My Last Duchess - Robert Browning

Who is Convinced?: How We Project Our Own Emotions on the Poem Theresa Lii '12, ENGL0600J: Mystics, Madmen, Prophets and Perverts, 2009 In Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," the Duke of Ferrara addresses an envoy, through whom we, the audience, perceive the Duke. Browning succeeds in creating a growing sense of unease in the envoy — without ever directly referring to him. From the very first lines of the poem, we behold the Duke's hubris and hauteur. The Duke coolly describes his late wife's portrait "as if she were alive" and, with neither pause nor word of sad remembrance, he remarks upon the technical excellence of the painting. Instantly, Browning creates the vague suspicion that something is very, very wrong. As the dramatic monologue progresses, the Duke's speech grows more disjointed. Browning's use of dashes creates the image of the Duke trying to justify the disposal of his late wife: 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? The Duke continues to sugar coat his actions by repeatedly claiming that he does not "stoop." At the same time, our own suspicions grow; we assume that the envoy must also be showing signs of alarm. In attempt to soothe the envoy, the Duke hurriedly interjects, "Oh sir, [the Duchess] smiled, no doubt whene'er I passed her." The Duke swiftly regains his composure and continues, "but who passed without much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together." This chilling remark is especially unsettling due to Browning's use of short, pointed sentences. It unsettles the envoy as much as it unsettles the reader. Questions 1. By creating unease in the reader, Browning effectively characterizes the unmentioned envoy. To what extent are the reader's reactions identical to the envoy's reactions? Why do we so easily assume that our reactions match the envoy's? 2. In The Making of Victorian Values: Decency and Dissent in Britain, Ben Wilson describes Victorian attitudes toward marital infidelity: The wound which a woman suffers by her husband's offence is only skin deep; but an unchaste wife, by her adultery, casts an indelible stain in her own offspring; and her society is avoided by the chaste part of her own sex. [page 147 ] Although Browning writes about the Duke of Ferrara, who lived during the late Italian Renaissance, he composed the poem for the Victorian audience. What evidence, if any, points to the possibility that the Duchess committed adultery? What evidence goes against this possibility? How did the Victorians handle adultery? Were the Victorians more likely to sympathize with the Duke, or were they just as repulsed by the Duke as we are today? 3.In one of Robert Browning's other poems, "Porphyria's Lover," the main character also kills his female companion. However, Browning does not reveal the fact until the last third of the poem, where it appears as a sudden and unexpected twist. At what point in "My Last Duchess" do we suspect the Duke for the demise of his wife? How do revelations of murder differ in both poems? Why does Browning make the revelation more subtle in "My Last Duchess"? 4. What is the significance of the title "My Last Duchess"? In particular, discuss the various definitions of the word "last". Does it mean "previous, most recent" or does it mean "final, no more"? Are there other interpretations? How does this ambiguity affect our perception of the Duke? Related Materials Applying Modern Critical Theory to Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" Discussion Questions References Wilson, Ben. The Making of Victorian Values: Decency and Dissent in Britain. New York: Penguin Group, 2007.

Hops, Skips, and Jumps in "My Last Duchess" Sonia Kim '11, ENGL0600J: Mystics, Madmen, Prophets and Perverts, 2009 Robert Browning's poem, "My Last Duchess" begins innocuously enough — with an unnamed Duke appraising the portrait of his late wife. The chatty Duke casually refers to the amount of hours the comissioned artist spent on the painting, commenting on how the Duchess "look[s] as if she were alive" in the finished piece (2). Such remarks seem to have a sentimental tone as readers themselves paint the portrait of a man still mourning over the loss of his wife. One could almost relate to the Duke and quickly deem this work a commentary on the universality of grief. Almost, that is. Something seems amiss towards the middle of the poem, as the Duke's tone changes from somewhat jovial to disturbingly impassioned. He mentions detailed instances of his wife's flirtatiousness and condemns them as evidence of her ungratefulness and promiscuity: 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? After continuing his rant for several lines further, he ends with a declaration of his authority, namely his authority over his wife. 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 left Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, foorsooth, and made excuse, — E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. In this middle section of the poem, dashes pepper the Duke's speech as his thoughts skip from bitter memory to memory and from the past to the present. As the dashes mark gaps in the Duke's speech and thoughts, they act as a grammatical parallel for the larger omissions present in the work. Browning never chronicles the actual events that occurred when the Duchess was alive which leaves the veracity of the Duke's words up for debate. Consequently, the gap between the events, people, and artwork as presented by the Duke and these counterparts rooted in reality cause a constantly shifting appraisal of truth and falsehood. The reader is left to make the appropriate hops, skips, and jumps in a poem that features a condemned Duchess who may be innocent, a beautiful painting that commemorates a horrific memory, and a Duke who, in reality, does not seem to act much like nobility at all. Questions 1. In the passage, the Duke asserts that he has given his wife the "gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name." Why does he choose to mention this specific quality (versus his "undying love" or his fortune) as his gift — especially in light of the fact that he is never specifically named? 2. The Duke mentions the word "stoop" three times in the passage, showing his clear obsession with authority and husband-and-wife power dynamics. Who does Browning deem more powerful: a wife whose "promiscuity" obsesses her husband even after her death or a husband who ends up killing a disobedient wife? 3. In "Porphyria's Lover," Browning also features a man who kills his beloved. However, this unnamed killer lingers over the woman's "smooth white shoulder" and "yellow hair" while chronicling the violent event as it happens in the present. How does this focus on physical appearance and present tense characterize Porphyria's lover as someone different from the Duke? Could these differences reflect a socio-economic difference between the two characters? 4. In Victorian society, social standing and gentlemanly (or ladylike) behavior remain tantamount to operating as effective citizens of England. In "The Gentleman," David Cody asserts that "[m]embers of the British aristocracy were gentlemen by right of birth (although it was also emphasized, paradoxically enough, that birth alone could not make a man a gentleman), while the new industrial and mercantile elites, in the face of opposition from the aristocracy, inevitably attempted to have themselves designated as gentlemen as a natural consequence of their growing wealth and influence." An attention to morality as a morality of a gentleman pervaded Victorian thought. In light of this information, how difficult is it for the murderous Duke to retain his title in Victorian society? References David Cody. "The Gentleman." Victorian Web. 2009. April 1, 2009.

