English IOC

Poetry – Robert Browning

1.Porphyria’s Lover
2.Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister
3.Love among the Ruins
4.My Last Duchess
5.The Lost Leader

Robert Browning and his works

  Poet of the Victorian age

 Versatile Poet

 The age of colonization

 The age of blurring of social boundaries

 Ground reality portrayed in his poems and social conflict which played a role
in the redefinition of social bounds.

 Was very famous for his use of the genre of “Dramatic Monologues” in his
poetry.

 Very elaborate descriptions.

 Conceptualizes his poems.

 His poems have a structure and form.

Porphyria’s Lover
About the Poem -
"Porphyria's Lover," published in 1836, is one of Browning's first forays into the
dramatic monologue form (though he wouldn't use that term for a while). The basic
form of his dramatic monologues is a first person narrator who presents a highly
subjective perspective on a story, with Browning's message coming out not through
the text but through the ironic disconnect of what the speaker justifies and what is
obvious to the audience. The main objective of the poem was to portray love among
unequals in the Victorian society.

Overview of Analysis –

In this poem, the irony is abundantly clear: the speaker has committed an atrocious
act and yet justifies it as not only acceptable, but as noble. Throughout the poem, the
imagery and ideas suggest an overarching conflict of order vs. chaos, with the most
obvious manifestation being the way the speaker presents his beastly murder as an
act of rationality and love.

The clearest example of the disconnect between order and chaos comes in the
poetic form. The poetry follows an extremely regular meter of iambic tetrameter (four
iambic feet per line), with a regular rhyme scheme. In other words, Browning, always
a precise and meticulous poet, has made certain not to reflect madness or chaos in
the rhyme scheme, but instead to mirror the speaker's belief that what he does is
rational.

Indeed, the order that the speaker brings to such a chaotic act is explained with
rather romantic rationale. Porphyria, it is implied, is a rich lady of high social
standing, while the speaker, out in his remote cabin, is not. She has chosen on this
night to leave the social order of the world and retreat into the chaos of the storm to
quell her tumultuous feelings for this narrator. Thus there is some indication of the
theme of class, though it is far less pervasive in the poem than are the large
questions of human nature. When the speaker realizes that Porphyria ultimately will
choose to return to the order of society, while simultaneously believing that she
wishes to be with him – she "worshipp'd" him, after all – he chooses to immortalize
this moment by removing her ability to leave.

In this line of thought lies the key to understanding much of Browning's poetry: his
sense of subjective truth. Unlike most poets, whose messages, even when obtuse,
are fully formed, Browning believes humans to be full of contradictions and malleable
personalities that shift constantly, sometimes moment to moment. Even if we
assume the speaker understands the situation correctly when he identifies Porphyria
as purely devoted to him at the moment of the murder, we are also to believe that
she will soon retreat to a different contradictory personality, one that prizes social
acceptance. So what the speaker undertakes is in some ways a fallacious yet heroic
goal: to save Porphyria from the tumultuous contradictions of human nature, to
preserve her in a moment of pure happiness and contentment with existing in chaos.

It is also interesting how Browning uses so much stock, melodramatic imagery to set
his poem up. While the storm certainly suits his ideas as a symbol of chaos (as
opposed to the order of society), it is akin to the 'dark and stormy night' setups of
traditional stories. However, once Porphyria enters, the poem moves to a more
explicitly sexual place – notice the imagery as she undresses and dries herself – that
suddenly equates those natural forces with the human forces of sexuality. The
speaker, who had "listen'd with heart fit to break" to the storm, seems to recognize in
both of these parallel forces the existence of the uncontrollable. Considering the
Victorian period in which Browning wrote, this sense of sexual freedom could be
expected to prompt a judgment from his audience on Porphyria as an unwed sexual
woman, a judgment that is quickly reversed when she becomes the victim of an even
darker human impulse than sexuality (though one most certainly tied in with it). It is
worth mentioning that the speaker does not take any sexual license with her dead
body, but instead tries to maintain a sense of the purity he had glimpsed in her,
creating a tableaux with her head on his shoulder that evokes childish affection
rather than adult depravity. As with all things, Browning complicates rather than
simplifies.

The overarching message of the poem is thus that humans are full of contradictions.
We are drawn to both the things we love and the things we hate, and we are
eminently capable of rationalizing either choice. Through such measured and
considered language, we are invited to approve of the murder even as it disgusts us,
and in the murder itself we are to forgive the woman for what we (at least if we were
Victorian) might have otherwise judged her. Humans are creatures of transience and
chaos, even as we belabor the attempt to convince ourselves that we are rational
and that our choices are sound.

ANALYSIS (DETAILED)

Title with Opening and Closing Lines -

The final title, "Porphyria's Lover," makes the poem about the speaker, but he's only
identified through his relationship to Porphyria – he is never named.

Key Theme -

Society and Class (love among unequals) - This is one of the more understated
themes of this poem. Porphyria seems to be of a higher social class than the
speaker. Her reluctance to be with him might have to do with her reluctance to give
up social standing. Death, however, acts as a social leveler – killing her makes her
social class irrelevant.

Other Themes –

Love - In "Porphyria's Lover," love is always figured in terms of freedom and

restraint, suggesting that, ultimately, neither Porphyria nor the speaker have any real
agency. Porphyria's love for the speaker is described as "worship," while his love for
her is violent and objectifying. In the end, both kinds of love alienate the subject from
the beloved.
Sin - There's some pretty obvious sinning going on in "Porphyria's Lover" – after all,
the speaker describes how he strangled his lover. But there's some less obvious sin
here, too. Victorian moralists were all about repressing female sexuality and
pretending that it didn't exist. For a woman to acknowledge that she even had sexual
desires was considered sinful, and actually acting on those desires was borderline
criminal. So for Porphyria to "come through wind and rain" to be with her lover was
seriously risqué (line 30).

Power - The "love" between the speaker and Porphyria turns pretty quickly into a
power play. Porphyria seems to be the one who's in control at the beginning of the
poem, then the speaker completely reverses things. He seems to want to possess
Porphyria, so he reduces her to an object (a corpse, instead of an independently-
thinking individual).

Passivity - Porphyria and the speaker keep switching places. At the beginning, the
speaker is passive, and allows Porphyria to move his arms around as she sees fit.
She does everything, while he just sits on the couch like a lump. But then, abruptly,
they swap: the speaker strangles her, and makes Porphyria even more passive than
he was.

Symbols, Imagery and Semantics –

Yellow Hair

Porphyria's yellow-blonde hair is one of the most memorable images in the poem,
and the speaker refers to it frequently. Does the speaker have a hair fetish? Why
does he choke her to death with her own hair? Why not use his hands? Or a pillow?
Why is Browning making us think of alternative ways to kill Porphyria? That's really
messed up.
 Line 13: After entering soundlessly from the storm, Porphyria takes off her wet
coat and hat, and lets her "damp hair fall." It's no accident that Browning uses
the word "fall": that word has some pretty negative connotations. For one, the
word implies sin (Victorian moralists referred to women who had sex outside
of marriage as "fallen women"). So maybe Porphyria's free, "fallen" hair
symbolizes the irrevocable step she's taken in coming, alone, to see her
lover?
 Line 18: This is the first time the speaker describes the color of Porphyria's
hair: "yellow." Blondness is often associated with angelic purity and with
children.
 Line 20: After pulling the speaker's head down against her bare shoulder,
Porphyria spreads her "yellow hair" over him. It's the second time in three
lines that her hair is described as "yellow." The speaker must really like that
hair to be talking about it so much.
 Lines 38-41: The speaker takes all of Porphyria's hair, wraps it three times
around her neck, and strangles her. If Porphyria's hair is somehow symbolic of
 her "fall" from sexual purity, does that mean that her "fall," or her sin,
somehow kills her? Maybe, but there are lots of other possible interpretations,
as well. Browning's a hard guy to pin down.

The Storm

The speaker of "Porphyria's Lover" opens by describing the storm outside. Oddly, he
describes the storm with adjectives that suggest that the weather is conscious of
what it's doing. A Victorian critic named John Ruskin scathingly ridiculed this literary
move, in which the outside world is described in a way that reflects the inner mood of
a character. He called it the "pathetic fallacy." After all, Ruskin pointed out, the
weather isn't conscious of whether we're in a good mood or not. It's not like it starts
raining just because we're heartbroken, or turns sunny and warm the moment we fall
in love. Writing poems or novels in which the weather reflects the inner state of the
characters, Ruskin argued, is just bad craftsmanship.
 Line 2: The words "sullen" and "awake" personify the weather. It's not like the
wind can literally feel "sullen," nor was it asleep before it started to pick up.
 Line 3: More of what Ruskin calls the "pathetic fallacy": the wind doesn't
actually feel "spite" when it tears up the trees. Browning just decided
to personify it again.
 Line 4: And now the lake is being personified. You can't really "vex," or
irritate, a body of water, no matter how hard you splash it.
 Line 7: Porphyria has some kind of power over the storm – she is able to "shut
[it] out" almost instantaneously. The speaker doesn't describe her actions –
only their effects.

