My last duchess, and other poems

by Robert Browning

Hardback with dust jacket. There is a name and date written in the front and back of the book. Some light general wear and dust stain on the page edges. Good usable condition.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, 19th Century, British Literature, Fiction, Victorian, Literature

62 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1842

About the author

Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a British poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.

Browning began writing poetry at age 13. These poems were eventually collected, but were later destroyed by Browning himself. In 1833, Browning's "Pauline" was published and received a cool reception. Harold Bloom believes that John Stuart Mill's review of the poem pointed Browning in the direction of the dramatic monologue.

In 1845, Browning wrote a letter to the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, professing that he loved her poetry and her. In 1846, the couple eloped to Europe, eventually settling in Florence in 1847. They had a son Pen.

Upon Elizabeth Barrett Browning's death in 1861, Browning returned to London with his son. While in London, he published Dramatis Personae (1864) and The Ring and the Book (1869), both of which gained him critical priase and respect. His last book Asolando was published in 1889 when the poet was 77.

In 1889, Browning traveled to Italy to visit friends. He died in Venice on December 12 while visiting his sister.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the Overriding Male Ego that Rules the World digs its spurs a little too sharply into your tender, aching sides...

You may recollect that you have Robert Browning to take his sharp pin of wit and Prick their Burgeoning Balloons, saving the Day.

Yes, those staid Victorian gentlemen never quite knew what hit ‘em, bless them all...

Perhaps they commented through their hirsute muttonchops: “I say! Not really in good form, perhaps, but he Does bring history To Life...” If Browning can give Life to the Dead, folks, it’s because he chooses to be Real.

And to be Real you’ve got to let your HEART cry out from between the lines.

No, they never knew what hit ‘em.

And Browning made his vigorous reputation atop their slumbering, dozy bulks as they napped through their postprandial brandies. And no, he didn’t do it for Himself. He did it for the Truth.

But get this, you old Victorian codgers: the egomaniacal bishop ordering his priceless tomb and the still-frayed Noble scion commenting on the pestering portrait of His Last Duchess are Really... YOUSE GUYS.

Yep, Browning gets it.

And your ever-so-polite young wives get it too, gents - and chuckle behind their embroidered lace hankies! Yet they are deeply afraid...

For they all sense the Empire has passed its zenith.

Soon it will be time to pay the piper:

And on that Day we’ll ALL finally see...

“What’s bin did & what’s bin hid.”

[هدى يحيى · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Last Duchess
--------------------

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his later life, Robert Browning played host to many dinner parties. At one of these parties in 1888, the American inventor Thomas Edison was in attendance with the hope of recording the poet’s voice for posterity on one of his “wax cylinders.” The result was this hilarious audio in which Browning begins reciting his poem How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, forgets the verses, blurts out his own name, and then starts chanting “hip, hip, hooray” with his dinner guests.
The first recorded fail.
Browning had less than a year left to live so he can be forgiven for choking under the pressure and forgetting verses he wrote more than 40 years earlier, but the incident gives some insight into his character that is good to keep in mind when approaching his work.


Reputation – 4/5
Robert Browning’s reputation rests on the fact that, along with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, he was the leading poet of the Victorian Era. The two men could hardly have been more different. Tennyson was the stoic, titled, over-serious poet, aware of his own greatness; Browning was dynamic, middle class, and apparently quite a chatterbox. In another archival recording, Bertrand Russell compares Tennyson and Browning, describing the latter as “the sort of man who would be pleasant to old ladies.”
I bring up these insights into Browning’s actual character because they are so rarely seen his poetry. In his poetry, Browning was always playing somebody else.


Point – 4/5
Tennyson may have invented the form we call the dramatic monologue, but Browning mastered it and made it his trademark.

The title poem of this selection, My Last Duchess is the epitome of the form: a narrator telling a story to an implied listener, attempting to explain (to both the listener and himself) the reason for his actions. In My Last Duchess we have a powerful Italian duke hinting that he had his wife murdered for infidelity. Of course, we are not told directly about the infidelity or the murder – the action is not what is important in Browning. Rather, through the speaker’s self-justifications and projections, the narrator’s portrait becomes psychological.

