40 pages • 1 hour read
Robert BrowningMy Last Duchess
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1842A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“My Last Duchess” is composed of 28 rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter with no divisions into stanzas. Iambic pentameter refers to the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in a line of verse. Meter is measured in groups of syllables called a “foot,” and the pentameter indicates five feet within a line. The iamb refers to a specific type of foot that sees an alternation between an unstressed syllable then a stressed syllable. Thus, one line of verse in iambic pentameter will carry 10 syllables in total, divided into five feet, each carrying a pair of alternately stressed syllables.
Given below are the first four lines of the poem with each line’s five feet demarcated, and the stressed syllables highlighted in bold:
That’s my | last Duch- | ess paint- | ed on | the wall
Looking | as if | she were | alive. | I call
That piece | a won- | der, now; | Fra Pan- | dolf’s hands
Worked bu- | sily | a day, | and there | she stands.
The poem is composed entirely of rhyming couplets, sets of two lines, thus the 
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By Robert Browning