Browning's Portrait of a Renaissance Man: Alphonso II D' este, Duke of Ferrara, in "My Last Duchess" (1842) Philip V. Allingham, Contributing Editor, Victorian Web; Faculty of Education, Lakehead University (Ontario) In reading Robert Browning's Renaissance-set dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess," one must bear in mind that "Browning is not primarily concerned to tell a story. . . or describe a mood . . .: his aim is to depict a man as he is, with such autobiographical flashbacks as may be necessary to explain the character of the speaker" (Ian Jack, Browning's Major Poetry, p. 196). In his psychological portrait of the Duke of Ferrara Browning was as much inspired by his general notions of Italian court portraiture as he was by any specific individual--and yet there is an actual historical figure behind the poem. John Pope-Hennessy, in The Portrait in the Renaissance (1979), feels that the Renaissance vision of man's self-sufficient nature marks the beginning of the modern world, the world of scientific thought and materialism. The Renaissance assertion of man's place--the individual's place--in the scheme of things coincided with the humanistic art initiated by Giotto in Italy. Although somewhat idealized, those faces that peer out at us from Renaissance portraits and paintings evoke an immediate and sympathetic response because they remind us of our own, reflecting all the human follies, passions, desires, and disappointments that we see in the mirror every day. Part of the appeal of Browning's Duke is that there is someone like him somewhere in every reader; and, although Browning knows better than to attempt an outright exorcism, his poetry has a salutary if not always flattering way of making readers confront this ducal reader or Duke within. [Tucker, p. 181] The historical basis for the character of the Duke, however, is not merely a type, but a very real individual, Alphonso II of Ferrara, a member of the extravagant D'este family, who satisfied their obsession for luxury and money by borrowing and by arranging substantial marriage dowries. There is a depth to this psychological study, quite apart from the dramatic tension created by the reader's imagining the disturbed envoy of the Count, eager to escape the portrait of the most recent duchess and its concomitant revelation of the owner's sociopathic psyche. This dramatic action, as Thomas Blackburn argues in Robert Browning: A Study of His Poetry (1967), renders the poem "a novel [which] in about sixty lines conveys a sense of the infinite complexity of life, of the under and overtones of existence" (p. 173). Under Browning's hand, the Duke becomes a portrait of a type: the petty aristocrats who governed the city-states of Renaissance Italy. "There she stands / As if alive," remarks Alphonso of his wife's portrait: however, he finds the picture preferable to the original because he now has total control over who will view her and because she can no longer mar her beauty by unseeming behaviour or emotion. Ironically, Browning's Duke, displaying the picture of his last Duchess, is himself a full-length portrait. His dignity, courtesy, cruelty, interest in sculpture, in painting, unites, unconsciously and without exaggeration, to show this cross-section of a Renaissance aristocrat. As Browning's aim too is not moral instruction but the dispassionate study of individual character, good and evil qualities are allowed to intertwine in the same perplexing fashion as in actual life. [Palmer, p. 133] Although Browning does not make overt statements about the Duke's moral turpitude, he nonetheless gives us clues as to how we, along with the implied auditor, the Count's envoy, are to react to the Duke. For example, a significant piece of unintentional self-revelation is the Duke's proudly pointing out his statue of "Neptune, / Taming a sea-horse" (lines 54-55), in fact an emblem of the Duke's attempt to dominate his former duchess as if she were an unruly animal. The statue becomes a metaphor for the Duke's view of himself, as well as a second object lesson for the envoy (the portrait itself being the first) who has just attempted the presumption of preceding his imperious host down the stairs. But there is an even greater, unconscious revelation of character in the Duke's proprietary command: "Notice" (line 54). Neptune is seen in an attitude of doing what the Duke cannot do, . . . [since] the latter can only have ordered to be "cast" a symbol that might represent his desires in "taming," subjugating, vanquishing, bending to his will--or, in the form of a bronze group, his accomplishment in art impossible in his life. [Berman, p. 85] The Duke's having commissioned a statue in which he figures himself as Greco-Roman the earth-shaker in a display of power is a sort of wish-fulfillment. Perhaps, as Herbert F. Tucker, Jr., has hypothesized, encasing both his last duchess and himself in objets d'art is his only means of exerting control of those vital forces which continually frustrate his understanding: He literally encloses his Duchess in a tomb or convent and imaginatively encloses himself in an icon of possession, a bronze statue of Neptune, in order to avoid confronting what he perceives as an absence of meaning in his surroundings, in his marriage, and in himself. [p. 182] The irony of the Duke's conceiving himself as godlike is that the real Alphonso was impotent--either congenitally, or as a consequence of a tournament injury sustained in youth (according to Berman, p. 100)--and, therefore, quite incapable of passing on his "gift of a nine-hundred years-old