Early on in his career, Browning realized that he could do these psychological character sketches in verse better than anybody. They became his calling card. He put himself inside the mind of Italian painters, Spanish monks, Flemish soldiers, medieval theologians; turning each one into a recognizable role in a miniature drama. These dramatic lyrics required a sort of scholarship quite foreign to English poetry. Browning was constantly studying the oddest things he could possibly find to get ideas for his pieces. 300-year-old court cases in Latin, diaries of Renaissance Italian artists, Elizabethan news reports, whenever he found something that interested him, he invented a psychologically believable character out of it.

Browning performed this character building from the inside-out so often and with such success that his reputation as a poet has suffered. Oscar Wilde said he “used poetry as a medium for writing in prose” and called him “the most Shakespearean creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths.” In the typical Wildean mode, every compliment is back-handed.
Wilde’s judgement has become the fashion, and Browning is now often considered something at once greater and less than a poet. He is a philosopher, a psychologist, or a dramatist, but he is not a poet on par with any of those other professions.

It is a very strange fate for someone who wrote almost nothing but poetry. But Wilde’s main point that Browning “stammers” – i.e. that his verse is unsophisticated – is precisely what makes him more Shakespearean than any other English writer. In Elizabethan plays we come across hundreds of minor characters who stammer – whose English is silly, clumsy, or plainly bad. In Shakespeare we account for this by saying “why should a cobbler speak like a count?” and chalking up more points for Shakespeare’s “realism” in psychological portraiture.
Something about Browning keeps us from giving him this credit. It may be because his dramas are in the miniature, it may be because he rarely gives us sustained pomp in the Shakespearean sense, but my instinct is that it is because Browning is not interested in the great and the grand; he is interested in the minor and the mundane. Browning doesn’t write a monologue as Michelangelo, but as Andrea del Sarto. When he writes the Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister he does not put it into the mouth of St. Ignatius Loyola, but a nameless monk.

And now I return to the original character sketch of Browning, himself. What grandiosity is there in a man who forgets his own verses and then starts chanting at the dinner table? or in a man who is an old lady’s darling? Wilde expressed this well when he said:
“The method by which the fool arrives at his folly was as dear to him as the ultimate wisdom of the wise.”
Indeed, very much dearer! Browning was interested above all in normal people and in the psychologies of each one. He was interested in how we think when we try to talk about ourselves and our feelings. In this, his definition of “psychology” is exactly our own: the study of the conscious and the subconscious.
When we are trying to justify ourselves to ourselves do we fit that cognitive dissonance into perfectly-formed poetry? Browning’s technique, while it may not be perfect, works perfectly for what he is trying to express. It is a type of psychological realism that we only find consistently in Browning and Shakespeare.


Recommendation – 4/5
There can be some difficulties in “getting” Browning. His meters are sporadic and it often takes more than one reading to grasp the subconscious side of his darker characters. But he also wrote some very straightforward pieces. How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix is a fun ride on a horse through Belgium, Incident of the French Camp is a tongue-in-cheek war report on Napoleon’s campaign, and let's not forget that Browning also wrote the children’s tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin!
In this book you get just about every shade of Browning in 100 or so pages.


Personal – 5/5
Browning is one of my favorite poets and I think he’s absolutely unique in English literature. For all English poetry’s forms and innovations, many of its poets can do very little besides be exceedingly English. The most refreshing aspect of Browning is that he can write as a Spanish nun or an Italian judge and bring us away from the dull slopes of the English countryside and the roundtables of King Arthur once in a while. Shakespeare and Byron are the only other English poets who do this with any regularity, but both of them are more interested in the grandiose and monumental.
Browning, by contrast, is that very rare genius that is also a completely normal guy. The kind of guy who is not preachy or self-important, who is more likely to bore you with an ancient Egyptian recipe for mint tea than with his sweeping theory of how the Egyptian empire collapsed. It’s pleasant to be in that kind of company, and I always come back to Browning, not just for the psychology of his characters but for the psychology of HIS character.

I think Browning himself best sums up his personal appeal in a few lines from A Grammarian’s Funeral:

“That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred’s soon hit:
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.”

