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.
Introduction
“My Last Duchess”
- Originally Published: 1842
- Form/Meter: Dramatic monologue in rhymed couplets; iambic pentameter
- Literary Devices: Form; meter; narrative voice; enjambment
- Setting: Renaissance Italy
- Central Concern: A self-absorbed and controlling duke, in conversation with a representative of his potential new wife’s family, alludes to his last wife’s inadequacies as he shows her portrait. The poem is a dramatic monologue based loosely on a historical figure, the Duke of Ferrara, who is the speaker of the poem.
- Potential Sensitivity Issues: Murder; objectification of women
Robert Browning, Poet
- Bio: 1812-1889; Victorian-era English poet and playwright; known for his use of the dramatic monologue form; very popular in his lifetime; secretly married the poet Elizabeth Barrett despite her father’s disapproval; buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner
- Other Works: “Paracelsus” (1835); “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” (1842); The Ring and the Book (1868-1869), a novel in verse
THEMES
- The Interplay of Pride, Power, and a Need for Control
- The Exaggerated Importance of Social Status and Hierarchy
- Values and Perceptions Surrounding the Victorian Woman
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