, tribal cultures were very chic in American art and literature. After Hughes visited Africa in
1923, he no longer viewed Africa as a mythic, exotic land where black identity was rooted, but instead
as a land ravaged by Western imperialism, a symbol of lost roots. In his later writing, Hughes steered
away from images of African primitivism, for he saw such depictions of African and African-American
culture as impeding rather than advancing the cause of racial equality.

Lines 8 10
Here Hughes draws an analogy between the ancient rivers alongside which Africans founded
civilizations, and the Mississippi, the river on which several American cities were built, including St.
Louis (Hughess birthplace) and New Orleans. Onwuchekwa Jemie, writing in Langston Hughes: An
Introduction to the Poetry, notes that the magical transformation of the Mississippi from mud to gold
by the suns radiance is mirrored in the transformation of slaves into free men by Lincolns
Proclamation. In The Life of Langston Hughes, Arnold Rampersad views this transformation as the
angle of a poets vision, which turns mud into gold. The suns transformation of muddy water to gold
provides an image of change. The change may represent the improved status of African Americans
after the Civil War, hope for future changes, or the power of the poet to transform reality through
imaginative language. Line 8 personifies the river by giving it the human capacity to sing. The rivers
singing invokes both the slave spirituals and songs of celebration after the slaves were freed. Line 9
also personifies the river by endowing it with a muddy bosom. The Mississippi river is known for its
muddiness. The term bosom is associated with women and so connotes fertility and nurturing.
Through this personification, Hughes associates the ceaselessness of the mighty river with the eternal,
life-affirming endurance of Africans and African Americans.

Lines 11 13
The poem closes with the phrases that opened it. The speakers language completes a cycle that
mirrors the rivers eternal cycling of waters around the earth and the African races continuing role in
human history. By enacting the circling of time and rivers, the speaker again associates himself with
those elemental forces. The phrase dusky rivers refers literally to rivers that appear brown due to
mud and cloudy skies. Figuratively, the phrase again likens rivers to peoples of African descent, whose
skin is often called dusky or dark. The final line reaffirms the speakers sense of racial pride, of

continuity with ancient, advanced civilizations, and of connection to life-giving, enduring forces in
nature.