[Jorge medina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading "My Last Duchess” really grabbed my attention through the whole story it created many possible scenarios about the Duchess paint in my mind about what could it possible means in this short poem by Robert Browning. I think this poem is very interesting because the main character fuel the plot, even when its dramatic and symbolic definition of duchess paints. Duke Ferrara is a very jealous, possessive and control man. Duke possess a portrait on the wall of his last wife covered with curtains and not letting anyone see the portrait; except for a man who has arrive into Ferrara”s house to fix a marriage between another family’s daughter and duke Ferrara. As duke shows the man the portrait, he started to express his feeling and thoughts about his ex-wife mentioning that she never appreciated his honorable name “Somehow I know not how as if she ranked. My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody’s gift” and she always flirted with every man who got close to her “Too easily impressed; she liked whatever she looked on, and her looks went everywhere”. Duke was possessive and when in the poem says “I gave commands, and then all smiles stopped together” when Ferrara mentioned that he let me think about if he was the one responsible for his wife’s death. The characters are somewhat round and static because through the play the main character which is the duke that surprise me when he started being educated and then he demonstrated his real personality being jealous, and a possessive man. The other character in the play I notice was the man that just listened to the duke expressing himself from the portrait and the man never changed anything in the story. I think that the fact that duke character changed his personality from the beginning to the end made the play very interesting and dramatic that grabbed all my attention, including how specific the duke character was using words while describing her ex-wife. This poem’s characters made the story very authentic and exiting in compared to other similar poems that I had read.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My Last Duchess" is impressive:

This world's no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

And of course, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is timeless.

One of my favourites is “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix”, all galloping, and God speed as they travel through Belgium:

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear:
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Düffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aershot up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland, at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Browning in my collection is scattered in older, more fragile volumes, but this Dover volume serves as a wonderful introduction to a great writer. There's no better short story/dramatic monologue than My Last Duchess. It just happens to be written in painstakingly perfect poetic language.

[GONZA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every once in a while it pays to do a callback with eternal poetry.

Ogni tanto conviene fare un richiamino con la poesia eterna.

[Anna Zhirova · Rating 5 out of 5]

The speaker is the Duke of Ferrara, the 16th-century Italian aristocrat. The conversation is taking place in the gallery of objects. He showed the art to his guest, a portrait of his former wife, Lucrezia, the Duchess of Ferrara. The Duke is a jealous person. He thinks that she should be grateful to him for giving her his name and that she had been flirtatious with other men. Probably, he murdered his wife. The evidence of the murder is that the Duke appreciates his object of art more than his alive wife.

It is an interesting and creepy poem!

[Amber Anseeuw · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's giving "gothic murder plot", and I'm here for it

[Zach Deverill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just read the poem My Last Duchess through W.J.T. Mitchell’s essays on Representation. Of which, his following analysis is so fucking spectacular I just wanna have it somewhere. So I’m going to copy and paste it here. No possible analysis, no possible reading of a work of art has possibly blown me away more, and hopefully changes the way I too ENGAGE with the art presented to me.