name" (line 33). Historically, by the way, the Count with whom Alfonso II was negotiating was lord of the Tyrol, whose principal city was Innsbruck; so that the Duke's passing reference to the craftsman responsible for the Neptune statue may be a subtle way of implying that he already has some knowledge of and ties with the Count's region which marriage to the Count's daughter will serve to strengthen (Berman, p. 86). Another fascinating historical footnote is that Browning's other great Renaissance man, the Bishop of St. Praxed's, was likely modeled on Cardinal Ippolito d'Este the Younger, brother to Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara (according to William Clyde De Vane's Browning's Duke, p. 167), making the Duke of "My Last Duchess," Alphonso II (the fifth and last d'Este Duke of Ferrara) his nephew. Further, Browning had encountered Alphonso when researching the life of the poet Torquato Tasso (whom the Duke of Ferrara had imprisoned) for Sordello (1840). Like his uncle the Bishop, the Duke in Browning's poem fails to see the irony in his artistic commissions and aesthetic pronouncements because he is blind to his own repressive, sterile nature. The Duke especially, as Tucker points out, may be taken as a symbol for the sort of reader (or, in the broader sense, interpreter of art) who "imprison[s] the meaning of poems." (p. 181) The Duke's artists, the sculptor Claus of Innsbruck and the painter Fra Pandolf, have no historical counterparts. They are, in effect, metaphors for the poet himself, for the function of all art is to enable the consumer--the viewer, auditor, or reader--to liberate himself from his own introspective inflexibility by permitting him to see his inner self through the mirror of art. Unfortunately, although a discerning patron, the Duke cannot penetrate beyond the superficial beauty of art to its underlying truth. In this moral blindness the Duke is also very much a man of his time. The Barberini Pope Urban VIII, who sponsored the sculptor Bernini and condemned the astronomer Galileo, and had all the birds killed in the Vatican gardens, offers a real, historical parallel to Browning's Duke: on the one hand he is positive (a discriminating art-collector and patron who speaks with genuine elegance), and on the other negative (he is a chilling figure who kills off youth and living beauty to replace it with an artistic recreation). Browning treats the Count's envoy ironically. "Nay, we'll got Together down, sir!" suggests that he is trying to get away from both the Duke and the "trophy" painting that is mute testimony to the owner's ruthlessness. The speaker assumes that he is about to win another fat dowry, but his doing so depends upon the report of the envoy (if his impression is anything like ours, the Duke will not succeed). Ironically, although the Duke so highly regards his lineage and expensive art, he is in need of money. The poem is patently about the "last" rather than the "first" or "former" duchess, suggesting that the Duke is something of a Bluebeard, the ghastly antagonist of a cautionary tale translated into English in 1729 from Perrault's collection and vastly influential in the Victorian period. At the close of the poem, as the pair walk down the grand staircase of the ducal palace, Browning invites us to construct one of two conclusions for ourselves: either the envoy will support the Duke's "pretence" (meaning "claim," but also implying "act" or "deception"), or he will advise the Count against the marriage. Brilliantly, Browning has the Duke condemn himself out of his own mouth; although he offers us no judgment himself, the poet would have us judge the Duke and the age in which he ruled. Browning's primary interest is in the villain's psychology, but in vividly, fascinatingly revealing the Duke's motivations the poet reveals him as the product of a definite set of traditions. In accordance with Machiavelli's advice in The Prince, the Duke reveals his power to the envoy by using his late wife's fate as an object lesson. Neptune's taming a seahorse, the bronze statue which the Duke commissioned, is yet another image of brutal domination. Browning sees the Duke as characteristic of the political leaders of the epoch: power, art, sophistication, pitiless tyranny come together in one splendidly-drawn figure. The Duke's superbia is a feature of his character that is reflection of the personalities of such Renaissance giants as Pope Julius II of Agaony and Ecstacy fame and Sigismundo Malatesta, the central figure in Ezra Pound's Cantos. References Berman, R. J. Browning's Duke. New York: Richards Rosen Press, 1972. Blackburn, Thomas. Robert Browning: A Study of His Poetry. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967. De Vance, William Clyde. A Browning Handbook. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955. Jack, Ian. Browning's Major Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973. Jerman, B. R. "Browning's Witless Duke." Modern Language Association Journal, June 1957: 488-493. Palmer, George H. "The Monologue of Browning." Harvard Theological Review, XI, 2 (April 1918): 121-144. Pope-Hennessy, John. The Portrait in the Renaissance. New York: Bollingen Foundation and Patheon Books, 1966. Robert Browning The Poems, Volume One. Ed. John Pettigrew and Thomas J. Collins. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. Pp. 349-350. Shaw, David W. "Browning's Duke as Theatrical Producer." Victorian Newsletter 29 (Spring 1966): 18-22. Tucker, F. Herbert, Jr. Browning's Beginnings: The Art of Disclosure. Minneapolis: U. Minnesota Press, 1980.