Eyes

There's not a lot of talking in this poem. Porphyria doesn't get any direct dialogue,
and the entire poem is the speaker's (possibly internal) monologue. Eyes do most of
the talking in "Porphyria's Lover." Let's see what they say…
 Lines 31-32: The speaker does something active for the first time in the poem!
Instead of just lying there like Gumby, allowing Porphyria to rearrange his
limbs as she sees fit, he "look[s] up at her eyes." It's not clear whether "happy
and proud" describe her "eyes," or the speaker. It's ambiguous. But it's clear
that the speaker sees something in her eyes that convinces him that she
really, really loves him.
 Lines 43-44: This is a weird simile. The speaker compares Porphyria's closed
eyes to a closed flower "bud" with a "bee" inside. Is he afraid of getting stung
by her eyes when he opens them again? Or is it a sexual metaphor, since
bees, after all, pollinate flowers? Also note that the alliteration (the repeated
"b" sounds) connects the "bud" and the "bee."
 Line 45: There's a lot going on in this line. The speaker is
using synecdoche by making Porphyria's "blue eyes" represent the whole
woman ("synecdoche" is when you have a part of something stand in for the
whole thing). After all, "eyes" don't "laugh" by themselves. But there's also an
odd metaphor at the end of the line. What kind of "stain" could the eyes
 have? Does he mean that they're clear, and not bloodshot (as you might
expect the eyes of a strangled woman to be)? Or does he mean that, by
dying, the "stain" of Porphyria's sin is gone? Or is he saying that there's no
"stain" of his sin (of killing her) visible in her eyes?

Cuddling by the fire

Porphyria and her lover spend most of the poem cuddling by the fire. Of course,
she's dead for half of it, and their positions get reversed, but still: there's not a lot of
movement in this poem. Let's take a look at how they're positioned…
 Line 16: Porphyria is the active one here: she physically takes the speaker's
arm and pulls it around her "waist." He just sits there like a lump and lets her
rearrange him.
 Line 19: Again, Porphyria is active, and the speaker is passive. She's the one
to pull his head down against her shoulder.
 Line 31: Here, exactly halfway through the 60-line poem, the speaker finally
does something active. He turns and "looks up" at Porphyria's face.
 Lines 49-50: Now the speaker is the active one – their positions are reversed.
Porphyria's head now leans against his shoulder, and he's the one
rearranging her limbs.

Form and Meter –

The meter of "Porphyria's Lover" is fairly regular iambic tetrameter. Wait: before you
zone out, let us explain. The meter refers to the pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables in the line. An iamb is an unstressed, followed by a stressed syllable: da-
DUM. So "iambic tetrameter" describes any poem with four (tetra=four) iambs per
line: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Check it out:
“The rain set ear-ly in to-night,
The sul-len wind was soon a-wake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did bits worst to vex the lake:”
Try reading those first four lines out loud – the stressed syllables fall on where we've
made the text bold and italicized. See how even the rhythm is? But then it all goes
out the window in the next line:
“I list-ened with heart fit to break.”
Whoa! The line starts out iambic, but then you have two unstressed syllables in a
row, followed by two stressed ones in a row. What's up with that? Did Browning just
mess up? Hardly: Browning establishes that regular iambic tetrameter in the first four
lines in order to create the anticipation for a regular meter throughout. When that
meter fails, it's always for a reason. In this line, the speaker refers to himself for the
first time, and it's to say that his heart was breaking. So the regularity of the meter
breaks, just like the speaker's heart! Oh, Browning, you sly dog. Keep an eye out for
other spots in the poem where the meter breaks down, and see if you can figure out
why Browning does it (hint: he's too clever a poet to do anything by accident!).
That covers the meter, so what about the rhyme? You've probably already noticed
 the rhyme scheme – it's pretty regular, and follows this pattern: ABABB, CDCDD,
EFEFF, etc. The rhyme is regular, but it's asymmetrical. Each rhyming unit is back
loaded: there are more "B" rhymes than "A," and more "D" than "C," etc. What's up
with that? Well, some critics like to argue that the unbalanced rhyme scheme reflects
the speaker's unbalanced mind. You might have a different impression – how does
the asymmetry of the rhyme scheme impact your reading of the poem?

 There are no stanzas in this poem: it is just one long speech.

 The rhyming scheme used can be seen as consistent hinting towards a ballad
form every four lines. This gives the impression that the mindset of the lover does
not change from the start of the poem to the end.
 The poem is in time chronological order.
Due to the lack of stanzas, the structure can be separated through key themes in the
poem:

 Porphyria coming home.

 Porphyria looking after the man, lighting the fire.
 Porphyria laying down with the man.
 Porphyria telling the man she loves him but cannot commit.
 The man strangling Porphyria.
 What the man does with the body.

Setting –

The poem takes place in a house near a lake, probably out in the country
somewhere. There are trees around, and it's probably a pretty nice place to visit
when the weather's good. Too bad the weather's so crummy on the night the poem
takes place. It's raining and so windy that the speaker imagines that the wind is
consciously trying to break down trees out of "spite" (line 3).

The speaker doesn't tell us much about what the inside of the house looks like.
There's no fire in the "grate" until Porphyria arrives, so the house is probably pretty
cold. If there's no fire, there must not be any servants (most middle class Victorians
kept at least one servant), so the speaker might be relatively poor. After all, the
house is described as a "cottage" (line 9). Porphyria sure does a lot to cheer up the
inside of the house, though! The fire makes everything all cozy. It doesn't seem all
that bad – a nice cozy cottage with a bright fire on a rainy night. Seems like the
perfect time and place to curl up with your significant other and cuddle by the fire,
right? Sure, until the speaker decides that it's also the perfect time and place to
strangle Porphyria to death with her own hair.

Quotes to show use of language –

 The immediate response from the title is that Porphyria is the women and the
lover is the man. It also suggests foreshadowing insanity. ‘Porphyria’ is a mental
illness that causes the subject hallucination and become insane reflecting upon
the actions of the lover.
 There is use of pathetic fallacy, ‘The rain set early in to-night’. There has been
previous rain/bad weather for a while. This makes clear their relationship has been
bad for a while (the weather reflects their relationship).
 The wind is personified, ‘sullen wind’.
 ‘I listened with a heart fit to break’. This strengthens the form of this poem that
it is a dramatic monologue. He is telling us his emotions that he is extremely
unhappy.
 Although she may not be called Porphyria, I will refer her by that name.
Porphyria has come from a cold wet place to now a dry warm place providing a
juxtaposition between setting.
 The fact Porphyria ‘glided’ in makes her seem graceful.
 She ‘Blaze[s] up’ which means she starts a fire going. This illustrates that she
is looking after him.
 ‘When no voice replied’ suggests that if no voice replied, they may have
had arguments in the past that supports the point the pathetic fallacy was making.
 She’s ‘Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour’ makes clear he wants her to
love him the way he loves her.
 ‘From price, and vainer ties dissever’. She is a respectable women in society
and cares about how she is perceived. Paranoia is a symptom of the illness
Porphyria. This also sugessts she has another life meaning she is unable to
commit to him. This moment where she’s breaking apart is here trying to be sweet
and nice (otherwise know as ameliorative).
 He believes ‘Porphyria worshipped me’ making him feel he had power and
love. However, it doesn’t mean anything because she cannot commit to a
relationship he wants.
 His madness continues where his materialistic trait comes through, ‘mine,
mine, fair’. He thinks he possesses her and strengthens this view by repeating
‘mine’.
He shows desperation through the way he wanted to kill her:
‘In on long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she‘
 Porphyria is portrayed as fragile and vulnerable from the way her
throat is ‘little’.
 Extreme juxtaposition appears her. The start of the line starts with the
way he murdered her innocently. This contrasts to to the ending where
he pacifies the murder by unreliably claiming she felt no pain. The use of a
caesura (break in the middle of the line being the full stop) makes clear that the
line’s conjunction has contradictory words such as ‘strangled ‘ (which is also
onomatopoeic) and ‘no pain’.
 He is forever worried about her love and wants to keep her loved. He wanted
to retain her at the most perfect moment in time when she loved him. Therefore,
by killing her then will, in his opinion, mean she will love him forever.
 We gain the impression he is careful and loving after the murder making this
seem even more disturbing to read. This is made clear through the use of
 sibilance on words such as ‘tress’, ‘Blushed’ and ‘kiss’. The repeated ‘s’ sound
makes him sound soft and caring juxtaposing to what he just did to her.
 He is portrayed as even more insane, ‘I propped her head up as before’
showing his affectionate side. However, this is not the way a killer would react.
 He objectifies Porphyria ‘The smiling rosy little head, / So glad it has its
utmost will’. This also makes clear that he believes she wanted to be killed.
Therefore, he did it for her sake.
 ‘And I, its love, am gained instead!’ He is saying that she’s got him forever
now instead of her ‘vainer ties’.
 The use of ‘its’ provides dissociation from society.
 ‘And all night long we have not stirred’. He has been in the same position all
night long. He is finally spending a night with her without interruptions of morals or
arguments.
‘And yet God has not said a word!’
This quote can have different interpretations:
 He must think he has been morally right if God has not disturbed him while
murdering Porphyria.
 He doesn’t know if he has done right or wrong. Therefore, he wants
God’s approval.
 He is criticizing God that he could let such a deed like this happen without any
consequences.
 He is criticizing religion. He has done something this bad and has not been
punished by God questioning religion.
 Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister
About the Poem –