“The first thing that may strike us about this poem is the way that Browning renounces any direct representation of his own views: the poet does not lyrically describe the painting, or narrate any events in his own voice; he lets his invented character, the duke, do all the talking, as if he were a character in a play. The second thing that may strike us is that this is not a play but something like a fragment or extract—a single speech or “monologue”—presented, however, as a whole poem. Browning has, in other words, deliberately collapsed the distinction between two kinds of literary representation—the brief, self-sufficient lyric utterance of the poet, and the dramatic speech that would conventionally belong in a more extended representation—in order to create a new hybrid genre, the dramatic monologue. This “collapse” of lyric and dramatic conventions is itself an act of representation in which what would have been a part or fragment (a dramatic speech) is allowed to “stand for” or take the place of the whole. And, indeed, one of the pleasures of reading this brief monologue is the unfolding of the whole drama that it represents in miniature. We quickly surmise that the duke is an obsessively jealous husband who had his last duchess killed because she was too free with her affections and approval—“she liked whate’er / She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.”
The truly tantalizing mystery, however, is the meaning of the drama that this speech represents in little. Why is the duke telling this story to the agent of his bride-to-be's father? Is he trying to impress the emissary with his power and ruthlessness? Is he indirectly doing what he was unable to do with his last duchess, “stooping” to warn his next duchess that she had better be more discreet in her behavior? Is his speech better understood as a calculated threat in which signs of spontaneity are disguises for a deep plot or as an unwitting confession of the duke's inability to control the affections of women? What state of affairs (including “state of mind”) does the duke's speech really represent? And (a rather different but related problem) what authorial intention or meaning is conveyed by Browning's presentation of the duke in just this way? What judgment are we being invited to make about the speaker and his words? It would seem clear enough that we are meant to disapprove, but what specific form does this disapproval take?
One way of getting at these questions is to reflect on the role of yet another character in the poem, that of the auditor, whose reactions are represented to us by the duke. The auditor is, of course, a representative of his “master” the count, a go-between who presumably is working out details about the dowry (the duke is evidently confident that the count's “known munificence” guarantees that he will make money on the marriage: “no just pretense / Of mine for dowry will be disallowed”), though the duke protests that he is really marrying for love (“his fair daughter's self, as I avowed / At starting, is my object”). But if the emissary represents the count to the duke in the implied drama of Browning's poem, he also represents the reader in its implied lyric address: like us, he is the auditor of the speech. What does this mean? What role are we, as readers, being coerced into by having ourselves represented within the poem?
One possibility is that Browning wants to place his reader in a position of weakness and servitude, forced to hear a repugnant, menacing speech but deprived of any voice or power to counteract it. The count's representative, presumably, has the responsibility for seeing that negotiations go smoothly in a marriage that will raise the count's daughter in the sociopolitical order (the difference between a duke and a count, exemplary representatives of feudal hierarchy, is crucial here). Should he warn the count that he's marrying his daughter to a Bluebeard? Should he warn the daughter to watch her step? Neither of these actions really opposes the duke's will; on the contrary, they are ways of carrying out his will, of “stooping” on the duke's behalf to convey warnings the duke would never “stoop” to make in person. If the duke represents the aristocratic, feudal social order, understood here principally as a system giving some men absolute power over others, and particularly over women in a system of exchange, the emissary represents a servant class or (as a representative of the reader) the new bourgeois class of nineteenth-century readers who may hear this speech as the echo of a bygone era, the “bad old days” of absolute power—a power which may be deplored, but which still has a power to fascinate, and which lies beyond our intervention.

The only representation in this poem that seems to have some power to intervene is the portrait of the duchess, which seems still to mock the duke with its free looks from the wall. He may control who can see her by drawing aside or closing the curtain that veils the painting, but he cannot control the way the painting looks. He could, of course, destroy it, just as he destroyed its original, the duchess herself; but he chooses not to. Is that because he wants it as a reminder that now he has her under his power? Or because he is, in some sense, no more capable of destroying the duchess's smiling image than he is of destroying those galling, disgusting memories of her behavior that he pours out on the envoy? If the painting functions as a representation of the duke's power, it also seems to be a continual reminder of his weakness, his inability to “make [his] will / Quite clear” to his wife. In a similar way, the duke's whole performance, his boasting speech to the envoy, is an expression of a wish for absolute power that has just the opposite effect, revealing the duke as someone who is so lacking in confidence about his power that he needs constant reassurance. His final appeal to the envoy to “notice” his statue of Neptune “taming a sea horse” is a transparent invitation to see the duke as a god “taming” nature, much as he “tamed” his duchess by having her painted on his wall. The duke thinks of his power as something that is certified by his control of representations—by his painting of the duchess hidden behind a curtain that only he can draw, by the statue of Neptune “cast in bronze for me,” by his control over the envoy's attention (and those whom the envoy represents) with a strategic display of his gallery of representations. What Browning shows us, however, is the uncontrollability of representations, the way they take on a life of their own that escapes and defies the will to determine their meaning. If the duke truly has his last duchess (or himself) under control, why does he need to veil her image with a curtain? If he is so sure of his choosing “never to stoop” to make his will clear, why is he so conspicuously “stooping” to an underling, seducing a mere representative with this odd mixture of boasting and self-betrayal?
These, at any rate, are some of the questions that arise with respect to the duke's manipulation of representations within the mini-drama that makes up the poem. But what if we raised similar sorts of questions about the poem as itself a representation? Suppose, for instance, we think of this poem as itself a kind of dramatic portrait, a “speaking picture” in the gallery of Robert Browning's poetry? To what extent is Browning himself—or the commentator who claims to speak for Browning's intentions—playing a role like that of the duke, showing off his own power by displaying his mastery over representation? Should we think of Browning's poem, and the readings it evokes, as something we might call “My Last Duke”? Most readers of this poem have registered some version of Robert Langbaum's insight that “condemnation” is “the least interesting response” to the duke's outrageous display of evil. Just as the duke seems to hypnotize the envoy, Browning seems to paralyze the reader's normal moral judgment by his virtuosic representation of villainy. His poem holds us in its grip, condemning in advance all our attempts to control it by interpretation as mere repetitions of the duke's attempt to control his gallery of representations.
Browning's poem should make it clear why there would be a strong impulse in literature, and in literary criticism, to escape from representation and why such an escape can never succeed. Representation is that by which we make our will known and, simultaneously, that which alienates our will from ourselves in both the aesthetic and political spheres. The problem with representation might be summarized by reversing the traditional slogan of the American Revolution: instead of “No taxation without representation,” no representation without taxation. Every representation exacts some cost, in the form of lost immediacy, presence, or truth, in the form of a gap between intention and realization, original and copy (“Paint / Must never hope to reproduce the faint / Half-flush that dies along her throat”). Sometimes the tax imposed by representation is so slight that we scarcely notice, as in the perfect copy provided by a laser disk recording (“Is it real or is it Memorex?”). Sometimes it is as ample as the gap between life and death: “That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, / Looking as if she were alive.” But representation does give us something in return for the tax it demands, the gap it opens. One of the things it gives us is literature.” - (Mitchell’s Representations 17-21)