Applying Modern Critical Theory to Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" Philip V. Allingham, Contributing Editor, Victorian Web; Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario In the following readings of Browning's justly famous poem, Professor Allingham shows the different kinds of answers different critical approaches can produce. (Brief explanations of each critical method link to each of the terms below.) You will notice that although these various critical theories ask different questions and produce different answers, these readings complement — rather than contradict — one another. In other words, in the same way that a cell biologist can ask questions about the physics, biochemistry, genetics, and physiology of a cell and receive differing results, so, too, can a student of literary approach a text in different ways without making the study of literature subjective and a matter largely of personal taste and opinion. [GPL] 1. The poem "My Last Duchess" (complete text) is termed a "dramatic monologue" because A. it contains three formal elements: an occasion, a speaker, and a hearer. [Formalist] B. all its words are heard--and are intended to be heard--by an implied auditor. [Formalist] C. in it we hear only one voice--and as is typical of pre-twentieth-century verse that voice is male. [Feminist] D. rather than being "narrative," by virtue of its scansion and diction it appears to have been excerpted from the body of a verse drama such as a play by Shakespeare.[Rhetorical] 2. The "voice" or "persona" in the poem "My Last Duchess" A. enables the poet to synthesize two types of verse, the lyric and the drama. [Formalist] B. talks about and describes a woman, but never actually quotes that woman. [Feminist] C. presents the character directly and ironically, without comment by the poet. [New Criticism] D. creates what one critic has termed "psychography," a text which serves to reveal the inner workings of a single character's psychology, values, tastes, and motivations. [Psychological] 3. Browning's Duke speaks in noble poetry through which the reader A. rejects the behaviour of the speaker in favour of the behaviour of the woman who opposed him. [Feminist] B. responds negatively when the speaker assumes everything he says meets with the auditor's approval. [New Criticism] C. mentally constructs a vivid portrait of a deeply disturbed and disturbing individual. [Psychological] D. comes to comprehend the courtesy, dignity, artistic taste, and essential cruelty of a Renaissance autocrat. [New Historicist] 4. The phrase "Last Duchess" (as given in the title and repeated in the opening line) A. might suggest more a comparative than an exclusive designation, as would "Late." [ Rhetorical] B. reflects the woman was, ultimately, more a public "Duchess" than a private "wife." [Feminist] C. is part of an unspoken title: in his own eyes, there is no poem but only his words to the Count's emissary. [Deconstruction] D. implies that the Duke is that monster out of fairy tale and myth, a compound of the legendary youth-devouring Minotaur and the wife-collecting murderer Bluebeard from the popular Victorian fairy tale. [Archetypal] 5. In the last part of the poem, the Duke shifts the discussion away from the portrait per se to the negotiations about to begin "below," presumably in a great hall or audience chamber. The diction, shifting from art to business, is now characterized by such words as "gift," "munificence," "ample warrant," "disallowed," "company," and--perhaps most significantly--"dowry." A. The Duke has already to argue the rightness or justice of his "pretense," which literally means "claim," but is a double entendre implying also "act" and "deception."[New Criticism] B. Thus, the Duke reveals that everything that has gone before is mere "elegant persiflage" (light banter), a private conversation, and that only now is the real dialogue of competing interests about to begin. [Formalist] C. In matters artistic, the Duke has assumed a superior position; he, manifesting every outward sign of self-effacing civility as he and his guest are about to join the company, steps back to permit the Count's emissary to accompany him as a social equal. [Psychological] D. Thus, the Duke implies that the envoy should apply his "history" or "object lesson" (the fate of the unruly former duchess) to the female "object" of the transaction. In alluding to his wealth, nobility, power, and impeccable taste earlier, the Duke was emphasizing what currency he would be bringing to the bargaining table.[Marxist] 6. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! A. The value of a commodity is in direct proportion to its scarcity and desirability; to make the Duchess more valuable, the Duke had her commodified, made into a painting by a certified "Master" to which only the Duke himself controls the access. [Marxist] B. Since such statues as the one the Duke notes were hardly rare, the Duke ironically may be overvaluing the work which he is so proud of having commissioned. [New Criticism] C. The statue of Neptune is a psychological projection of the Duke himself as both enjoy dominating what is beautiful, delicate, feminine, and natural. [Psychological] D. The mention of the material would be unnecessary in a real conversation since the statue's being bronze would be obvious to an observer; therefore, the phrase "cast in bronze" betrays the artificial and textual nature of this one-sided dialogue. [Deconstruction] 7. 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. A. By her enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life rather than just the expensive products of male ingenuity, the Duchess defined herself as a non-man. [Feminist] B. The repetitions of the definite article, reinforced by the use of "alike," "all and each," are highly suggestive of those robot-like mechanics that completely define the Duke and the fabricated conventionality within which the Duchess was trapped. [Rhetorical] C. In order to put at stop to such unrestrained enjoyment and counter his feelings of inadequacy and rejection, the Duke had to do what he asserts he will never do--mentally "stoop" to reprove and correct. [Psychological] D. The grammatical structure of the sentence by its additive mode of simple enumeration implies the Duchess's failure to discriminate any ranking among the parts, as opposed to the Duke's punctilious gradation of the content. [Formalist] 8. The excellence of the poem, as B. R. Jerman contends, lies in the A. dramatic irony of the Duke's treatment of the envoy, for he unwittingly reveals his true personality to the Count's representative. [New Criticism] B. portrait it conveys of Renaissance society, which, though it esteemed feminine beauty, invested power in ruthless rulers such as the Duke as effective and praiseworthy. [New Historicist] C. Duke's inability to realize that having a real relationship with a woman such as the Duchess would be far more rewarding than owning numerous representations of women. [Feminist] D. monologue's characterizing arranged marriages among the governing classes of the Renaissance as nothing more than business transactions which commodified beauty. [Marxist] 9. I call That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hand Worked busily a day, and there she stands. A. The portrait of the last duchess is a