The Last Ride Together

“The Last Ride Together” is an example of the poetic genre called the dramatic monologue, which Robert Browning made central to 19th-century poetry. Most dramatic monologues consist of words uttered by a speaker who is different from the author and whose personality is gradually revealed through his/her own words. Sometimes the speaker addresses a listener who is another person clearly identified in the poem. In other words, the speaker’s intended audience is not the reader but an imagined character. An unambiguous example is another famous poem by Robert Browning called “My Last Duchess” (1842). The whole text of the poem consists of the words spoken by a 16th-century Italian duke to the messenger of his future father-in-law. Most of the duke’s speech is about his previous marriage—his “Last Duchess”—but it becomes gradually clear that its real purpose is to convey that he wants an obedient wife and an ample dowry. The reader realizes that the duke’s first wife displeased him and that he may have had her killed. The duke’s words are a kind of warning to his future wife. On the surface, he presents himself as loving and generous, but his words reveal him to be an arrogant and controlling man, instead.