[carolyn.reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most people know his wife Elizabeth Barrett-Browning instead of him; however, I prefer Robert Browning's poetry to his wife. The first time I read "My Last Duchess" was in my Brit Lit class, we were discussing works from the Victorian Era, I must say it was love at first read. There is something dark and ambiguous about his work that it makes people keep reading to find out where it's going to lead. The poem starts with a haunting sentence "That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call," readers can assume that something tragic and dark has happened, maybe a death. It's so intriguing from the very first sentence, and I think this is what Victorian poetry is supposed to be. I love that he did not explicitly write that the Duke killed his wife, thus, the ambiguity draws readers in. It makes one wondered what did happen to the previous Duchess. Is she still alive or is she dead? The readers do not know what happened to her, all we know is that they are not married anymore. The speculation drove me crazy, but I did some research of my own, turns out that the characters are based on real historical figures, but I admire what Browning did with their story. He drops a hint of curiosity to spark your interest, but the rest is up to you. It's interesting that in most of his work, he is not the speaker/narrator, instead he allows his characters to come alive through the use of first person narration. Browning introduced me to dramatic monologue, where a character unintentionally reveals a hidden secret about themselves, and for that I can enjoy the psychological chilling atmosphere of this particular poem. It's my favorite poem in the world.

[Lindsay Paramore · Rating 5 out of 5]

All of his poems are amazing, but Last Duchess in particular is quite astounding. Must read if you are really into poetry!

[John Yelverton · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a romantic poem about a man left with nothing but his wife's portrait to remind him of her, and yet the painting is done so well he doesn't really consider her absent from his life.

[Mert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do we have free will? This question brings to my mind the time that I was first introduced to the concept of the Butterfly Effect. The concept focuses on the cause-and-effect relationship. A classical example of this concept is that if a butterfly on the other side of the world flaps its wings, it might eventually cause a hurricane on this side. A butterfly flaps its wings, and a bee and a fly might change their direction, the bee might end up pollinating a different flower because of the butterfly. This new flower might procreate instead of another which in terms could have an effect on everything and everyone that interacts with it and so on. This theory made the think of two things. The first one is that we can trace everything to its original roots which in reverse means that everything I do will have an effect on another thing/person. The second conclusion was that if we know everything we could predict and control the future and therefore our influence on everything else. These two ideas had a great impact on me and influenced my decision to a large degree, even though, I am not sure that I would end up doing anything differently if it was not for the concept of the Butterfly Effect.
My thoughts and frustration kind of settled when I was introduced to the Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics. This principle states that at the atomic level – the smallest particles – acts completely randomly which means it is impossible to know at least one thing – the universe has its own randomizing mechanism 😊. Predicting the future to the point of certainty would be impossible if there is anything unknown/uncertain.
The Duke is – at least looks like – a “typical” Renaissance man. He looks like or tries to look like a highly educated, cultured, charismatic gentleman. However, all these things might just because he identifies – or wants to be identified – as a Renaissance man. The society around him probably had a great influence on his identification. Would this mean we should consider this when we judge him? If so, we would have to consider the preceding societies of the one that the duke is in. We follow this logic, and we will end up trying to trace everything back to an original. This tracing process is an endless one. We might try to do it but meanwhile, life goes on and if we wait to reach a conclusion so that we can react, we end up paralyzed.
“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
– T.S Elliot

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Porphyria's Lover"

In which the eponymous lover murders his sweetheart after she comes to see him & make love to him in the middle of a storm; the demented narrator believes he is doing both a favor by strangling her with her long yellow her: this way, he thinks, he can preserve their rare moment of communion forever--a moment threatened by some unnamed obstacle.