symbol of compliance in marriage, which the Duke intimates to the envoy is what he expects from the Count's daughter. [Feminist] B. The Duke utters the name "Frà Pandolf" three times in order to impress the envoy with his artistic taste and discernment. [Rhetorical] C. The Duke was egotistically insensitive to the living beauty before him when the Duchess lived, and finds it a wonder only now that it has been transformed into a timeless, ageless beauty that only a work of art can contain. [Psychological] D. While the real woman inconveniently took pleasure in things other than the Duke, the mechanically reproduced, realistic picture of a photogenic woman is a suitable trophy for a dilettante in that it is a distillation of only her beauty. [Feminist] 10. But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I). . . . The Duke keeps the full-length portrait covered because A. like a jealous and emotionally insecure child, he wants to show complete possession of the Duchess's smile. [Psychological] B. he likes to use it as an object lesson to enforce in others a view of him that obliges them to respect and fear him. [Marxist] C. he believes he is revealing his taste when in fact he is revealing the traditional masculine pathology that requires a man's wife be entirely subservient to his will.[Feminist] D. reflecting the poet's sense of phrasing and timing, like a theatrical producer he wants to control the viewer's response by timing the drawing of the curtain as part of his faultless performance as the gracious and cultured host.[Rhetorical] 11. I call That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. The magisterial sweep of the opening lines, as David Shaw contends, A. in their oracular impressiveness and grammar suggests a parody of the opening of Genesis, in which God "calls" all life into being and names everything He has created. [Reader-Response] B. establishes from the outset that the Duke appreciates objects of art more than he does the rights of others because the art has tangible, "monetary" value. [Marxist] C. demonstrates that only "now," after a passage of time, the Duke has forgotten the woman he had to dispose of and is free to admire the virtuosity of the (male) painter who has transcribed that woman's chief commodity, her beauty, in a less threatening form. [Feminist] D. not only establishes the name of the master-painter who created this "wonder," but implies the supervisory role of the artist's "patron," the Duke, in its creation, as is consistent with the role of the aristocratic patron in Renaissance Italy.[New Historicist] 12. 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". . . . A. The Duke interprets the Duchess's plain enjoyment as impudence and rebellion against her social superior, surrogate father, and master. [Psychological] B. What is most repulsive in the Duke's manner here is the callous precision of an insane rationalist whose dissociation of logical forms suggests mild schizophrenia. [Psychological] C. The Duke's continually referring to his auditor as "sir" similarly implies the speaker's feeling that the envoy shares his outlook and interpretation of the Duchess's aberrant conduct, and will endorse the "commands" that the Duke ultimately felt he had to give. [New Criticism] D. Regardless of what the envoy tells his master of this speech, the putative duchess will still have no part in the negotiations since Italian women of the sixteenth century were treated as chattels rather than legally independent entities. [New Historicist] 13. Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West. . . . A. The rhymes, which are irrational satellites revolving round the rhetoric, imply that, for example, in the above couplet, the Duchess' "breast" has indeed become for the Duke a sinking sun. [Rhetorical] B. Her according the natural phenomenon, a common enough event, and the mark of his special grace equal status the Duke interpreted as a diminution of his assumed perfection; such notice would be for the Duke psychologically intolerable. [Psychological] C. The Duchess, indicates the painter, valued the Duke's "favour" since it occupies first place among her accessories in the portrait, but her painted her clear of those walls which must have been for her nothing but a prison. [New Criticism] D. For the Duke, exposing the Duchess's lack of discernment is the equivalent of exposing himself as one who could not master her; and that mastery, never realized while she lived, asserts itself by his manipulation of a cord that draws curtains--ironically, scarcely satisfying "control." [Feminist] 14. That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. A. The Duke intends to flatter the Count's envoy by giving him the privilege of beholding what he regards as an extraordinarily beautiful work of art. [Psychological] B. The Duke intends to impress the Count's envoy with his power to command complete and total subservience, that he is no mere princeling, but a genuine autocrat. [Marxist] C. The Duke indicates to the Count's envoy verbally what the curtains manifestly symbolize, that the lady in the portrait is now dead, not tucked away in a convent. [Deconstruction] D. The Duke implies to the Count's envoy that the painting is superior to the original because the (male) artist has infused the face with an earnestness and depth of passion that the lady herself lacked. [Feminist] 15. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! A. Browning himself visited Innsbruck and Tyrol just four years before "My Last Duchess" appeared in print, when he was on his way home from Italy in 1838. [Philological] B. The arrogant affability of the conclusion makes it clear that the Duke is both insane and frighteningly in control, as the perfect, deceptive iambic pentameter couplet asserts. [Formalist] C. The closing phrase of the poem, "for me," re-establishes the whole proprietary nature of the Duke, and rules out any possibility of a final redemption before he disappears from our ken forever by descending the staircase. [Psychological] D. Since Alfonso d'Este's grand-aunt owned a similar work, "Un Neptuno sopra un monstro col tridente," the reference to this statue's being in the ducal palace of Ferrara is intended as a piece of historical detailism to prove the text's verisimilitude. [New Historicist] 16. This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. A. The poem has the salutary effect of making readers, particularly masculine readers, confront the Duke within themselves. [Feminist] B. This deliberate ambivalence shows the poet's deliberately departing from historical truth. Browning in an interview once said, "I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death . . . Or he might have had her shut up in a convent." [Deconstruction] C. The Duke is modeled on Alfonso II, fifth Duke of Ferrara, and the last of the Este family which Browning had dealt with in Sordello; Alfonso II, born in 1533, married Lucrezia de Medici, then fourteen, in 1558. Four years after her death, perhaps caused by poison, in 1561, Alfonso married the daughter of Ferdinand I, Count of Tyrol. [New Historicist] D. Browning said that the Duke used his wife's supposed shallowness as an excuse--mainly to himself--for taking revenge on one who had unwittingly wounded his absurdly pretentious vanity, by failing to recognize his superiority in even the most trifling matters. [Psychological] 17. 