One should approach this poem, which was published between 1842 and 1845 as
part of Browning's Bells and Pomegranates series, as a humorous piece. Certainly,
it's full of both dramatic irony and comments on serious themes like most of
Browning's dramatic monologues, but the speaker's emotions and mode of address
are so heightened that it's obviously meant to amuse as much as inform.

Analysis Overview –
The basic premise of the poem is suffused with dramatic irony. The speaker,
anonymous outside his vows as a monk, despises Brother Lawrence from some
unspecified envy, though he rationalizes his envy under the guise of piety. The many
sins he accuses Brother Lawrence of committing provide the speaker with
justification for his hatred, but the truth is that the speaker is unknowingly guilty of
each of them himself, whereas Brother Lawrence is only guilty of them in the
speaker's imaginination. Consider the examples: the second stanza accuses
Lawrence of pride in his conversation, whereas the speaker is himself proud enough
to want another man dead and damned for some transgression. In the fourth stanza,
the speaker angers himself over Brother Lawrence's lust for the two nearby women,
but the truth is that it is only the speaker who notices the girls. What's more, he
admits to himself that Brother Lawrence does not "show" his lust, suggesting it is
only the speaker's lust that fuels the attack. In the fifth stanza, he accuses Brother
Lawrence of failing to show proper piety through ridiculous gestures like crossing his
fork and knife in the shape of a cross or drinking in three gulps to imitate the Trinity.
Even when he thinks of the presumably lewd French novel as a way to ensnare
Brother Lawrence, he ironically reveals his own knowledge of the book. If knowing
the book makes one impious and he hates Brother Lawrence for being impious,
there is an irony that the speaker is too blinded by hate to recognize. It is abundantly
clear to the reader that the speaker knows only the outward shapes of Christianity,
whereas the true meanings of the religion – charity, love, and forgiveness – are
absent from his character.

So absent are they that the speaker is willing not only to damn Brother Lawrence to
an eternity in hell, but also to damn himself. The turn that the poem takes in the
seventh stanza, when the speaker begins to consider hell as an option, moves the
poem into a starker comment on hypocrisy. Implicitly, it reveals the thin line between
religious piety and hellish damnation. Because both operate in extreme realms, it is
easy to make the jump. The speaker is so convinced of his own piety that he
considers damnation an appropriate punishment for he who fails in it. As with most of
Browning's characters, what comes across most of all is the human complications of
psychology, whereas institutions like religion are thin disguises of these more
ordinary emotions.

The poem is also a masterful use of voice, which helps the dramatic irony land so
strongly. While the meter, iambic tetrameter, does not necessarily contribute to the
poem's meaning, it does give Browning a great form in which to create a wonderful,
multifaceted address. First, while this poem is grouped as one of Browning's
dramatic monologues, it is not technically a monologue but instead a soliloquy, a
speech where the speaker shares his inner thoughts. The form allows the monk to
take on many voices in the same way Browning is crafting his voice. In the second
stanza, he mocks Brother Lawrence's dinner-time comments, in the third stanza he
takes on Lawrence's voice to suggest his love of material objects, and in the sixth he
imagines a conversation with him. Herein is a commentary on the malleability of
human psychology and our ability for rationalization. By taking on Brother
Lawrence's voice, the speaker is able to justify his otherwise-ungrounded hatred,
even while the more he rationalizes, the more we as readers are confronted with the
dramatic irony that the speaker lacks any objective justification. There's a voice even
within the voice Browning crafts, all of which suggests how deeply our psychology
can work in order to defend our subjective truths.

Overall, even though the poem is best viewed as a comedy in its presentation, the
subject is the depths of the ego. Certainly, Browning does not mean to suggest that
all priests are as deeply hypocritical as this speaker, or that we are all so wicked, but
he does suggest through this masterful sketch how adept any individual can be at
justifying his own subjective truth, and how the complications of our psychology often
work against us by allowing us such license to rationalize our otherwise-ungrounded
feelings and actions.

ANALYSIS (Detailed)

Title with Opening and Closing lines –

The title "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" tells us a few things about the poem
we're about to read: first, it takes place in a Spanish cloister, which is the central
garden of a monastery. So we know that the poem will be about members of a
religious order of some kind, and since we know it's in Spain, we suspect that these
monks will be Catholic.
The second thing we learn is that the poem is in the form of a soliloquy, which is a
speech or unspoken reflection by a single person (same root as "solo"). So even
though the speaker occasionally imagines dialogue with Brother Lawrence, the entire
poem is spoken by just one unnamed monk.

Key Theme –

Hate - "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" begins and ends with an actual, guttural g-r-r-rowl
of utter hatred, so you better believe "hate" is our number one theme! The speaker simply
cannot stand his fellow monk, Brother Lawrence. In the first stanza of the poem, he watches
the object of his hatred walk by, growling, "If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,/ God's
blood, would not mine kill you!" That's some pretty intense loathing right there – way
stronger than your run-of-the-mill jealousy. So why does the speaker hate Brother Lawrence
so much? Where does this intense hatred come from? Is it jealousy, or does it really spring
from the petty doctrinal differences of religious practice that the speaker describes?
Other Themes –

Hypocrisy - The speaker of "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" describes the supposed
sins of Brother Lawrence in great detail, showing so much expertise in these various sins
that it's clear he really knows what he's talking about! The speaker is guilty of many of the
sins of which he accuses Brother Lawrence, despite his frequent claims of religious and
moral superiority. Robert Browning is famous for allowing the speakers of his dramatic
monologues to condemn themselves – they expose their own sins and vices through their
own speech, rather than through a narrator's description. The speaker of the "Soliloquy" is
no exception: he inadvertently shows himself to be a religious hypocrite.

Religion - "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" takes place in a cloister, or the central
garden of a religious monastery, and the speaker and the other main character,
Brother Lawrence, are both monks. So it makes sense that religion should be a
major theme. But what makes a good monk, in the mind of the speaker? Is it the little
things, the details like how you polish your plate and how you drink your orange
juice? Is it strict adherence to the letter of the law? Or does religion require
something more than an outward, formal show of piety?
Sex - What, you ask? How can "sex" be a theme in a poem that takes place in a
monastery? Very easily, actually! The speaker of "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"
accuses his rival, Brother Lawrence, of having lustful thoughts about the women –
possibly nuns! – who bathe in the river outside the monastery grounds. He also owns
a sexy "French novel" that he plans to show to Brother Lawrence. Even a glance at a
particular page of that novel will condemn Brother Lawrence to damnation! That's an
awful lot of sex in a poem written from the point of view of someone who has taken a
vow of chastity.