"My Last Duchess"

In which a Duke is to be newly married to the daughter of a Count--and in which he shows the Count's emissary a portrait of his most recent wife, his "last duchess"; it is suggested that he murders her out of spiteful jealousy because she bestowed her affection too liberally on others. He wishes to possess her entirely; even her portrait is concealed behind a curtain.

"Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister"

In which a friar attempts to persuade us of the odiousness of another friar in his monastery by pointing to the most venial peccadilloes (his interest in latin botanical names, his tendency to over-polish silverware, his alleged (and unsubstantiated) spying on bathing women) and persuades us of the opposite: of the speaker's mental instability and spiteful jealousy

"Love Among the Ruins"

In which a lover makes his way to his beloved, who is waiting for him in the turret of a ruined castle in a vast pasture; the spot used to be a center of empire, but all that is passed, and the speaker reflects on the superior beauty of his love--something greater than vast kingdoms, which inevitably decay.

"Fra Lippo Lippi"

In which the orphan-turned-artist is caught carousing late at night when he should have been at the home of his patron, C. de Medici. He tells his life story, with reflections on his realistic and bodily painting style, which is frowned upon by critics who prefer idealized representations of life and the soul.

"Andrea del Sarto"

About a gifted artist who can't find the will or motivation to produce the great art he is capable of making--partly because of his unsupportive and adulterous wife. An evocation of the life of the brilliant artist, stunted and enervated by life.

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"

A mysterious quest poem through a shifting topographical space--a barren wasteland that ultimately leads a daring knight to a fateful tower, where he blows his ominous slung-horn.

[carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this because in the exclusive edition of the marriage portrait, maggie o’farrell mentions that this poem by robert browning was part of what inspired her to write about lucrezia. and that robert’s poem is told from the pov of alfonso II while he thinks about lucrezia.

so i wanted to read it and see what the fuss was about. i will admit that most of it went over my head, but it was cool to see the pieces of inspiration that maggie o’farrell pulled from the poem. there were direct lines that paralleled to how she describes lucrezia and the activities that she enjoyed. overall, very cool to read after reading the marriage portrait.

[Nada Khaled · Rating 3 out of 5]

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance

I loved the vintage classic soul of the poems,
They are really Victorian,
I didn't read English poetry since so long, and it was a good return.

[Mubtasim Fuad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this poem. Actually, I found some similarities in habits between the Duke of Ferrara and me. I know Duke presents a negative role, but the possessiveness is actually kinda justified in my opinion. If I love someone with my heart and soul, then I will also expect that person to appreciate my love equally. I don't want the same treatment you gave to literally everyone. I consider you special, so you will also have to treat me in that way. Otherwise, what's the point?

Now don't start calling me a psychopath or something, please!

[Hanna W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Fra Lippo Lippi" - fantastic poem. I've always been fond of monologues in literature, so it's no surprise that dramatic monologue poetry is my type of entertaining. I feel like I learned a lot about writing and characterization just by reading this one poem - count me a fan. I'll have to return to this and check out more of his work sometime, he's a very great writer indeed..

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Last Dutchess.

Great little poem. Wish I could show the Duke from this poem Weezer's No Other One, I bet he would find that song relatable. Not necessarily related to the book, but I remember I had this discussion about it on my literature class, and some guy said he's just like me fr, and that hasn't left my mind ever since. Funniest thing I've heard in years

[Benjamin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't help but enjoy the victorian poetry of Robert Browning. It'll either grab you or it won't.

[Kendalyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

actual rating: 4.5

[Danielle Depa]

why can’t men just let girls have fun 🙄

[Shining Triscuits · Rating 1 out of 5]

“My Last Duchess”…yikes.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

A haunting poem, a truly beautiful piece. My last duchess, is a poem filled with little hints, the rest of his work is just as complex and fun to read.

