ROBERT BROWNING

Master of the dramatic monologue

🡪it’s different from an Elizabethan monologue 🡪part of a longer play 🡪action stops and the
character speaks directly to the audience to explain his thoughts and intentions (ex.: to be or
not to be)

🡪a self contained poem 🡪it’s just a poem 🡪not destined to be acted out, so it’s not part of a play
🡪there’s a specific speaker (a persona, may be the poet or not)
🡪there’s a specific listener 🡪they never answer
🡪there’s a specific situation (ex.: Valediction, the Flea by Donne)

Long poetic composition in which a single character speaks about his own life and reaches an objective
quality that was highly appreciated by later poets (Elliot, other modern authors)

🡪modern
🡪style (not languid, not musical, but spoken)
🡪by speaking and without realizing the speaker reveals a lot about his own personality

He exposes the cruelty and the perversions of the Victorian frame of mind 🡪exactly the opposite of
Kipling

My last duchess
🡪counterpart of Kipling’s “If” 🡪portrayed the ideal Victorian gentleman and listed his virtues

In order to criticize the Victorian frame of mind he sets this dramatic monologue in Ferrara, during the
Renaissance

🡪so that who read this already knew from the beginning that this character is not to be trusted
(the English despised the Renaissance Era in Italy because of the corruption and the vices of the
noblemen and the Catholics)

A lot of psychological introspection: the duke, without even realizing it, is telling us everything there is
to know about his mad nature and distorted personality 🡪 reveals the flaws of his personality

Colloquial, concentrated, rhyming couplets of iambic pentameters

What are the flaws of the Victorians?

🡪they want to be the master of the world (which is a virtue for Kipling) 🡪the world needs to be at their
command, and everything needs to revolve around him

🡪utilitarian 🡪when he thinks about marriage he only thinks about money 🡪and also he considers
everything around him his exclusive property (including his wife)
🡪criticism about the position of women 🡪 they were their husband’s property and were only there to
support their husbands, to care for their children, but they weren’t independent 🡪they were servants of
their husbands 🡪if women behaved in a way that the husbands didn’t like, they became outcasts in
society, and sometimes they would even get killed

Summary
The speaker is the Duke of Ferrara during the Renaissance 🡪 speaks about his dead wife

We only get to know who he’s speaking to later 🡪a messenger of a Count who wants to give him his
daughter in marriage

He makes the listener see a portrait of his dead wife 🡪she looks like she’s alive (but we know from the
title that she’s dead)

Very bombastic style of writing 🡪 a duke is speaking

The portrait of his dead wife is always covered by a curtain 🡪he’s the only one who can decide to whom
he wants to show it 🡪it’s a privilege for the ambassador to be able to see her

The people who have seen it 🡪 seem like they want to ask him how this sparkle in her eyes and the blush
on her cheeks were able to be drawn on a portrait

How does she have it?

🡪it wasn’t just the presence of the husband that made her cheeks blush

🡪but while Fra Pandolf (the painter) was painting her, he asked her also to raise her sleeve, in
order to paint her arm
🡪compliments Fra Pandolf made her blush

She had a heart too easily impressed 🡪she loved everything she looked at and appreciated beauty on
everything 🡪totally blameless things

🡪it should have only been the fact that she had married the Duke that should have made her
blush more than everything in the world 🡪she should have appreciated only him, only his love
🡪but everything had the same beauty: the sunset, the cherry branch that some admirer had
given her, or the white mule she rode 🡪everything was on the same level of beauty 🡪everything
made her blush and gave her joy

The duke wanted her to only appreciate him 🡪 she had others (innocent things)

She thanked others like they were giving the same things as he did (his name of 900 years) 🡪she should
have just adored him and not the other things

But he won’t lower himself to her level to lecture her🡪that would be stooping 🡪she’s like a property,
she’s on a lower level 🡪he’s treating her like an animal

Even if he had had the ability to speak to her and to tell her that she was exaggerated, and even if she
would have listened to his lectures, and even if she would have said sorry 🡪he would have lowered
himself to her level by telling her that 🡪so he never told her
She was supposed to only smile at him 🡪She kept smiling at others and others kept smiling at her 🡪so in
the end he made her get killed

🡪she became the perfect wife: looking alive, always smiling, but only when her husband wants
her to and only to the people he wants
🡪she is his property and behaves like it. 🡪now he’s the master of everything that surrounds him

(There she stands as if alive)

He says to the messenger that they should go back downstairs to the other people 🡪they are having a
party

He’s sure that if he marries the daughter of the count, the count is going to give him her dowry
🡪because the count is very generous 🡪he’s certainly going to marry for money (utilitarianism)

🡪then he says: as he said on the beginning, his most important desire is the beautiful girl
🡪it might be his most important desire, but the first thing he mentioned is the money

All this speech about his last duchess is also a threat to the count’s daughter, because if the count’s
daughter does not behave the way he wants, she’s going to make the same end as his last duchess

The ambassador is trying to go another way, but the Duke stops him to make him go down the same
way as him

🡪he makes him look at a statue of Neptune (we understand that they are probably in an
exhibition at the Duke’s house🡪his wife is just a piece of his collection now)
🡪it was made by a famous artist of the time and it was cast in bronze especially for him
🡪everything is FOR HIM 🡪the world revolves around him 🡪if he doesn’t like something he
eliminates it, because he can, because he’s the duke of Ferrara, with a 900 year old name and
everything is made for him
 My Last Duchess BY ROBERT BROWNING
FERRARA

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—
E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!