Babienko AP English
“My Last Duchess”
Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is a dramatic monologue, a form associated with Robert
Browning and other Victorian Poets. Definition: a poem in which a single speaker who is not the poet
utters the entire poem at a critical moment. The speaker addresses a listener within the poem, but we too
are his/her listener, and we learn about the speaker's character from what the speaker says. The speaker
often unintentionally reveals certain aspects of his/her character.
Comprehension:
 Who is the speaker of the poem?
 Who is the audience/addressee within the poem?
 What is the setting? Where are they?
 What is the situation or occasion?
 What is being discussed? (related to occasion)
 Why is this subject being discussed? (related to occasion)
 What happened to the last Duchess?
 What is the meaning of the poem? What does the poet convey through this dramatic monologue
by the Duke?
Devices:
 What is the speaker’s tone?
 What features of the poem create a conversational atmosphere? How does this affect the
characterization of the Duke?
 What devices does Browning use and how do they contribute to the tone and meaning?
 How does Browning enable us to plunge immediately into the dramatic situation of the poem?
Character analysis:
Even though the poem is a dramatic monologue, the personality of
both the Duke of Ferrara and his Duchess are clearly evident.
1. Look for the 7 specific complaints that the Duke has about the Duchess.
Use those to make inferences about the Duke and then about the Duchess. Make a
two-column table (one column for the Duke, one for the Duchess); based on your inferences, list character
traits for each. You might consider:
 passages which reveal the Duke’s background, pride and jealousy
 passages which reveal the Duchess’ background, charity, and all-embracing love
2. How does Browning use the Duke’s art collection and his attitude toward it to convey his character?
3. Based on his character, do you think the proposed marriage of the Duke will have a similar
ending? Explain.
Now that we know what the poem is about, choose one of the following activities for creative projects
(due next week):
1. Create a drawing or series of drawings that depict the setting, characters, and events
described in the poem.
2. Based on the “facts” of the poem and the inferences you draw from them, write and
perform (live) a song that tells of the events in the poem in a new way (play around with
POV, etc.)