Symbols, Imagery and Semantics –

Flower and Plants

The speaker's rival and nemesis, Brother Lawrence, is an avid gardener, and the
poem takes place in the cloister, or the open garden area at the center of the
monastery. The speaker works in his complaints about Brother Lawrence around
remarks about his flowers. In poetry, flowers are generally associated with beauty
and innocence, but the speaker wants us to believe that Brother Lawrence is actually
a corrupt, hypocritical monk. But the series of references to flowers just help
underline that it's actually the speaker, who wants to "blast" the "rose-acacia," who is
corrupt (69).
 Line 2: The first reference to flowers has the speaker telling someone – we
don't yet know whom – to "water [his] damned flower-pots." Why curse the
flower-pots? Could this be hyperbole, or poetic exaggeration? What's wrong
with watering flowerpots? Watering flowers seems like the least offensive
thing to do, ever. Already, we're led to suspect that the speaker's rage might
not be totally justifiable.
 Line 5: "Trimming" can be seen as a metaphor for the ideal "monkish"
behavior – it's repressive and holds back growth and life.
  Lines 6-7: Then Brother Lawrence stops the trimming to refill the vase of a
flowerpot. This could be read as a metaphor, loosely, for sex. Roses are often
associated with sex and beauty, and the speaker notes that Brother Lawrence
stops his repressive "trimming" in order to refill a vase of beautiful roses.
 Line 14: The speaker hates how Brother Lawrence always talks about
gardening at dinner. His example is about how Brother Lawrence talks about
"oak-galls," which is a disease affecting oak trees. This is an appropriate
example and a possible pun, since the speaker finds Brother Lawrence
"galling."
 Line 16: "Swine's Snout" is actually a common name for the dandelion,
although the speaker is making a double entendre, or pun, insulting Brother
Lawrence by calling him a pig face ("swine"=pig). Part of the pun could also
be that the speaker is insinuating that Brother Lawrence is an unwanted
weed, like a dandelion, that needs to be eradicated.
 Line 24: The "lily" referenced here is a metaphor for innocence and purity.
But the speaker is delighted ("he-he!") that the illusion of Brother Lawrence's
innocence and purity is "snapped," or broken.
 Lines 47-48: The speaker admits that he sneakily "nips" the buds of Brother
Lawrence's flowers. We often use the expression "to nip [something] in the
bud," so this could be a metaphor for the speaker's efforts to thwart Brother
Lawrence's efforts more generally.
 Line 63: The speaker uses alliteration in this line with the repetition of the "g"
sound ("gathers his greengages"). Greengages, by the way, are a type of fruit
related to the plum.
 Line 69: This is a line that many readers and critics have argued about: is the
speaker talking about "blast[ing]," or killing, a literal "rose-acacia" that Brother
Lawrence has planted, or is the "rose-acacia" supposed to stand
in metonymically for Brother Lawrence himself? (Metonymy is when a writer
uses something small to stand for something larger, like "the bottle" for
drinking.) Some critics have even argued that the speaker has gotten himself
so wrapped up in his angry passion that he loses track of the direction of his
sentence partway through, and says "rose-acacia" because it's the first thing
he sees. (He's still looking out into the cloister garden, so there are flowers
galore). What do you think?

Eating and Food

Symbol Analysis
Several stanzas of this poem are explicitly about eating and drinking, and the
speaker clearly has strongly held opinions about the right and wrong way to eat,
what to eat and when, and how to behave at the dinner table. In Western poetry, the
act of eating together is often symbolic of the Last Supper of the Christian tradition:
the last meal Jesus ate with his disciples before he died. Fruit and gardens pack a
big symbolic punch in the Judeo-Christian tradition (Garden of Eden and the fruit
from the Tree of Knowledge, anyone?) so whenever you see a poem with fruit in a
garden in the Western literary tradition, stop and think about if there's some kind of
tacit allusion to the Garden of Eden hidden away in there.
The cloister here is hardly a paradise, and the monks at dinner hardly seem like the
disciples at the last supper... unless the speaker is meant to represent the serpent in
the Garden of Eden, or Judas at the Last Supper. What do you think?
 Line 9: These are monks sharing a meal together, but there's not a lot of solemnity or
any reference to the Last Supper – instead, the speaker silently seethes, loathing
Brother Lawrence's every word. The lack of a reference to the Last Supper actually
might be telling us something here.
 Lines 17-24: The speaker describes the meticulous care with which Brother
Lawrence washes his platter, spoon, and goblet after the meal. Sure, monks are
supposed to keep their belongings clean and tidy, but the speaker suggests that
Brother Lawrence is toocareful – that he keeps his belongings all shiny out of pride,
which is one of the seven deadly sins for devout Catholics.

 Lines 41-44: The speaker somehow manages to turn Brother Lawrence's offer to
share his melon crop into something bad: his "so nice!" just drips with irony – clearly
he means the opposite.

Religious Dogma, Hersey and Satan

The speaker of this poem is obsessed with religious dogma. He insists on obeying
the letter of the law (the literal text) rather than the spirit of it (the intention behind the
dogma). He obeys all the nitty-gritty, visible aspects of religious law and calls Brother
Lawrence to task for being more relaxed about such things. He accuses others
(those who don't follow the prescribed, accepted teachings of the Catholic Church) of
being heretics. According to Catholic teachings of the Middle Ages, when this poem
is probably set, anyone following heretical teachings was in league with Satan, who
is Public Enemy Number One in the Christian tradition.
 Lines 33-36: The speaker is always careful to lay his knife and fork down in
the shape of a cross, to symbolize Jesus' crucifixion.
 Lines 37-40: The speaker, unlike Brother Lawrence, always drinks his orange
juice in three sips, to symbolize the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (meaning
the three aspects of God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
 Lines 49-51: Critics and readers have argued about these lines a lot. What
text is he talking about? Most interpreters agree that it's totally made up. Sure,
there's a book of the Christian New Testament called Galatians, but there isn't
a passage in that book that describes "29 distinct damnations." The speaker's
assertion that you have to "trip on" the verse also suggests that he made it up.
 Lines 55-56: Here's another reference to a heretical group of early Christians.
Manichees were an early Christian sect that believed that the universe was in
a constant struggle between the spiritual world of Good and the material,
physical world of Evil. It's not clear why the speaker thinks he'd be able to
make Brother Lawrence into a Manichee, and thus condemn him to hell, but
it's possible he's just using "Manichee" as a shorthand, generic way of
describing heretics and non-believers generally.
 Lines 59-60: The speaker has moved beyond heresies and is now threatening
Brother Lawrence with a demon. Belial is a minor demon in the Judeo-
 Christian tradition, subordinate to Lucifer (a.k.a. Satan), but still a pretty evil
guy.
 Lines 65-70: The speaker has now moved beyond minor demons and arrived
at Satan himself! This could be an allusion to the legend of Faust, a brilliant
scholar who makes a pact with Satan, trading his soul in exchange for
limitless knowledge and pleasure. Faust was hoping for a nonstop scholar
party, but of course Satan ends up getting the better of him. So the speaker's
hope to get the better of Satan in an agreement is supposed to be read as
idiotically prideful.

Form and Meter –

This poem is divided into nine eight-line stanzas, or octaves ("octa" means "eight"…
and yep, an octopus has eight legs), each with a regular ABABCDCD rhyme pattern.
Below is an example of what we mean. We'll assign a letter for each end-rhyme:
Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence! (A)
Water your damned flower-pots, do! (B)
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, (A)
God's blood, would not mine kill you! (B)
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? (C)
Oh, that rose has prior claims— (D)
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? (C)
Hell dry you up with its flames! (D)
The rhyme scheme and number of lines per stanza are very regular and predictable,
but the meter – the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables per line – is
irregular.
We define the meter of this poem as trochaic tetrameter because most of the lines
have four stressed syllables ("tetra" means four… like how Tetris shapes are all
made of four blocks). "Trochaic" describes the pattern of those stressed syllables. A
trochee is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (DA-dum). Take a
look at line 5. If we bold the syllables that you would naturally stress as you say the
words, it would look like this:
What? your myr-tle bush wants trim-ming?
So the pattern is DA-dum, DA-dum, DA-dum, DA-dum. Four trochees. Trochaic
tetrameter.
Of course, the speaker gets carried away a lot, so often this meter gets thrown out
the window. Still, the regularity of the stanzas and the rhyme scheme keep the poem
from getting too chaotic. Later dramatic monologues by Robert Browning don't have
a regular rhyme scheme at all. What's the effect of the regularity in this poem? Why
would Browning keep some aspects of the form, like the rhyme scheme, regular,
while allowing the meter to be so irregular?

Setting –
The setting is indicated by the title of the poem: it takes place in a "Spanish cloister."
A cloister is the square, open garden at the center of a religious monastery, where, in
this poem, a monk named Brother Lawrence likes to grow flowers and fruit trees.
The word "cloister" has also come to mean "enclosed," since monastery cloisters are
enclosed from the outside world.
The poem's setting does come across as being very claustrophobic. The speaker is
trapped in a small community of monks with a man whom – rightly or wrongly – he
just can't stand. The speaker's hatred for Brother Lawrence might just be a product
of his boredom and restlessness. Perhaps he's dissatisfied with his life as a monk
and wishes he had the freedom to be a part of the wider world (this might explain the
almost longing detail with which he describes the hair of the women bathing down at
the river). Perhaps the speaker feels that religious life is too constricting and
confining – too "cloistered."