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. A. Browning's Duke is a soulless virtuoso, the natural product of a corrupt class system that empowers a proud, arrogant, and exclusive aristocracy. [ Marxist] B. Browning's psychopathic Duke finds satisfaction only in manipulating and controlling others, the outward and visible signs of his imposing his will being wealth and what wealth enables him to purchase. [Psychological] C. Browning's theme is the historical tyranny of man over woman--the tyrannical suppression of one nature by another merely on the basis of gender, and not with respect to economic or social necessity. [Feminist] D. Browning's Duke is the Devil incarnate, inured to murder and ignorant of Christian virtues, a creation intended to be a symbol of pride, materialism, and viciousness of Christian evil, blind to his own probable damnation. [Archetypal] 18. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Frà Pandolf" by design. . . . A. A gentle "spot of joy" that the artist has captured in the Duchess's cheek will remain undiminished when her imperious Duke, like the real lady herself, is dust and ashes. [Formalist] B. In sympathy with the observant painter of the poem, Browning invites us to suspend the moral judgments of others and judge for ourselves two studies of human nature, the one a portrait in pigments, the other a portrait in words. [Psychological] C. In the Italian Renaissance, rulers such as Browning's Duke employed subservient craftsmen--painters, sculptors, poets, musicians, and architects--whose work provides an historical account to us of those fierce and elegant despots who patronized them. [New Historicist] D. In repeating the name of the artist three times, the Duke implies vaguely that the genius exhibited in the painting is somehow his, and that the choice of artist is itself a higher creative act since the painting was done under his strict supervision--for, after all, Frà Pandolf's proletarian hands did not actually "paint," they merely "worked." [Marxist] Related Materials Discussion Questions The Silent Listener in Browning's "My Last Duchess" References Berman, R. J. Browning's Duke. New York: Richards Rosen Press, 1972. Corson, Hiram. An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1889. Fotheringham, James. Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. London: Kegan, Paul, and Trench, 1887. Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. 8th edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. Jack, Ian. Browning's Major Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973. Jerman, B. R. "Browning's Witless Duke." Modern Language Association Journal, June 1957: 488-493. Mitchell, Domhnall. "Browning's 'My Last Duchess'." Explicator 50, 2 (Winter 1992) : 74-75. Palmer, George H. "The Monologue of Browning." Harvard Theological Review, XI, 2(April 1918) : 121-144. Poems in English 1530-1940, ed. David Daiches. New York: Ronald, 1950. Pp. 462-463. Robert Browning The Poems, Volume One. Ed. John Pettigrew and Thomas J. Collins. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. Pp. 349-350. Shaw, David W. "Browning's Duke as Theatrical Producer." Victorian Newsletter 29 (Spring 1966): 18-22. Tucker, F. Herbert, Jr. Browning's Beginnings: The Art of Disclosure. Minneapolis: U. Minnesota Press, 1980. Victorian Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Walter E. Houghton and G. Robert Stange. Boston: Riverside, 1959. Pp. 179-180.

Summary This poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the 16th century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us he is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate the Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of another powerful family. As he shows the visitor through his palace, he stops before a portrait of the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait sessions, then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a diatribe on her disgraceful behavior: he claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.” As his monologue continues, the reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the Duke in fact caused the Duchess’s early demise: when her behavior escalated, “[he] gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.” Having made this disclosure, the Duke returns to the business at hand: arranging for another marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the emissary walk leave the painting behind, the Duke points out other notable artworks in his collection. Form “My Last Duchess” comprises rhyming pentameter lines. The lines do not employ end-stops; rather, they use enjambment—gthat 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. Commentary But Browning has more in mind than simply creating a colorful character and placing him in a picturesque historical scene. Rather, the specific historical setting of the poem harbors much significance: the Italian Renaissance held a particular fascination for Browning and his contemporaries, for it represented the flowering of the aesthetic and the human alongside, or in some cases in the place of, the religious and the moral. Thus the temporal setting allows Browning to again explore sex, violence, and aesthetics as all entangled, complicating and confusing each other: the lushness of the language belies the fact that the Duchess was punished for her natural sexuality. The Duke’s ravings suggest that most of the supposed transgressions took place only in his mind. Like some of Browning’s fellow Victorians, the Duke sees sin lurking in every corner. The reason the speaker here gives for killing the Duchess ostensibly differs from that given by the speaker of “Porphyria’s Lover” for murder Porphyria; however, both women are nevertheless victims of a male desire to inscribe and fix female sexuality. The desperate need to do this mirrors the efforts of Victorian society to mold the behavior—gsexual and otherwise—gof individuals. For people confronted with an increasingly complex and anonymous modern world, this impulse 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: works like this imply that, surely, a time that produced magnificent art like the Duchess’s portrait couldn’t have been entirely evil in its allocation of societal control—geven though it put men like the Duke in power.A poem like “My Last Duchess” calculatedly engages its readers on a psychological level. Because we hear only the Duke’s musings, we must piece the story together ourselves. Browning forces his reader to become involved in the poem in order to understand it, and this adds to the fun of reading his work. It also forces the reader to question his or her own response to the subject portrayed and the method of its portrayal. We are forced to consider, Which aspect of the poem dominates: the horror of the Duchess’s fate, or the beauty of the language and the powerful dramatic development? Thus by posing this question the poem firstly tests the Victorian reader’s response to the modern world—git asks, Has everyday life made you numb yet?—gand secondly asks a question that must be asked of all art—git queries, Does art have a moral component, or is it merely an aesthetic exercise? In these latter considerations Browning prefigures writers like Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde.

