236 Browning, Robert
when it was reprinted in Dramatic Romances and
Lyrics. Among his best-loved and most widely
anthologized works, the poem exemplifies what
modern critics have termed the dramatic mono-
logue, a poetic genre in which a speaker, addressing
a silent auditor, gradually discloses depths of his own
character and psychology to which he himself may
well be blind. Indeed, Browning (1812–89) worked
extensively with this form and is typically recog-
nized as having produced its finest examples.
Set during the early modern period in Italy, the
poem takes the shape of a courtly address by a high-
ranking nobleman in dowry negotiations with the
agent of his lesser-born prospective second father-
in-law. Standing on the staircase of the ducal palace,
the two pause as the duke draws a curtain revealing
a painting of his first, late wife. The highly measured
and imperiously delivered monologue that unfolds
systematically exposes the duke’s extreme jealousy
and possessiveness and their role in his decision to
have her killed. Only the duke appears unaware of
the implications of his conduct. The reader—and
presumably the reader’s surrogate, the emissary—
grows increasingly uncomfortable as the duke elabo-
rates his confession, a confession that doubles, of
course, as a threatening declaration of expectations
for his bride-to-be. It is the count’s “fair daughter’s
self ” for which the duke is bargaining, and her com-
plete servility that he demands.
In its ironic self-elaboration and psychological
disclosure, the duke’s address allows Browning to
explore themes of excessive individual pride, gen-
dered power and violence, and social class.
Hilary Englert
deatH in “My Last Duchess”
Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My Last
Duchess” features an early modern Italian noble-
man’s unapologetic (if tense) account of the death of
his late wife by his own orders. The actual murder—
the event one might have expected to produce the
poem’s greatest dramatic effect—is recounted in so
quiet and elliptical a way as to nearly elude a hasty
reader. On the heels of a litany of petty complaints
against his high-spirited, lower-born late wife, the
duke confesses: “I gave commands / then all smiles
stopped” (ll. 45–46). Convinced that her execution
was justified and that he has conducted himself in
keeping with the prerogatives of his rank, the duke
nonetheless emphasizes his distance from the mate-
rial act itself. His physical remove from the killing
is echoed by the euphemistic subtlety with which he
recounts the event. As he implies later in the poem,
to have committed murder with his own hands
would have been too dirty and demeaning to him-
self, and he makes it clear from the outset that he
“choose[s] / Never to stoop” (ll. 42–43). The duke’s
conspicuous unwillingness to revisit the moment of
the duchess’s death with any kind of clarity, direct-
ness, or detail further reflects his refusal to stoop. It
is in the gaps left by this refusal that the drama of
the duke’s psychology unfolds.
The poem’s first couplet faintly registers the
duchess’s death, as the duke and his interlocutor, an
emissary representing to the duke’s lesser-ranking
future father-in-law, gaze upon a painting of her,
“Looking as if she were alive” (l.2). Toward the close
of the monologue, as though haunted by the lifelike
impression left by the painting, the duke retraces
that impression in the very same words: “There she
stands / As if alive” (ll. 46–47). In its verisimilitude,
the image manages to create the effect of realness,
the sense that a live woman “stands” stationary
within its frame. Indeed, the duke repeats this for-
mulation as well, declaring the “piece... a wonder,
now... and there she stands” (ll. 2–5). Presumably,
the work is a “wonder” because it is so lifelike. But
the duke’s nervous repetition also, if unwittingly,
points to the representational complexity of the
scene: The image of the duchess in the painting
stands in for the wife as well as standing for her, and
in this sense, too, it signals a wonder, a strange and
surprising power exercised from beyond the grave.
In capturing “the depth and passion of [the
duchess’s] earnest glance” (l.8), the painting on
the wall serves to recall the live woman whom it
represents. It also—in some cases apparently quite
threateningly—reminds its beholder of the duke’s
power and readiness to end life. Surely, in disrupting
the dowry negotiations for his bride-to-be with an
account of the violent end met by his former wife,
the duke makes this threat pointedly. The portrait
signifies both the life and death of the late duch-
ess, as well as the duke’s megalomaniacal ambition