Colloquialism –

One of the strange and delightful things about this poem is how realistic it sounds.
The occasional growls ("G-r-r-r!") and the parenthetical asides make the poem sound
the way you'd imagine an angry, repressed, jealous monk would. The speaker
practically spits out certain lines, with lots of hard "d" and "k" sounds, instead of more
melodious "s" and "l" sounds.
Another fun thing about the sound of this poem is the variety of ways it can be read.
Some readers like to imagine that the speaker is actually carrying on a dialogue with
Brother Lawrence, although the reader only gets to hear what the speaker says and
thinks. The speaker's tone of voice changes dramatically between his very pious
descriptions of how he lays down his knife and fork in the shape of a cross (33-36),
his syrupy-sweet, sarcastic "so nice!" (42), and the growling and name calling ("G-r-r-
r – you swine!"). The sound of the poem changes drastically at these different points,
depending on who the speaker imagines his audience to be. The dramatic shifts
serve to underline his insincerity and hypocrisy.

Quotes –

Gr-r-r – there go, my heart's abhorrence! (line 1)

Here we are, first line of the poem, and the speaker is already so disgusted that he
can hardly form words – he actually growls to open the poem! He calls the as-yet-
unnamed Brother Lawrence his "heart's abhorrence," reversing the usual poetic
trope of addressing the speaker's beloved as his "heart's love" or "heart's joy."
Hate

Quote #2
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you! (lines 3-4)
The speaker admits that his hatred is intense enough to kill... if hate actually worked
that way. Isn't it kind of bad to hate a fellow monk that much? Wouldn't that count as
a sin?
Hate

Quote #3
Hell dry you up with its flames! (line 8)
The speaker intersperses delightful little oaths and swears like this with his fake-
polite remarks about Brother Lawrence's gardening. Grumbling and swearing under
your breath when you're angry at someone? Yeah, that seems pretty realistic.

At the meal we sit together:

Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year (lines 9-12)
The speaker has to sit with Brother Lawrence at every meal, and he hates every
word that comes out of his fellow monk's mouth. "Salve tibi" is Latin for "hail to thee"
or "how's it going," but the speaker uses italics to show his mockery for the overly
formal speech of Brother Lawrence.
Hate

Quote #5
What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout? (lines 15-16)
The italics in the first line seem to indicate the speaker's contempt for what Brother
Lawrence has to say. He adds (under his breath, perhaps?) his own question: asking
for the Greek word for "Swine's Snout," or dandelion. Is he calling Brother Lawrence
a weed, like a dandelion, or is he just using a pun on the common name for
dandelion to call Brother Lawrence a "Swine's Snout"?
Hate

Quote #6
Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice. (lines 41-44)
This might not sound like the most hateful passage of the poem at first – isn't the
speaker just being grateful that Brother Lawrence is sharing his melons? Hardly. The
"…so nice!" is just dripping with sarcasm.
Hate

Saint, forsooth! (line 25)

The speaker again uses italics to show his contempt for what other people say, and
apparently other members of the monastery call Brother Lawrence a "saint." But the
speaker says, "yeah right!" ("forsooth!"). He wants us to believe that Brother
Lawrence is really a hypocrite.
Hypocrisy

Quote #2
While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs (lines 25-29)
The speaker wants the reader to believe that Brother Lawrence is ogling Dolores and
Sanchicha as they bathe "outside the Convent bank." But he describes their
luscious, beautiful "blue-black" hair with so much loving detail... who's really the one
checking them out on the sly?
Hypocrisy

Quote #3
(That is, if he'd let it show!) (line 32)
The speaker admits, in a parenthetical aside, that Brother Lawrence doesn't actually
show any indication at all that he's been checking out the women by the river. But he
assures us that it's just because Brother Lawrence is too good at hiding it.
Hypocrisy

How go on your flowers? None double?

[...]
Strange! – And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly! (lines 45-48)
The speaker politely inquires after Brother Lawrence's flowers, then tells the reader
that he secretly sneaks out and nips the flower buds on the sly. Why does he even
pretend to care about the flowers? Seems pretty hypocritical.
Hypocrisy

Quote #5
Or, my scrofulous French novel (line 57)
Wait, the speaker has a "scrofulous," or naughtily erotic, French novel? What kind of
a monk is he? How can he accuse Brother Lawrence of the sin of lust if he owns
naughty novels?
Hypocrisy

God's blood (line 4)

This was a common oath, or swear word, for a very long time. It's a reference to
Jesus' blood when he was executed, so to swear "on Jesus' blood" or "on God's
blood" was a pretty serious oath to take for a Christian. Using it lightly, the way we
might say "I swear to God!" nowadays, was a big no-no for observant Christians, and
especially for monks!
Religion

Quote #2
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise. (lines 33-36)
The speaker criticizes Brother Lawrence for failing to take every opportunity to show
just how good of a Christian he is by putting his knife and fork down in the shape of a
cross.
Religion

Quote #3
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp –
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp. (lines 37-40)
Again, the speaker takes Brother Lawrence to task for skipping some of the more
formal ways of showing his religious belief in everyday activities, like sipping his O.J.
in three sips, to symbolize the doctrine of the Trinity. What do you think of the
speaker's priorities regarding religion?
Religion

There's a great text in Galatians,

Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails (lines 49-52)
The speaker apparently has scoured the New Testament looking for ways of getting
Brother Lawrence damned to hell on a technicality, and he's found a "great" way in
the book of Galatians. (Don't get too excited, though: the actual text doesn't really
exist.)
Religion

Quote #5
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee? (lines 53-56)
The speaker imagines whipping out this text from Galatians when Brother Lawrence
is on his deathbed and managing to trick him into saying something that isn't exactly
right, according to the letter of the Christian law. If he screws up on his deathbed,
he'd have to go to hell, the speaker hopes.
Religion

Quote #6
Or, there's Satan! – one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia (lines 65-69)
The speaker actually imagines making a deal with Satan to do away with Brother
Lawrence (or just his favorite rose-acacia bush; it's not totally clear). But he says he
wouldn't really pledge his soul to Satan – he'd be clever enough to leave a loophole
in the fine print and get out of it! Riiight.
Religion

My Last Duchess
About the Poem –

"My Last Duchess," published in 1842, is arguably Browning's most famous dramatic
monologue, with good reason. It engages the reader on a number of levels –
historical, psychological, ironic, theatrical, and more. 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.

Analysis Overview –
The most engaging element of the poem is probably the speaker himself, the duke.
Objectively, it's easy to identify him as a monster, since he had his wife murdered for
what comes across as fairly innocuous crimes. And yet he is impressively charming,
both in his use of language and his affable address. The ironic disconnect that colors
most of Browning's monologues is particularly strong here. A remarkably amoral man
nevertheless has a lovely sense of beauty and of how to engage his listener.

In fact, the duke's excessive demand for control ultimately comes across as his most
defining characteristic. The obvious manifestation of this is the murder of his wife.
Her crime is barely presented as sexual; even though he does admit that other men
could draw her "blush," he also mentions several natural phenomena that inspired
her favor. And yet he was driven to murder by her refusal to save her happy glances
solely for him. This demand for control is also reflected in his relationship with the
envoy. The entire poem has a precisely controlled theatrical flair, from the unveiling
of the curtain that is implied to precede the opening, to the way he slowly reveals the
details of his tale, to his assuming of the envoy's interest in the tale ("strangers like
you….would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there"), to his final shift
in subject back to the issue of the impending marriage. He pretends to denigrate his
speaking ability – "even had you skill in speech – (which I have not),” later revealing
that he believes the opposite to be true, even at one point explicitly acknowledging
how controlled his story is when he admits he "said 'Fra Pandolf' by design" to peak
the envoy's interest. The envoy is his audience much as we are Browning's, and the
duke exerts a similar control over his story that Browning uses in crafting the ironic
disconnect.
In terms of meter, Browning represents the duke's incessant control of story by using
a regular meter but also enjambment (where the phrases do not end at the close of a
line). The enjambment works against the otherwise orderly meter to remind us that
the duke will control his world, including the rhyme scheme of his monologue.

To some extent, the duke's amorality can be understood in terms of aristocracy. The
poem was originally published with a companion poem under the title "Italy and
France," and both attempted to explore the ironies of aristocratic honor. In this poem,
loosely inspired by real events set in Renaissance Italy, the duke reveals himself not
only as a model of culture but also as a monster of morality. His inability to see his
moral ugliness could be attributed to having been ruined by worship of a "nine-
hundred-years-old name.” He is so entitled that when his wife upset him by too
loosely bestowing her favor to others, he refused to speak to her about it. Such a
move is out of the question – "who'd stoop to blame this kind of trifling?" He will not
"stoop" to such ordinary domestic tasks as compromise or discussion. Instead, when
she transgresses his sense of entitlement, he gives commands and she is dead.