Robert Browning published "My Last Duchess" in 1842 in a book of poems titled Dramatic Lyrics. As the title suggests, in these poems Browning experiments with form, combining some aspects of stage plays and some aspects of Romantic verse to create a new type of poetry for his own Victorian age. The Victorians are the poor unfortunates who come between the Romantics and the Modernists. In other words, authors in this period got sandwiched between two great movements that majorly influenced Western Culture, and so readers sometimes forget about the Victorian age writers. It’s important to notice that "My Last Duchess" is one of the poems that falls into this somewhat problematic in-between age. (For reference, you can think of the Victorian era as stretching from 1837-1901. At least, those are the years when Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. You might know her better by the shorter title of Queen of England. Keep in mind that literary movements only correspond roughly with her reign.) For the most part, poetry didn’t do so well in the Victorian period – it was the age of the novel, and everyone was reading Charles Dickens, George Eliot, or "penny dreadfuls," which were the Victorian version of the sensationalist paperbacks sold in your local grocery store today. Most Victorian poets were highly experimental and, with the exception of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, not so highly popular; people kept reading the now-classic Romantic poets, like William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, instead of tuning in to the new developments in poetry.Robert Browning alarmed his Victorian readers with psychological – and sometimes psychopathic – realism, wild formal experiments, and harsh-sounding language. These qualities, however, are what make poems like "My Last Duchess" so attractive to today’s readers, who value the raw power of Browning’s writing more than some of the feel-good flowery Romantic poems. Browning’s inspiration for "My Last Duchess" was the history of a Renaissance duke, Alfonso II of Ferrara, whose young wife Lucrezia died in suspicious circumstances in 1561. Lucrezia was a Medici – part of a family that was becoming one of the most powerful and wealthy in Europe at the time. During Lucrezia’s lifetime, however, the Medici were just beginning to build their power base and were still considered upstarts by the other nobility. Lucrezia herself never got to enjoy riches and status; she was married at 14 and dead by 17. After her death, Alfonso courted (and eventually married) the niece of the Count of Tyrol.Robert Browning takes this brief anecdote out of the history books and turns it into an opportunity for readers to peek inside the head of a psychopath. Although Browning hints at the real-life Renaissance back-story by putting the word "Ferrara" under the title of the poem as an epigraph, he removes the situation from most of its historical details. It’s important to notice that the Duke, his previous wife, and the woman he’s courting aren’t named in the poem at all. Even though there were historical events that inspired the poem, the text itself has a more generalized, universal, nameless feel. Why Should I Care? We can understand why you might have trouble caring about "My Last Duchess" at first. After all, it’s a fictional speech by a Renaissance duke who’s conducting a marriage negotiation. But the themes in play here are way more interesting than the basic setup. Jealousy, sadism, murder, manipulation, a sinister atmosphere, and the inner thoughts of a psychopath – it’s practically The Silence of the Lambs in poem form. If the macabre sensationalism isn’t enough to draw you in, consider this: the Duke’s overreaction to the Duchess’s genial nature pretty much makes him a textbook example of a controlling, abusive husband who demands absolute subservience from his wife. The only difference is that he’s crazy enough to think that even ordering her not to be nice to people is beneath him. In his mind, killing her is the only way to deal with the fact that she smiled at the sunset. And that reminds us of another movie from the early 90s – Sleeping With the Enemy. So you can visualize the Duchess as Jodie Foster or as Julia Roberts, if you like. But the point is that this poem has several different attractions: a "true crime" feel (the real-life Duchess of Ferrara did die under suspicious circumstances) and a chilling depiction of the psychology of a man obsessed with power. If you ever wondered what was going through the head of someone on the edge, Browning’s poetry is for you.

THAT’S my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said "Frà Pandolf" by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe 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 firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas notHer husband’s presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle lapsOver my lady’s wrist too much," or "PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat": such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad.Too easily impressed: she liked whate’erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.Sir, ’twas all one! My favor at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace – all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men, – good! but thankedSomehow – I know not how – as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech – (which I have not) – to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say, "Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,Or there exceed the mark" – and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, – E’en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene’er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commandsThen all smiles stopped together. There she standsAs if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The Count your master’s known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretenceOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll goTogether down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Lines 1-2 THAT’S my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. The speaker points out a lifelike portrait of his "last Duchess" that’s painted on the wall. This tells us that the speaker is a Duke, that his wife is dead, and that someone is listening to him describe his late wife’s portrait, possibly in his private art gallery. It also makes us wonder what makes her his "last" Duchess – for more thoughts on that phrase, check out our comments in the "What’s Up With the Title?" section. Lines 2-4 I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands. The Duke tells his mysterious listener that the painting of the Duchess is impressively accurate. The painter, Frà (or "Friar") Pandolf, worked hard to achieve a realistic effect. Notice that the Duke’s comment "there she stands" suggests that this is a full-length portrait of the Duchess showing her entire body, not just a close-up of her face. Line 5 Will’t please you sit and look at her? The Duke asks his listener politely to sit down and examine the painting. But the politeness is somewhat fake, and the question seems more like a command. Could the listener refuse to sit down and look and listen? We don’t think so. Lines 5-13 I said "Frà Pandolf" by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe 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 firstAre you to turn and ask thus. The Duke explains to the listener why he brought up the painter, Frà Pandolf. He says that he mentioned Pandolf on purpose, or "by design" (6) because strangers never examine the Duchess's portrait without looking like they want to ask the Duke how the painter put so much "depth and passion" (8) into the expression on the Duchess's face, or "countenance" (7). They don’t actually ask, because they don’t dare, but the Duke thinks he can tell that they want to. Parenthetically, the Duke mentions that he’s always the one there to answer this question because nobody else is allowed to draw back the curtain that hangs over the portrait. Only the Duke is allowed to look at it or show it to anyone else. This is clearly his private gallery, and we’re a little afraid of what might happen to someone who broke the rules there. Lines 13-15 Sir, ’twas notHer husband’s presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess’ cheek: Addressing his still-unknown listener as "sir," the Duke goes into more detail about the expression on the Duchess's face in the painting. He describes her cheek as having a "spot / Of joy" (14-15) in it, perhaps a slight blush of pleasure. It wasn’t just "her husband’s presence" (14) that made her blush in this way, although the Duke seems to believe that it should have been the only thing that would. The Duke doesn’t like the idea that anyone else might compliment his wife or do something sweet that would make her blush.

