The poem has a very abrupt beginning and appears to be one half of a conversation. Browning opens with the Duke explaining why he has named the painter, and that the painting is kept behind a curtain which he alone is permitted to draw back. And when he does this it seems as though the viewer is keen to ask why only the Duke is allowed to draw the curtain, but is too frightened to ask. We also note he is not been the first to question this action. We learn that the Duke is very particular about who sees the portrait of the Duchess and we wonder if this has significance in the reason for the Duchess murder.
Although we assume from the poem that the Duke murdered the Duchess the Duke never says unambiguously or openly that he killed his wife or even got anyone else to do it for him. However there are points throughout the poem that indicate the Duchess annoyed the Duke. He thinks that the Duchess should be more dignified and not so easily impressed.
Specifically he faults her for finding equal pleasure in four things as if they are not at all of equal value.
- The white mule that she rode
- The Sun setting
- A gift of fruit from an unnamed courtier
The Duke emphasises in lines 31-33 that it was good for her to show gratitude, but bad that she considered ‘anybody’s gift’ with his gift of giving her his family name which is nine hundred years old.
Frequently we find that the lines contain ellipsis, which helps to develop the poem how Browning wants, so that we come to our own conclusion of exactly why and how the Duchess was murdered. However Browning places the Ellipses, and develops the poem so well that the conclusion is almost exactly the same for every reader of his poetry.
The Laboratory, like my Last Duchess comes fro the 1842 collection. It has a similar subject- a person who is about to kill her rival in the presence of her lover who appears to be romantically connected to the speaker in some way. It is in the form of a dramatic monologue, and again like the Last Duchess is being addressed to a silent listener who again plays a significant role in the poem. The silent listener we discover is an expert in poisons who sells his service to wealthy women.
Unlike My Last Duchess this women has not already committed the murder but is spending her time thoughtfully. This woman also envisions killing other women, which emphasises the fact that she is mentally unstable.
I think that this is a significant difference between the two poems. In the Laboratory the women who is planning the murder is clearly mentally unstable unlike My Last Duchess whose character comes across as rather calm, and irrational as if oblivious to the fact he has just killed his wife.
As with my Last duchess, we form a vivid sense of the speaker, but it is not always clear. The killer in The Laboratory appears to be wealthy and mixes in the highest society.
However she has to resort to stealth in order to kill her rival as she does not have the power or the authority to have her murdered.
But she is very different from the Duke of Ferrara, who merely speaks a word and his wife is dead.
The personalities of the two characters come across very differently. The woman in The Laboratory is killing her love rival for having a relationship with the man she loves. This infuriates her and she feels compelled to do something about it. However the Duke in My last Duchess does not mind that the Artist is taken with his wife. He does not feel compelled to kill him. This is probably due to the fact that he knows the artist would never dare to begin an affair with his wife as he knows what the consequences would be.
Hitcher is a poem by Simon Armitage and is taken from Book of Matches. Like The laboratory & my last Duchess, Hitcher is a dramatic monologue in which a man confesses to murder. We notice that he is like, yet unlike, his victim. Briefly the man in the poem has been taking time off work – feigning illness and not answering the phone.
As this man drives out of Leeds he picks up a hitchhiker who is travelling light and has no set destination. Some little way later he attacks he attacks his passenger, and throws him out of the still-moving car. The last he sees of the hiker, he is “bouncing off the kerb, and then disappearing down the verge” – we do not if he is dead or just badly injured. The driver does not care.
Unlike My last Duchess & the Laboratory the man in Hitcher does not know the man that he has killed. He does not even have a real motive for killing like the Characters in the other poems do.