Another element of the aristocratic life that Browning approaches in the poem is that
of repetition. The duke's life seems to be made of repeated gestures. The most
obvious is his marriage – the use of the word "last" in the title implies that there are
several others, perhaps with curtain-covered paintings along the same hallway
where this one stands. In the same way that the age of his name gives it credence,
so does he seem fit with a life of repeated gestures, one of which he is ready to
make again with the count's daughter.

And indeed, the question of money is revealed at the end in a way that colors the
entire poem. The duke almost employs his own sense of irony when he brings up a
"dowry" to the envoy. This final stanza suggests that his story of murder is meant to
give proactive warning to the woman he is soon to marry, but to give it through a
backdoor channel, through the envoy who would pass it along to the count who
might then pass it to the girl. After all, the duke has no interest in talking to her
himself, as we have learned! His irony goes even further when he reminds the envoy
that he truly wants only the woman herself, even as he is clearly stressing the
importance of a large dowry tinged with a threat of his vindictive side.

But the lens of aristocracy undercuts the wonderful psychological nature of the
poem, which is overall more concerned with human contradictions than with social or
economic criticism. The first contradiction to consider is how charming the duke
actually is. It would be tempting to suggest Browning wants to paint him as a weasel,
but knowing the poet's love of language, it's clear that he wants us to admire a
character who can manipulate language so masterfully. Further, the duke shows an
interesting complication in his attitudes on class when he suggests to the envoy that
they "go Together down," an action not expected in such a hierarchical society. By no
means can we justify the idea that the duke is willing to transcend class, but at the
same time he does allow a transgression of the very hierarchy that had previously
led him to have his wife murdered rather than discuss his problems with her.

Also at play psychologically is the human ability to rationalize our hang-ups. The
duke seems controlled by certain forces: his own aristocratic bearing; his relationship
to women; and lastly, this particular duchess who confounded him. One can argue
that the duke, who was in love with his "last duchess,” is himself controlled by his
social expectations, and that his inability to bear perceived insult to his aristocratic
name makes him a victim of the same social forces that he represents. Likewise,
what he expects of his wives, particularly of this woman whose portrait continues to
provide him with fodder for performance, suggests a deeper psychology than one
meant solely for criticism.

The last thing to point out in the duke's language is his use of euphemism. The way
he explains that he had the duchess killed – "I gave commands; Then all smiles
stopped together" – shows a facility for avoiding the truth through choice of
language. What this could suggest is that the duchess was in fact guilty of greater
transgression than he claims, that instead of flirtation, she might have physically or
sexually betrayed him. There's certainly no explicit evidence of this, but at the same
time, it's plausible that a man as arrogant as the duke, especially one so equipped
with the power of euphemism, would avoid spelling out his disgrace to a lowly envoy
and instead would speak around the issue.

Finally, one can also understand this poem as a commentary on art. The duke
remains enamored with the woman he has had killed, though his affection now rests
on a representation of her. In other words, he has chosen to love the ideal image of
her rather than the reality, similar to how the narrator of "Porphyria's Lover" chose a
static, dead love than one destined to change in the throes of life. In many ways, this
is the artist's dilemma, which Browning explores in all of his work. As poet, he
attempts to capture contradiction and movement, psychological complexity that
cannot be pinned down into one object, and yet in the end all he can create is a
collection of static lines. The duke attempts to be an artist in his life, turning a walk
down the hallway into a performance, but he is always hampered by the fact that the
ideal that inspires his performance cannot change.

Analysis (Detailed)

Title with Opening and Closing Lines –

The title of "My Last Duchess," like the first few lines of the poem, gives us quite a bit
of information about the dramatic scenario in the text. The word "My" clues us in to
the fact that the poem is going to be in the first-person – so, before the poem even
begins, we know from the title that we’re going to be hearing the voice of a character,
not just of a general poetic speaker. The title "Duchess" makes it clear that we’re
dealing with European nobility, probably in a bygone age. And then there’s that
adjective "last."

We’ll go ahead and ask the obvious question for you: why is she the Duke’s last
Duchess? Well, that implies that there will be another Duchess in the future – and
that there might have been several Duchesses before her. But wait a minute, isn’t
marriage forever? Not for this Duke, who seems to dispose of Duchesses pretty
quickly. So the designation "last" implies that this Duchess is only one of a sequence,
preparing us for the fact that the poem might consider some of the other women who
end up in that sequence.

After all, when you start describing something as your "last" one, you’re usually
about to start explaining what’s going to be different about your "next" one, as in "My
last car always hydroplaned, but I’m going to make sure my next one has good
traction." The Duke’s last Duchess smiled and showed favors to everyone, and the
Duke is going to make sure that his next wife, the daughter of the Count, doesn’t
behave in the same way. How is he going to do that? Well, telling this story to her
father’s servant, and thereby warning everyone in the Count’s household that he
murders wives who are nice to their servants and male friends, is probably a pretty
good start.
Key Theme –
Power - "My Last Duchess" is all about power: the political and social power wielded by the
speaker (the Duke) and his attempt to control the domestic sphere (his marriage) in the
same way that he rules his lands. He rules with an iron fist. The Duke views everything that
he possesses and everyone with whom he interacts as an opportunity to expand his power
base. Wives need to be dominated; servants need to understand his authority; and fancy
objects in his art gallery display his influence to the world – if he decides to show them.
Kindness, joy, and emotion are all threats to his tyrannical power.’'

Other Themes –
Language and Communication - In "My Last Duchess," choices about what to
communicate and what to withhold are the means by which power is wielded. The Duke
sees communicating openly and honestly with someone about the problems you have with
their behaviour as impossible because it would compromise his authority. It’s also possible to
hint at his power by intentionally letting stories of the past exploits slip to a new listener.
However, because language is full of subtlety, the Duke might accidentally communicate
more than he meant to about his own psychosis.

Art and Culture - "My Last Duchess" is a piece of art about a piece of (fictional) art –
a poem about a pretend painting. The speaker of the poem, the Duke of Ferrara, is a
connoisseur and collector of objets d’art, or art objects, which he displays privately in
order to impress people. In this poem, art and culture become tools for
demonstrating social status – and ways to reduce unstable elements, like the
Duchess herself, to things that can be physically controlled.

Madness - In "My Last Duchess," a husband murders his wife because she blushes
and smiles at other people – even though theses blushes are out of her control and
probably entirely innocent. This is pretty much the textbook definition of an abusive,
controlling husband. The Duke doesn’t even want his wife to thank people for gifts,
because it makes him jealous. But we think this goes beyond abuse into the realm of
madness: after all, trying to control someone is abuse; thinking that because
someone blushes she must be having an affair, and that the only remedy is murder
is just insane.

Jealousy - The Duke in "My Last Duchess" is pretty much the green-eyed monster
incarnate. He’s almost an allegorical figure for jealousy. He’s jealous of the attention
his wife shows to other people – even if all she does is thank them for bringing her
some cherries. He’s jealous of every smile and every blush that she bestows,
intentionally or unintentionally, on someone else. He’s so jealous that he can’t even
bring himself to talk to her about her behavior – murder is the only solution he can
come up with. His jealousy isn’t just about romantic attention; it’s about any kind of
attention.

Symbols, Imagery and Semantics –

Fra Pandolf’s Painting of the Duchess

The most obvious symbol in "My Last Duchess" is the one that the Duke spends
most of his time talking about – the portrait of the Duchess painted by Frà Pandolf on
the wall of his private gallery. Intriguingly, the Duke doesn’t say much about the
painting itself, except that it’s lifelike and that it seems to capture the Duchess’s
emotional state. We don’t get any sense of what pose the Duchess is in, what she’s
wearing, or what the color scheme or brushstrokes. What we do learn about the
painting is that it’s painted directly on the gallery wall, and so the Duke has to keep it
covered by a curtain so that he can control who views it.
  Lines 1-2: The Duke points toward the portrait of the duchess using the
language of this first sentence – "that" and "painted on the wall" start setting
the scene for the reader.
 Lines 3-4: When the Duke describes the hard work that went into the painting
of the Duchess, he uses a synecdoche, making Frà Pandolf’s hands, not Frà
Pandolf himself, the subject of the sentence. By reducing the painter to the
part of his body that does the work, he dehumanizes Frà Pandolf, turning him
into a tool instead of a person.
 Line 8: It’s a tough call on this one, but you could think of the painting of the
Duchess as personified. After all, paintings themselves are just paint on a
surface, but this painting is looking at the viewer – it has an "earnest glance" –
and it almost seems like it has feelings – "depth and passion." However,
because the painting is an image of a person, you could also interpret the
Duke’s comments as being about the subject of the painting, instead of the
painting itself – in which case this wouldn’t be personification.
 Lines 17-19: Imagining the way the painter might have complimented the
Duchess, the Duke uses elaborate imagery.

