Free notes: Robert Browning :MY LAST DUCHESS

Poetry: Robert Browning: My last Duchess

Question: Write a critical appreciation of My last Duchess.

Answer:
Browing’s ‘My last Duchess’ can be considered as a unique model of dramatic monologue. This piece of work of Browing has added a dimension in the world of literature. “The Whole poem, says David Daiches, ‘is but the visible part of the iceberg but the submerged invisible part is not a matter of vague suggestiveness; it is both psychologically and historically defined.’ The poem is a beautiful study in soul-dissection in its short dramatic form. From our reading of the poem, the Duke of Ferrara emerges as unscrupulous, selfish, tyrannical and arrogant, emerges as an individual as well as a typical nobleman of the Italian Renaissance. We form the idea of the Duchess from the words of Duke himself. She is frank, charming girl, innocent, good-natured and unsophisticated.

The poem is a great specimen of dramatic monologue. Phelps comments that it is astounding that so profound a life-drama should have been conceived and faultlessly expressed by so young a poet. The whole poem contains only fifty-six lines, but it could easily be expanded into a three volume novel. Indeed, it exhibits Browing’s genius for condensation as impressively as The Ring And the Book proves his genius for expansion.

The Metre (of this poem) is interesting . It is a heroic couplet, the same form exactly in which Pope wrote his major productions . ‘Yet the rhyme, which is as evident as the recurring strokes of a tack-hammer in Pope, is scarcely heard at all in ‘My last Duchess’ Its effect is so muffled, so concealed, that I venture to say that many who are quite familiar with the poem, could not declare off-hand whether it were written in rhyme or in blank verse. This technical trick is accomplished by what the French call over-flow, the running on of sense from one line to another.

The use of the symbol of the statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse in the last lines in noteworthy. The Duke believes in taming wives like Duchess:
“………This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.”

The poem is a glorious example of epigrammatic and intense style which don’t mark the spontaneity, beauty an purity of the poem. Generally, Browning has some stylistic problems but this poem is free from such kinds of lopes. Such as the poem does not suffer from the chronic faults omission of words; uncommon illusions; startling and unusual double-rhymes, etc. The parentheses or the use of brackets and dashes in the poem render the construction of the sentences difficult of comprehension by the common readers.

The Duke of Ferrara is the representative of the Italian Renaissance. Through the character of the Duke, the characteristics of the age have been exposed vividly. The period of the Italian Renaissance was full of intrigue, sensuality, loose morals, diplomacy, avarice and in some case of intellectual and artistic activities . In spite of having a lot of wealth the Duke hankers after money and wealth and expects a rich dowry from his would be father – in – law.
“………………………I repeat,
The count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mind for dowry will be disallowed.
The Duke did not love the Duchess. His love for her was like a show case of his ‘nine hundred years old name.’ So he does not know how to love human beings what is the main aim of life. So he is totally cut off from common people. He abhors ‘the approving speech’ and ‘blush’ of the common people the real people who don’t know what is hypocrisy or the value of “nine hundred years old name”. The Duke is found in his real collection like-‘gallery’, ‘the brozen statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse’, ‘The portrait of the Duchess drawn by Fra Pandolf.

‘My last Duchess’ is most probably Browning’s supreme dramatic monologue. Here, in this poem, we see a true Duchess who had real quality to be a mother, a wife, a Duchess, and after all a human being. On the other hand her husband, the Duke, is spiritually dead. The Duke can see the beauty of picture- hanging from the wall, not the beauty of soul.


Amir mohammad kabir





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