Hi, I'm Rebecca Balcarcel. Let's take a look at "My Last Duchess," a poem by Robert Browning.
This poem is a dramatic monologue, and that means that it's a character who is speaking
to us in the poem. So it's the words of the character.
He's Italian, because it says, "Ferrara," underneath the title, which refers to a place
in Italy, a region of Italy. Notice the title says "My last
duchess," and it means my last one, the previous duchess, and he's going to talk about his
previous duchess. Let's see what he has to say. "That's my last Duchess painted on
the wall, / Looking as if she were alive." Now that line
seems sort of strange, because of course she would look as if she were alive in the painting.
But the fact is she's not alive, so that's why he said
that. "I call / That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands / Worked busily a
day, and there she stands." Fra Pandolf is the artist who painted this woman, the duchess.
And he is a fictional person, but the poet has decided to just make
up sort of an Italian painter-sounding name. Notice that the man talking, the duke, is
name-dropping here. He is saying, um, I know this artist,
I'm such a classy guy. I'm so rich and everything. I had her painted by this artist, who's name
you'll probably recognize. That kind of thing. So it shows a bit of snobbiness. He goes on
and says, "Will't please you sit and look at
her?" So he's asking his listener to sit down. That tells us there's two people here, a listener
and this duke, who's talking about, for some reason,
his previous wife. We'll find out what that reason is. He says, "I said / Fra Pandolf
by design," (on purpose) "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." This long section is the
duke saying, okay, everybody who sees this painting asks me who painted it, so that's
one of the things he's saying, but he also mentions this curtain
that he himself has to pull back in order to reveal the painting. So it's under his
control whether people see her or not. And that's not how it
was when she was living, as he will explain. And notice too that he says some people don't
dare ask him who painted. If they durst, that's the past-tense of dare. So some people are
too afraid of him to ask who painted it. And why is he a
scary person? Well, uh, I think we're starting to see that he at least is controlling. He
put the painting behind a curtain, and, um, we're going to
find out more about his personality as we go. "Sir, it was not / Her husband's presence
only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchess' cheek:" so he says, that spot of joy on her
cheek that you see in the painting, is caused not only
by my, her husband's presence. She likes other things too. Other things make her cheeks glow.
For example: And then he talks about the painter, who
might have said some compliments to her while the painting was being painted. And he doesn't
think that that should bring out this spot of joy in her cheek. He's annoyed with that,
and he says that she thinks maybe the painter's just being
courteous, just being sweet, but he doesn't like it, so he's criticizing that. "perhaps
/ Fra Pandolf chanced to say, 'Her mantle laps / Over my lady's wrist too much,'"
so her mantle, her cloak-thing, "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." Now he complains about
her more directly. "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." So he does not approve of the fact that she's easily impressed,
easily made happy. He thinks that she should be more
discerning, I guess, more discriminating. Or maybe he thinks that only his presence
should make her happy. And her looks shouldn't go everywhere. She should be looking at him.
She should be happy only with his presence. He's pretty
self-centered. Now he says, "Sir, 'twas all one!" meaning it was all the same to her.
"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." So he lists all these different things that make her happy:
the horse and the sunset. And he thinks that his presence should make her happier than
all those other things. He says "my favor at her breast,"
meaning his favor, as in his regard for her, his attention to her. The fact that he chose
her, that should make her happy. Not these other things. You
can see he's a pretty strict kind of husband, and he's mostly wanting to control her. Now
he admits, "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." So he thinks his heritage, his family name, is such a valuable thing,
that she should rank that the highest joy. She instead ranks it
the same as other people's gifts. He doesn't like that, does not approve of that? "Who�d
stoop to blame / This sort of trifling?" He admits that maybe some people call this a
trifling, unimportant matter, something that shouldn't
bother him. He says, well, I would like to tell her how she should behave. So he says,
"Even had you skill / In speech -- (which I have not)" he says,
"-- to make your will" (what you want) "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." This is a little bit complicated. He's saying,
even if I could tell her what she ought to do, I wouldn't stoop to do that. She should
know. She should know how to behave. I shouldn't have to tell her. He says that even if she
would let herself be taught, be lessoned, be given lessons,
he still wouldn't like it. Or even if she was cooperative, he still wouldn't like it.