That Spot of Joy

When the Duchess is happy about something – and we really mean anything, her
marriage, her dinner, the weather, anything at all – she smiles and blushes, and the
Duke describes her blush s a "spot of joy" (21) that appears in her cheek. The spot of
joy is an involuntary signal of the Duchess's pleasure, something that she can’t
control, that betrays her inner feelings to the world. The Duke thinks of it as a "spot"
– a stain, a symbol of her tainted nature.
 Lines 13-15: The Duke uses a tongue-in-cheek understatement to emphasize
how many things cause the "spot of joy" to appear in the Duchess's cheek.
 The phrase "spot of joy" itself is a startling juxtaposition of images that makes
the reader think differently about the kind of blush that crosses the face of the
Duchess. The fact that her blushing is referred to as a "spot" makes it sound
blameworthy.
 Lines 21-22: In order to convey that he perceives the Duchess as flirtatious,
the Duke comes up with a euphemism – "too soon made glad," which is a
roundabout way of saying "easily pleased" – or maybe just "easy."
 Of course, that may not be an accurate characterization of the Duchess – but
that’s how the Duke perceives her. Since the Duchess isn’t here to defend
herself, all we have to go on is the Duke’s claim.

Smiles

Along with blushes, the Duchess bestows pleased smiles on anyone and anything
that brings a little bit of joy into her life. The Duke thinks of these smiles almost the
way you might think of collector’s items – they’re worth less (maybe even worthless)
because she gives out so many of them. In fact, it seems like the Duke thinks that
the Duchess should only smile for him. Taking pleasure in your life, let alone in its
subtle details, just doesn’t fit with his prestige-and-power philosophy.
 Lines 23-24: The Duke continues to use indirect language and figures of
speech to imply that the Duchess is too flirtatious without saying so directly.
 In these lines, he uses innuendo together with metonymy – "her looks went
everywhere" – to suggest that she herself "goes everywhere" too.
(An innuendo is a seemingly innocent statement that implies something
bawdy, sexy, or racy. Basically, anything you could follow with "nudge, nudge"
or "that’s what she said" counts as an innuendo.)
 Lines 31-34: The Duchess isn’t the only one reduced to an intangible thing
associated with her – the Duke describes his marriage to her using
metonymy, calling it the "gift" of his "nine-hundred-years-old name."
 Lines 43-45: The Duke asks a rhetorical question, implying that the Duchess
bestows the same smile on everyone around her.
 Line 46: The Duke uses synecdoche when he admits to his murder of the
Duchess; instead of saying that he killed her, he mentions that all of her
smiles have stopped.

Stooping

It’s important to notice that when the Duke describes something that he thinks of as
inappropriate or base for him to do, he does so by calling it "stooping." He considers
himself to be on a high social pedestal, with his "nine-hundred-years-old name" and
his wealth. He can’t "lower" himself, even to tell someone that he’s angry with them.
Normal communication and behavior are out of the question for him, because they
fall into the category of "stooping."
 Lines 34-35: The Duke uses a rhetorical question to force his listener to agree
with him that it would be "stooping" to talk to the Duchess directly about her
inappropriate behavior.
 Line 36: A paradox: the Duke claims that he doesn’t have "skill in speech,"
even though he’s speaking skillfully in order to say so!
 Lines 42-43: In these lines, as the Duke repeats his belief that communicating
with the Duchess would be "stooping," Browning uses assonance, or the
repetition of vowel sounds, to bring emphasis to the lines.

Neptune taming a Sea Horse

The final art object that the Duke points out to the Count’s servant as they leave his
gallery is a bronze statue of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, taming a seahorse.
The Duke emphasizes that this statue was cast for him specifically and names the
sculptor, Claus of Innsbruck – which presumably means that this sculptor is well-
known. As readers, we have to consider this statue as a foil to the only other art
object that we see in the gallery – the portrait of the Duchess.
  Lines 54-56: Browning uses alliteration and consonance to unify and structure
the lines describing the statue of Neptune.

Form and Meter –

Iambic Pentameter Couplets

Browning himself described this poem as a "dramatic lyric" – at least, Dramatic
Lyrics was the title he gave to the book of poems in which "My Last Duchess" first
appeared. The "dramatic" part of the poem is obvious: it has fictional characters who
act out a scene.

The "lyric" part is less clear. "My Last Duchess" doesn’t read like a typical lyric poem.
Its rhymed iambic pentameter lines, like its dramatic setup, remind us of
Shakespeare’s plays and other Elizabethan drama. But it is about the inner thoughts
of an individual speaker, instead of a dialogue between more than one person. That
makes it more like the Romantic lyrics that came before it in the early part of the
nineteenth century – stuff by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley that are all about
the mind of the individual. So, really, Browning’s title Dramatic Lyrics says it all. "My
Last Duchess" is what would happen if Shakespeare’s Macbeth married
Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey" and they had a baby. It’s a hybrid of a play and a
poem – a "dramatic lyric."

As for meter, "My Last Duchess" uses the rhythm called "iambic
pentameter." Iambic means that the rhythm is based on two-syllable units in which
the first syllable is . . . oh, drat, your eyes are glazing over. Stay with us here. Okay,
an iamb goes "da DUM," like that. Pentameter means that there are five ("penta") of
those in a line. Listen: "There’s MY last DUCHess HANGing ON the WALL" – that’s
iambic pentameter. Okay, okay, you could argue that "on" shouldn’t be stressed and
so forth, but that’s the basic idea.

Why does this matter? Well, for one thing, some people like to claim that iambic
pentameter is the most "natural" rhythm for the English language to fall into, and that
we often speak in iambic pentameter without noticing. Nobody’s ever really been
able to prove this, and probably nobody ever will, but it’s a persistent "myth" about
meter, so you should know it’s out there. It also means that lines written in iambic
pentameter feel conversational to us. If you listen to someone read "My Last
Duchess" aloud (check out our "Links" section for some online audio recordings by
contemporary poets and scholars), you might not even notice that it has a fancy
meter, because it sounds more like normal speech than some other poetry does.

The other thing about iambic pentameter, like we said before, is that Shakespeare
and other Elizabethan dramatists used it in their plays. Browning, a very highly
educated writer, knew this, and his decision to use this meter in a poem that already
feels sort of like a play is a direct allusion to the patterns of monologues (speeches
made to others) and soliloquies (speeches made while alone) in drama. "My Last
Duchess" is more of a monologue than a soliloquy, because there is a character
listening to the Duke in the poem. He’s not speaking his thoughts aloud to himself
while he’s alone, the way Hamlet does.
Of course, although the iambic rhythm makes us think of Elizabethan drama, the
rhymed couplets (pairs of rhymed lines that occur together) of the poem keep tying
the Duke’s speech into tidy packages, even though his thoughts and sentences are
untidy. Both Shakespeare and the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth used
iambic pentameter without rhyme, a form called blank verse. But Browning
introduces couplets into the mix. We think you can probably guess why it might be
more appropriate for the control-freak Duke of Ferrara to speak in harsh, structured,
rhymed lines than in unrhymed ones.
"My Last Duchess" reminds us of an arrogant speech by a witty guy who knows he’s
witty. Because it’s written in iambic pentameter, and because it has so many
dramatic qualities, it reminds us of a Shakespeare play. We imagine the most
pompous actor we’ve ever seen standing in the middle of a stage, planting his feet
wide apart, and declaiming his lines with a lot of pretentious self-importance. There’s
no doubt that the Duke is self-important. After all, what makes him angry about the
last Duchess's behavior is that she thinks anyone could be important as important as
he is. Toward the end of the poem, as the Duke walks his listener downstairs toward
the rest of the party, he points out one last piece of art in his collection:

Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! (54-56)

We can just see the Duke pointing proudly at the statue, speaking each of his
phrases with distinction, and crackling those hard consonants ("Which Claus of
Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!") for all he’s worth.

Setting –

A Private Art Gallery in the Palace of the Duke of Ferrara

Unlike some lyric poetry, and very much like a play, "My Last Duchess" has a very
definite physical and geographical setting: a private art gallery in the palace of the
Duke of Ferrara in mid-sixteenth-century Renaissance Italy. The modern day country
of Italy didn’t exist during the Renaissance – the many city-states in the region
weren’t unified until the late nineteenth century. But Ferrara was a city-state in what
is today northern Italy, sort of near Bologna. Browning even tells us this setting in the
epigraph, as though he were listing the location of the scene in a play. What’s
interesting is that the real historical details of life in sixteenth-century Ferrara are
much less important to the poem than the connotations and stereotypes of an Italian
Renaissance palace.