Lines 15-21 perhapsFrà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle lapsOver my lady’s wrist too much," or "PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat": such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. The Duke imagines some of the ways that Frà Pandolf might have caused the Duchess to get that "spot of joy" in her face. He might have told her that her "mantle" (her shawl) covered her wrist too much, which is the Renaissance equivalent of saying, "man, that skirt’s way too long – maybe you should hike it up a little." Or he might have complimented her on the becoming way that she flushes, telling her that "paint / Must never hope to reproduce" (17-18) the beautiful effect of her skin and coloring. The Duke thinks the Duchess would have thought that comments like this, the normal flirtatious "courtesy" (20) that noblemen would pay to noblewomen, were "cause enough" (20) to blush. Strangely, the Duke seems to believe that blushing in response to someone like Frà Pandolf was a decision, not an involuntary physical reaction. Notice that the Duke also seems to infuse his comments with a judgmental tone. Lines 21-24 She hadA heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad.Too easily impressed: she liked whate’erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere. The Duke describes the Duchess as "too soon made glad" (22) and "too easily impressed" (23). This is his main problem with her: too many things make her happy. Another way of looking at it is that she’s not serious enough. She doesn’t save her "spot of joy" for him alone. She’s not the discriminating snob that he wants her to be. She likes everything she sees, and she sees everything.

Lines 25-31 Sir, ’twas all one! My favor at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace – all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. The Duke elaborates further on the Duchess's tendency to see every pleasant thing as pretty much the same. If he gives her a "favor" or mark of his esteem that she can wear, such as a corsage or piece of jewelry, she thanks him for it in the same way that she approves of a pretty sunset, a branch of cherries, or her white mule. At first the Duke suggests that she speaks of all these things equally, but then he changes his claim and admits that sometimes she doesn’t say anything and just blushes in that special way. And maybe she’s a little promiscuous – either in reality, or (more likely) in the Duke’s imagination. Part of the problem is not just that she likes boughs of cherries – it’s that some "officious fool" (27) brings them to her. (An "officious" person is someone who pokes their nose in and starts doing things when they’re not wanted – somebody self-important who thinks they’re the best person to do something, even when everyone else wishes they would just butt out.) Lines 31-34 She thanked men, – good! but thankedSomehow – I know not how – as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody’s gift. The Duke claims that, although it’s all well and good to thank people for doing things for you, the way the Duchess thanked people seemed to imply that she thought the little favors they did her were just as important as what the Duke himself did for her. After all, the Duke gave her his "nine-hundred-years-old name" (33) – a connection to a longstanding aristocratic family with power and prestige. The Duke’s family has been around for nearly a thousand years running things in Ferrara, and he thinks this makes him superior to the Duchess, who doesn’t have the same heritage. He thinks the Duchess ought to value the social elevation of her marriage over the simple pleasures of life. Lines 34-35 Who’d stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? The Duke asks his listener a rhetorical question: who would actually lower himself and bother to have an argument with the Duchess about her indiscriminate behavior? He thinks the answer is "nobody." We don’t think that there is much open and honest communication in this relationship!

Lines 35-43 Even had you skill In speech – (which I have not) – to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say, "Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,Or there exceed the mark" – and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, – E’en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. The Duke lists all the obstacles that prevented him from talking to the Duchess directly about his problems with her behavior. He claims that he doesn’t have the "skill / In speech" (35-36) to explain what he wants from her – but his skillful rhetoric in the rest of the poem suggests otherwise. He also suggests that she might have resisted being "lessoned" (40), that is, taught a lesson by him, if she had "made excuse" (41) for her behavior instead. But even if he were a skilled speaker, and even if she didn’t argue, he says he still wouldn’t talk to her about it. Why? Because he thinks that bringing it up at all would be "stooping" to her level, and he refuses to do that. Lines 43-45 Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene’er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? The Duke admits to his listener (who is this guy, anyway?) that the Duchess was sweet to him – she did smile at him whenever he passed by her. But, he says, it’s not like that was special. She smiles at everyone in the same way. Lines 45-46 This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. The Duke claims that "This grew" (45) – that is, the Duchess's indiscriminate kindness and appreciation of everything got more extreme. The Duke then "gave commands" (45) and as a result "All smiles stopped together" (46). Our best guess is that he had her killed, but the poem is ambiguous on this point. It’s possible that he had her shut up in a dungeon or a nunnery, and that she’s as good as dead. She’s not his Duchess anymore – she’s his "last Duchess" – so she’s clearly not on the scene anymore. Lines 46-47 There she standsAs if alive. Will’t please you rise? The Duke ends his story of the Duchess and her painting by gesturing toward the full-body portrait again, in which she stands "As if alive" (47).

Lines 47-48 We’ll meetThe company below, then. The Duke invites his listener to get up and go back downstairs to the rest of the "company." As in line 5, this sounds like a polite invitation – but we can’t imagine anyone refusing. Lines 48-53 I repeat,The Count your master’s known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. We finally learn why the Duke is talking to this guy: his listener is the servant of a Count, and the Duke is wooing the Count’s daughter. The Duke tells the servant that he knows about the Count’s wealth and generosity, or "munificence" (49), so he expects to get any reasonable dowry he asks for. But his main "object" (53) in the negotiations is the daughter herself, not more money. Lines 53-54 Nay, we’ll goTogether down, sir. The Duke’s listener seems to try to get away from him (we would try, too). The Duke stops him and insists that they stay together as they go back to meet everyone else downstairs. Lines 54-56 Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! Before the Duke and his listener leave the gallery, the Duke points out one more of his art objects – a bronze statue of Neptune, the god of the sea, taming a sea-horse. The Duke mentions the name of the artist who cast this statue, Claus of Innsbruck, who made it specifically for him.