From the portrait sessions, the Duke, in what seems like a wave of emotion and rising bitterness moves on to describe the Duchess herself. His reflections give way to a tirade on her ‘disgraceful’ behaviour. “She liked whate’er / She looked on, and her looks went everywhere”, this meant that the duchess was susceptible to all kinds of temptations and was equally happy of “thanking men” of lower rank and ranked the Duke’s “gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name / With anybody’s gift” such as “some officious fool” that “Broke the bow of cherries in the orchard for her”.
The Duke continues his ‘tirade’ with saying that he himself, did not, of course, “Have skill / In Speech to make [his] point quite clear”, he could not say “Just this / Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss / Or there exceed the mark”, he could not “stoop to blame / This sort of trifling.”
The impression is given that in the end, the Duke could not stand that nobody “passed without / Much the same smile” as he himself was given. He “gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.” The reader is left to speculate what is actually meant by the Duke “giving orders”, but it is highly probable that the orders were, indeed, to kill the Duchess. The Duke, finally, ends his ‘tirade’ and casually mentions, what I believe is the dowry of the his new bride, he understands that the Counts name “Is ample warrant that no just pretense / Of [his] for dowry will be disallowed”, though of course it is “[The Count’s] fair daughter’s self … that is [his] object”.
The poem ends rather abruptly with the Duke pointing out a statue of “Neptune … thought a rarity / Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!”
As mentioned earlier, the poem is a monologue, which, quite cleverly incorporates some conversation, with all parts spoken by the Duke. The audience, or person to whom the Duke is speaking, even though never says a word, seems present, participating in a conversation. The Duke describing some of the audiences’ actions makes this possible: he answers, for example, the questioning glance he gets from the guest about the “spot of joy on the Duchess’ cheek”.
To me the most interesting part of the structure of the poem is the author’s ability to give it an air of informality, which makes it so much more natural. We take this for granted, as we are more used to hearing such language as opposed to more literal, learned language. To make it more convincing, the author emphasizes the informality of the dialogue by contractions such as “That’s” and “Will’t”, digressions, such as the part in parentheses, and trains of thought that ‘run away’. An example of this, in my opinion, is not quite hard to find, as the whole description of the Duchess’ behaviour is one. One can also sense the emotion building up in the Duke. The author expresses this very cleverly: he uses dashes, which increases in number in the second part of the poem. These dashes often indicate broken thoughts, in between which the Duke adds comments such as “Somehow – I know not how – as if she ranked…” and “… Skill / In speech – which I have not – to make your will…”
Another interesting detail is that the author inserts comments which have to do with the characters’ actions, such the guest if he “Will’t please sit”, “Will’t please rise”, etc. These comments occur at random places, and thus contribute to the overall feeling of the authenticity of the informality in the ‘conversation’.
Notably, the end of the poem is rather interesting as well. For one, it comes abruptly, after what would have been the natural ending of the poem as the Duke and his guest “go / Together down”, it is the part about the bronze statue of Neptune. The abrupt change from talking about his deceased wife to talking about a valuable statue hints about how he treats the Duchess: as a part of his collection, not more valuable than the statue.
Note with what the poem ends: “cast … for me”. The Duke is very self-focused, he wants everything to revolve around him, his wife needs to obey him, without even needing any hints on what is expected of her and what is not! A bit unreasonably.
Finally I would like to reiterate that this poem is more than what it seems at first glance, the author has really done a terrific job of recreating a renaissance environment and emphasizing the unreasonabilities and injustices of the society towards women, who were treated as a piece of property, which could be disposed at will.