Browning was writing for a nineteenth-century audience (even if that audience didn’t
always "get" his poetry), and that nineteenth-century audience would have
immediately made certain assumptions about a place like Ferrara. You know how, if
we say "Transylvania," you immediately think of Dracula, werewolves, and creepy
moonlit castles? Well, for nineteenth-century British readers, saying "Renaissance
Italy" would have made them think of fantastic art objects, extravagant living, lavish
palaces, and sinister political ideas of the Machiavelli sort. In this way, that simple
epigraph "Ferrara" suggests a whole cluster of themes – even if some of those
themes might be inaccurate stereotypes.

Quotes –

(since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) (9-10)
The Duke’s first allusion to the great power he wields comes in a parenthetical aside,
in which he lets slip, intentionally or unintentionally, that he alone controls access to
his late wife’s portrait. Even her image is under his jealous guard. The words "control
freak" come to mind.
Power

Quote #2
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. (31-34)
The Duke’s emphasis on his family history and prestige – his "nine-hundred-years-
old name" – is underscored by his choice of the word "ranked" to describe the way
people should react to gifts. When was the last time you came up with a hierarchy of
your birthday presents?
Power

Quote #3
– E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. (42-43)
Maintaining his own stiff-upper-lip dignity is more important to the Duke than
dropping the Duchess a few hints that, if she doesn’t start being a bit less happy-go-
lucky, he’s going to have her killed. "Stooping" would be a more serious threat to his
power than her flirtatious nature.
Power

This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. (45-46)
Not only does the Duke have the power to order someone killed, he doesn’t do his
dirty work himself. He only has to give "commands" – he can just pick up the red
phone and things get done. This emphasizes how far up the social ladder he is – but
it also suggests that he’s dependent on underlings. We’re not sure the snobby Duke
has it in him to kill somebody with his own two hands.
Power

Quote #5
Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. (53-54)
The Duke is obsessed with power in every relationship – not only in a major
relationship like his marriage, but also in the minor relationship between him and his
listener, the servant of the Count. When the servant tries to get away from him after
hearing the story of the Duchess, the Duke insists that they head back to the party
together. Not only does this show how the Duke can control every little move the
servant makes, it prevents the servant from telling the Count what he’s heard
privately – which might make the Count back out on the marriage between his
daughter and the Duke.
Power

never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned . . .
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there (6-9, 11-12)
There are several different kinds of communication happening here. The Duke is
telling the servant a story about the portrait of the Duchess. But he’s also picking up
on the nonverbal cues that tell him what question the servant wants to ask. (Although
he may be projecting that desire onto the servant; we can’t be sure, because we
don’t get any information in the poem about how the servant is actually reacting.)
The Duke also inadvertently implies that he’s used to people being afraid of him –
they want to ask about the portrait, but they don’t dare.
Language and Communication

Quote #2
all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. (29-31)
The Duke’s big problem with the Duchess is that the way she communicates with
people isn’t nuanced enough. She gives the same friendly, flirty reaction to everyone
and everything.
Language and Communication

Quote #3
Even had you skill
In speech – (which I have not) – to make your will
Quite clear to such an one (35-37)
The Duke claims that he can’t talk to the Duchess about her behavior because he’s
not a good enough speaker to really make his feelings clear to her. But we can tell
this is just an excuse, because the language he uses to describe the situation to the
Count’s servant is quite skillful.
Language and Communication

This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. (45-46)
Although the Duke doesn’t want to communicate with the Duchess directly about her
indiscriminate kindness, he sets up an alternate, indirect line of communication in
order to bring about her murder. This other path of communication depends on an
underling who will hear and carry out the Duke’s orders. The implied murder of the
Duchess turns the Duke’s commands into performative language.
Language and Communication
I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands. (2-4)
Notice that the first comment the Duke makes about his late wife’s portrait is that it is
successful as a piece of art – it’s realistic, lifelike, and shows the painter’s skill. This
artistic quality is far more important to him than any sentimental value. (We’re not
sure the Duke has sentiment anyway.)
Art and Culture

Quote #2
that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance (7-8)
The portrait of the Duchess seems to have captured her spirit. The Duke doesn’t
describe the portrait in terms of its artistic school, colors, shapes, or brushstrokes –
he describes its emotional quality.
Art and Culture

Quote #3
"Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:" (17-19)
The Duke imagines the painter, Frà Pandolf, complimenting the Duchess by telling
her that no artistic medium could actually reproduce the complex flushes and tints of
her skin. In the Duke’s opinion, there is no greater compliment than the suggestion
that a human being could be superior to an art object.
Art and Culture

Too easily impressed: she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. (23-24)
The Duke’s assessment of the Duchess is that she likes everything in the same way
indiscriminately. As a connoisseur and collector, he values the ability to make fine
distinctions between the quality of different objects or acts. The Duchess's general
appreciation of everything – and everyone – in the same way frustrates him to no
end. It’s important to notice that part of his objection to her behavior is that she isn’t
critical or analytic about things the way he is.
Art and Culture

Quote #5
There she stands
As if alive. (46-47)
This is a simple but deceptive statement, which emphasizes several things including:
the lifelike quality of the painting, the fact that the Duchess is no longer alive, and the
idea that Frà Pandolf’s painting might replace the real-life Duchess for the Duke.
Art and Culture

Quote #6
Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! (54-56)
At the end of the poem, the Duke concludes his monologue by pointing out one more
art object in his gallery – a statue of Neptune, the god of the sea, taming a seahorse.
It’s important to him to emphasize the name of the artist and that the piece was
commissioned especially for him. (Notice his use of the exclamation point, a rare
occurrence in the poem.)We suspect it might also be important to him that the
subject of the piece is taming – he seems to enjoy domesticating and dominating
other people.
Art and Culture

THAT’S my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. (1-2)
The Duke knows the difference between the living Duchess and her painting – but he
doesn’t see it as much of a difference. It’s startling that he brings up the unusual
circumstances of his previous wife’s death at the beginning of this conversation with
a servant of the family he wants to marry into next. He’s a little bit obsessive to say
the least.
Madness

Quote #2
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? (32-35)
The Duke can’t believe that anyone would fail to understand that the most important
thing in the universe is having an old family name. Again, this isn’t exactly insanity,
but it is an extremely narrow-minded attitude toward values.
Madness

Quote #3
"Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark" (37-39)
OK, at this point, we’re really starting to wonder about the Duke’s sanity. "Disgust" is
a bizarrely strong and inappropriate word to use to describe your reaction to
someone smiling when they ride their white mule. If the Duke is this inappropriate
with his word choice, we have to wonder about the other ways in which he is
inappropriate.
Madness

This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. (45-48)
This is the point where we become pretty sure that the Duke is a little unhinged.
Admitting that you had your wife murdered is one thing – politely asking your guest
to walk downstairs in the very next sentence is psychotic.
Madness
Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek (13-15)
The Duke is offended that the Duchess would take pleasure in anything other than
him. Notice that the way she shows her pleasure is involuntary, (i.e., a blush counts
as showing pleasure), but the Duke describes it as though it were a stain or taint, a
"spotof joy."
Jealousy

Quote #2
perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat" (15-19)
The Duke’s jealous fantasies are very elaborate – he’s imagined in detail the kind of
compliments that the painter might have paid to the Duchess, and the coy way that
she might have responded. It’s important to remember that, as far as we know, this
could all be in his head. There’s no evidence in the poem that the painter said these
things or that the Duchess blushed in response.
Jealousy

Quote #3
such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. (19-21)
The Duke seems to believe that the Duchess chooses to blush or react to
compliments and gifts. He describes her as "calling up" her blushes, instead of
experiencing them as an involuntary reaction. As readers, we know that she probably
isn’t blushing intentionally, and the Duke’s jealousy is illogical.
Jealousy

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. (21-24)
When was the last time you heard someone complain because their spouse found
joy and pleasure in too many things? "Man, I can’t stand my wife, she’s happy all the
time," you might imagine the Duke saying. The Duke fantasizes that this pleasure in
the world implies that his wife is promiscuous – a stretch, to say the least.
Jealousy

Quote #5
Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? (43-5)
The Duke thinks of kindness as less valuable if it isn’t selective. As he portrays her,
the Duchess is a kind and attentive wife to him, but that means less, in his mind,
because she’s kind and attentive to everyone. He wants her to save all her affection
for him alone – classic controlling abusive husband stuff.
Jealousy