“My Last Duchess” is a dramatic monologue, a poem written in the form of a speech of an individual character. It reveals the character’s psychology, history, and motivation in a clever way. This poem is based on incidents in the life of Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara in Italy. The duke’s first wife, Lucrezia, died in 1561 – after they’d been married for three years. The background of this poem is interesting, but the passage can be hard to grasp. However, one can learn a great deal about the Duke’s persona by hearing how he thought and felt about his wife, the last Duchess. The Duke is dominant, filled with family dignity and a feeling of possession over even the memory of his deceased wife. We get the sense that he might have killed her possibly when “all smiles stopped together” (line 46) or he surely had something to hide. This is an unsolved mystery. It is also known that the Duke is in the process of looking for a new wife. We also learn about their association and hopes.
Robert Browning utilizes many poetic techniques to express the conduct of the Duke. These techniques include rhyme scheme, enjambment, and caesura to put across various characteristics and qualities about the speaker and the situation. An easy AA BB rhyme scheme, which is common to songs and ballads, develops the irony of the speaker’s later remark that he does not possess “skill/ In speech” (Lines 35 to 36). The enjambment lines show the control that the speaker is rushing through parts of the poem. When the duke is speaking of the death of his wife, for example, the lines running over suggest that he is uneasy about the subject. The caesuras also suggest to the reader that he is hiding something or most likely is thinking.
The title “My Last Duchess” lucidly refers to a wall painting that Ferrara exposes to the envoy of a Count whose daughter he is about to marry. The first line “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,” sounds quite unusual. The word “That’s” lowers a woman, once his wife, to something he carelessly points out, an item on the wall. “My” highlights his sense of owning her and “last” tells the reader that she is a figurine and has become old-fashioned which now needs replacement. This line implies self-satisfaction. Strangely the Duke does not mention her name and finishes his sentence, a simile, with “looking as if she were alive.” This tells the reader two things. The Duchess is looking out at the viewers, straight from the painting and her portrayal there is life-like, that is, we could be looking at a living person rather than a work of fine art.
Ferrara then happily continues describing the painting, not the Duchess “I call/ That piece a wonder, now.” The expression “That piece” which is the portrait is almost crude. It suggests that his last duchess is a slut. Ferrara’s next comment is somewhat crooked. “Frà Pandolf’s hands/ Worked busily a day, and there she stands.” Perceptibly the “piece” is a painting, not a person, yet Ferrara carries on, “there she stands.” The painting cannot stand because it is on the wall. Is he talking about the woman? Ferrara then tells the envoy, standing next to him, to sit down “and look at her.” Ferrara too in a way may be speaking to the reader directly and telling him or her to have a look at the Duchess, through his words, being just as silent as the “you” to whom Ferrara refers. In line 6, Ferrara tells us to “read” her face.
As “Strangers” (line 7), the listener must know why Ferrara invented Frà Pandolf, the painter named “by design,” giving him the respectful Frà meaning brother, due a member of religious orders and a bachelor. The Duchess’s look – her “pictured countenance, / The depth and passion of its earnest glance” causes unaware viewers, “if they durst” or dare, to ask Ferrara just what elicited that “passion” in her. Ferrara’s listener does not ask this question. But of course this is not possible for Frà Pandolf is a celibate and could never bring forward that “passion.” Ferrara implies that her loom did not rise from sexual passion but from a more general emotion.
Ferrara’s next line, "Sir,‘t was not / Her husband's presence only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchess' cheek." is an unnecessary phrase. It makes an indirect reference to the significance of his choice to be with her, the splendor that a duke awards, as a gift, on anybody by just showing up.
However, any "courtesy," Ferrara declares, any court praise owing to the Duchess simply by righteousness of her position, provoked that look, that "spot of joy," that "blush" (line 31). Frà Pandolf may have observed that the Duchess should shift her mantle up her arm somewhat to show more of her wrist, its skin being attractive; or he might have criticized that his art was not up to seizing the "faint / Half-flush that dies along" her throat. If it died in her throat, where would it live? Frà Pandolf refers here to the "spot of joy," spreading downwards from her cheeks (line 15) as he was painting her. Her discomforting vigilance that someone likes her reveals itself in a blush, a coloring in a small patch ("a spot") as blood flows to the face, that, Ferrara says, reveals a "joy" felt by the Duchess in her, at being herself, at being looked at favorably, no matter whether the painter, or the duke did the looking.
Ferrara, now standing before her portrait by the side of envoy obsessively reviews the reasons why that joy was "a spot," an impurity that should not have been on his last Duchess' cheek. The more he talks, the more his anger shows. Unable to appreciate "courtesy" as dishonest, she was made happy by it, in fact, took joy in "whate'er /She looked on, and her looks went everywhere." A sprig of flowers from the duke for her bosom (line 25) and his ancestral name itself (line 33) meant joy to her, no less than a sunset, a courtier's gift of some cherries from the tree, and the white mule whom she rode "round the terrace" (line 29). She smiled at him, whenever he "passed" her (line 44), though sharing the same smile with everyone else. Her humbleness and decent personality, however, disgusted (line 38) Ferrara for the way they seemed to trifle (line 35) with, or devalue his own gift, a place in a noble family nine hundred years old. Lacking the slyness to discriminate freely, to cajole Ferrara, she also could not spot his fury; and he said nothing to her about how he felt. She wore her feelings openly, in her face, but to the standing Duke any outward look of his concern would have meant "stooping" (line 34 and line 43), that is, lowering himself to her level. He attributes this silence to his lack of "skill / In speech", an excuse that the poem itself refutes. When he describes her as missing or exceeding the "mark" (lines 38 to 39), Ferrara develops his metaphor from archery, as if she was one of his soldiers, competing in a competition for prizes, rather than a Duchess who was herself the prize.
“This grew; I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands / As if alive." These indirect sentences bring Ferrara back to where he started. If the Duchess smiled everywhere, could her smiles be stopped by anything short of death by execution? What Ferrara's commands were, he does not say, but "As if alive", the second time he uses the phrase, has a much more threatening sound. At the beginning, Ferrara could indeed be talking chiefly about the "life-like" portrait, but as his anger grew, he moved to the Duchess. She cannot be "life-like.”Ferrara killed the joy that defined the "depth and passion" of her being. He finally controlled before whom she could "blush."
Ferrara then tells his envoy and the viewers to rise from being seated and "meet / The company below" (lines 47 to 48). When negotiating with the envoy's master, the Count for a dowry, Ferrara "stoops." He not only lowers himself to the level of a mere count but kindly offers to "go / Together down" with the envoy, a servant, side by side, instead of following him and so keeping representatively a duke's superior level and rank. For his entire obsession with his noble roots, Ferrara bargains with it openly.
Ferrara then claims the Count's "fair daughter's self" is his "object," Ferrara hints at his intentions by pointing out a second work of art, this time a bronze god in the statue of Neptune, the sea-god, "Taming a sea-horse" (line 55), as Ferrara tamed his last Duchess.
In conclusion, the poem is tragic. The Duke has put a curtain in front of the portrait to keep her yet enduring gaze from haunting him. The duke is forever trapped by his inability to ever completely control the Duchess when she was alive. Also one may think that the Duke has won by finally having her “smiles stopped together”, but much like the image of himself he tries so hard to convey, his battle is far from being over as the cycle of marrying another woman takes him. The poem also tells us how deceitful looks can be and based on the poem’s style, structure, and historical references, it becomes obvious that Ferrara did not kill his last duchess.