[k · Rating 2 out of 5]

i like robert the guy (he’s been dead for 130+ years) but i like his wife’s poetry a lot more than his

[Mamace · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really cool.

[Maria L. Lucio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sincerely, I do not enjoy at all reading poems because they are almost always full of a strange vocabulary that goes beyond my capacity to think. However, there some poems such as “My last Duchess” that really catch my attention. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning is a mysterious poem hard to understand due to its dramatic monologue. This poem was written in 1842, which makes it part of the Victorian poetry. The Victorian poetry was the poetry written during the reign of Queen Victoria. Thus, Mr. Browning used a lot of this form of poetry in his works. The poem seems to be part of a mystery because the speaker describes his feelings and emotions of a dead woman in a portrait; nevertheless, it can also be seen as an artistic commentary.
This poem is full of mystery and an example of that is the speaker himself, the duke. The main character, the speaker, is portrayed as monster, arrogant, and as a possessive and controlling man, and yet he is ironically charming, both in his friendly address and his selection in the use of words. For example, “I gave commands, and then all smiles stopped together” effectively captures the Duke’s arrogant character (Browning, 206). I think that the most obvious demonstration of this is the murder of his wife.
The subject of this poem is the longing for a lover that passed away. Also, the Duke’s tone grows harsh while he retrospects how both nature and human could impress her. Likewise, this story made me remember about Porphyria’s Lover poem, which is one of the first dramatic monologues of Mr. Browning. I found them in common because both stories are about dead and love, so maybe the author may combine some his personal feeling in his creation when writing a poem.
This poem is very interesting because it shows how humans sometimes appreciate the beauty of women when there is not present alive anymore. The duke remains in loved with the duchess he has had killed, though his affection and love now rests on a just a simple picture of her. In other words, he has chosen to love the “ideal image” of her rather than to have her in real life.

[deven isbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not going to add dates since Goodreads is going to mark it apart of my reading challenge and I have put far too many poems in already, but—

How I love the Brownings! I desperately need to find a huge compilation of their poetry (both Robert and Elizabeth’s) because it genuinely is so lovely.

I love gothic horror so, so much. If you want a short taste of what it is before you dive in head first, do read My Last Duchess. I truly feel like Catherine Tilney while reading. My head stuck in the page, drowning in the imagery and slowly, slowly starting to believe my whole life must be this dramatic and moody.

Mr. Browning’s work is all so compelling; the twists are by far my favorite I’ve ever read, and I usually try
to stray away from anything with ‘horror’ listed in the genres. (Not that horror is necessarily bad, it’s just everything I have read bores me to my core and I often find it horridly banal.)

This, however, is the biggest exception if there ever was one. All of Brownings, works, really.

Being introduced to his work in a literature class really lit the flame under me. I wrote paragraphs analysis to share with the class (which I’m sure now was probably 90% gushing). I know all of those poor college kids trying to get their ‘required, stupid’ english credit were soooo sick and tired of me.

But truly, there isn’t a better gothic poet out there. His works are SO incredibly exciting, well written, and hilarious if you really understand the time period. (Not to mention this guy was a huge advocate for women. His support and genuine love for his wife were extraordinarily ahead of their time.)

Give this one a read. A long read. And “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Meeting at Night,” “The Laboratory,” “Sordello,” etc.. etc.. also “Aurora Leigh” while you’re at it. Legitimately changed how my brain works.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Poems read--

Song from Pippa Passes
My Last Duchess--5
Incident of the French Camp
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
Johannes Agricola in Meditation
Porphyria's Lover
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix
The Lost Leader
Home Thoughts from Abroad
The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church
Earth's Immortalities
Meeting at Night/Parting at Morning--2
Love among the Ruins
A Lover's Quarrel
Up at a Villa--Down in a City
Fra Lippo Lippi
A Toccata of Galuppi's
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician
A Serenade at the Villa
My Star
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
Love in a Life
How It Strikes a Contemporary
The Last Ride Together
The Patriot
Memorabilia
Andrea del Sarto
In a Year
Two in the Campagna--2
A Grammarian's Funeral
Dis Aliter Visum, or le Byron de nos jours
Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology in the Island
Confessions
Youth and Art
Apparent Failure
House--3
Wanting Is--What? --2
Never the Time and the Place--3
The Names
Why I Am a Liberal