He doesn't want to have to teach her. He wants her to know
how to behave, and to just, all on her own, value him more than anything else. Then he
says, "Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, / Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without / Much
the same smile?" So yes, she smiled at me, but I want
her smile for me to be special. She shouldn't smile at just everybody. It sounds like she's
pretty cheerful, a happy person. She smiles at people, she
thanks people, and he doesn't like it. He's that jealous, he's that controlling. Maybe
he's a little insecure. I don't know. The poem doesn't have enough evidence for that.
He certainly wants to keep a tight grip on her. He says, "This
grew;" so this behavior of hers grew, it got even worse. "I gave commands; / Then all smiles
stopped together." So this sinister reveals that he has
had her killed. He gave commands, and her smiles stopped altogether. "There she stands
/ As if alive." So now think about the audience, this guy who's listening to the duke. He must
be kind of freaked out by now. And the duke says to him,
"Will't please you rise?" So let's stand up now. "We'll meet / The company below
then." Okay, so now he's giving us a little more information.
"We'll meet the company below" means that they've been upstairs. Now they're going to
go downstairs, probably to the main floor. We're going to meet the company, meaning he
has company, he has guests. So we'll meet that whole group of
people downstairs. And now we're going to find out why this man was even shown the painting,
why the duke has even been going on like this. He says,
"The Count your master's known munificence / Is ample warrant that no just pretence / Of
mine for dowry will be disallowed;" so he says, the Count is your master. So now we
understand that he's been talking to this representative of the
Count. So this man works for the Count, and the Count is, um, going to offer his daughter
in marraige to this duke. So this duke wants to marry the
Count's daughter, and he says that the dowry better be good. Now the dowry is a sum of
money or valuables that are given with the bride in marriage. Because the bride, of course,
being unable to support herself in this time period, will
cost him money to house and clothe and have all her life. So the father will give this
extra wealth for taking care of the woman. Um, the new duchess.
He says, a little arm-twisting line here, when he says, oh, your Count has munificence.
That means he's known to be a grand and gracious man, and of course he'll offer plenty of money
for the dowry, won't he? So this man is controlling,
not only with women, but also he wants this Count to put enough money into the dowry.
He wants to control the Count a little bit too. "Though his
fair daughter's self, as I avowed / At starting, is my object." He says, of course, what I
want is the daughter, not just the money, but, you know, of course it will be a good
dowry, won't it? "Nay, we'll go / Together down, sir," he
says. So apparently this listener has started down the stairs, and the duke says, wait,
stop, we'll go together. So now the duke is controlling this guy.
He seems to just want to micromanage everybody. So don't go yet, I'm coming, let's go down
together. The last couple lines, he says, "Notice Neptune, though, / Taming a sea-horse,
thought a rarity, / Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!" So this means that
he's pointing out a piece of art, a bronze sculpture that
this artist, Claus of Innsbruck, which is a fictitious name. Again the poet wants it
to sound like a plausible name for a sculptor. Again, the duke is name-dropping, like, oh,
I'm sure you've heard of this sculptor, and I got him to cast
this piece of art for me. And notice what the art is. It's the king of the sea, Neptune,
is taming a seahorse. Taming is exactly what this duke
keeps trying to do to his duchesses, to other people. He wants to control them, guide them,
train them to behave the way he likes, so that's an appropriate image to have in his
house. He's also pointing out how he likes to possess pretty
things. So he has the painting, he has the sculpture, now he wants this new duchess.
He seems possessive here, not just a guy who likes art, but a
man who wants to possess it, and especially with the duchess, wants to control her. I'm
also going to mention that poet has accomplished something quite interesting here. We see that
this whole talk was not just for the sake of chit-chat.
This was a threat. We understand this character, this duke, to be making a threat, because
he says, if this new duchess doesn't behave, she's going
to end up like the last duchess, my previous duchess, who's here on the wall as if she's
alive, but we know what happened to her. So the poet has managed to hide this information,
and yet reveal it at the same time, making the duke
into this sinister character who is going to get what he wants one way or another. So
the psychology is the cool thing about this poem. We can also
point out some technical stuff, like the fact that every single line has ten syllables,
or at least, I didn't count them all, but that's the pattern of most lines, have ten
syllables. There's a rhyme pattern as well. I didn't emphasize
the rhyming parts, but we have, I gave commands, there she stands. There are sets of twos throughout,
couplets that rhyme. So Robert Browning has done
a technical feat here, but more impressive to me is the psychological feat. He managed
to paint the picture of this wierd, murderous, controlling, possessive husband. And that
is scary and creepy, so- so I think that's the effect that
Browning was going for. I hope you enjoyed exploring this poem with me, and you'll join
me for another video sometime.