My Last Duchess

“My Last Duchess” is a dramatic monologue, a genre of poem Browning is famous for having mastered. As the name suggests, a dramatic monologue is a poem penned in the form of a speech delivered by a single character. The poem is thus rooted in a single scene but allows the reader insight into the speaker’s history, psyche, and character, by way of details revealed.

While the speaker is not explicitly named in “My Last Duchess,” he is revealed to be a duke owing to the opening lines in which he points to a portrait of his late wife and calls her his “last Duchess” (Line 1). Furthermore, the subtitle of the poem, “Ferrara,” has led to the assumption that the character of the duke is based on Alfonso II, the fifth Duke of Ferrara, whose life paralleled incidents narrated in the poem (See: Historical Context). Thus, the identity of the speaker is revealed at the start of the poem, as he seemingly innocuously calls the attention of an invisible listener to a portrait of his late wife.

At first, the duke appears to be commenting on the artistic quality of the painting.