The Dramatic Monologue: Robert Browning

Although the Victorian poet Robert Browning was not the first poet to use the form of the dramatic
monologue, he is generally considered to have perfected the form. The form developed as a type of
parallel to the stage, to the play as a dramatic presentation.

Dramatic monologues have the following characteristics:

1. A single person, who is not the poet, utters the whole poem in a specific situation at a critical
moment. ( In ‘My Last Duchess’, the Duke is negotiating with an emissary for a second wife.)
2. This person addresses and interacts with one or more other people, but we know of the
auditor’s presence and what they say and do only from clues in the discourse of the single
speaker. These silent characters, acknowledged or not, derive their ‘life’ from the speaker.
Usually our judgment of the silent auditor differs from the way the speaker perceives them.
The other figure, though he or she does not speak, is necessary to our understanding of the
monologue.
3. The monologue is organized so that its focus is on the temperament or character that the
dramatic speaker unintentionally reveals in the course of what he says. Character revelation
is far more important than action in this type of poem. (This last point, and the first, are
what sets the dramatic monologue apart from the dramatic lyric. The focus of the dramatic
monologue is on the character of the speaker not on the argument. (Compare this with The
Good Morrow for example where the focus is on the ingenious argument.) T S Eliot’s ‘The
Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’, with its focus on the character and temperament of the
speaker not his argument, is clearly a dramatic monologue. The climax does not result from
action but from a progressive revelation of the speaker’s psychological and emotional
complexities. Eliot’s innovation is, among others, that there is clearly no identified silent
figure. This poem is set for study in Year 12.)
4. In order to reveal the essence of the speaker’s character, his essential being, the poet
chooses an episode that characterises that being. It often begins abruptly (media res) and
ends without a definitive conclusion-the action is not the focus. It is a brief segment of the
speaker/character’s life that is revealing, allowing the reader to understand him clearly
5. Irony is an inherent characteristic. Almost every dramatic monologue reveals something that
the speaker does not intend to reveal or does not understand about himself. There is a
widening discrepancy between how the speaker sees himself and how we the readers
understand him.
6. In order to make an impact, the dramatic monologue depends on the reader’s deductive
ability. We should be able to make a number of inferences, mostly about character, from the
monologue.
7. Often, though not always, we are invited to engage in a sympathetic understanding with the
speaker in the poem. (Not, however, in the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning!)
8. The dramatic monologue differs from the soliloquy. In Shakespeare’s plays, there is self-
consciously working through his issues and problems. In dramatic monologues the speaker is
concerned with directing his attention outwards; the soliloquist is concerned with analysis of
self, the speaker in a dramatic monologue makes no such attempt; a soliloquist is not
unintentionally revealing something about himself whereas the effect of the dramatic
monologue lies in the disparity between what the speaker knowingly reveals and what he
unwittingly discloses; a soliloquy is part of the action and advances the plot. The dramatic
monologue is not part of any plot.
The poem ‘My Last Duchess’ fulfils all the requirements of a dramatic monologue.

Although unnamed, the Duke closely resembles Alfonso 11, fifth and last Duke of Ferrera,
1533-97. He took a young wife, Lucrezi (14 years old) the daughter of Cosimo! De Medici,
Duke of Florence. In 1561 she dies under mysterious circumstances. Her family were
comparative upstarts, the name being only a few generations old at the time.
Ferrera was a town in Northern Italy ruled by the Dukes of Este, renowned for their cruelty.
Browning, like many of his time, was interested in the Renaissance period, a period
frequently compared to Victorian England for its vigour and enterprise. The painter in the
poem, the monk Fra Pandolf is fictitious. Claus of Innsbruck is also a fictitious painter.
The Duke in the poem is entertaining the emissary from a neighbouring Count whose
daughter he is thinking of marrying (now that his first wife is dead)-provided the dowry is
sufficient, as he makes abundantly clear. The delayed revelation of what happened to his
first wife is what makes the poem particularly compelling.

Sources:
Poetry Examined by Adib Khan, 1983, Heinemann Educational Australia
My Last Duchess
FERRARA
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 pretense
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 c, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Analysis:
1. One interpretation of this poem is that the Duke is mad, that the whole story of his
marriage is a fantasy. Keep in mind that the poem requires that its reader has some
deductive powers and can pick up inferences, and also be aware that the poem is open
to interpretation. Is there anything in the movement of the poem, or the speaker’s
language, that the Duke is, or is not mad?
2. What is a dilettante? Does this word describe the Duke in your opinion? Explain your
response.
3. What is the function in the poem of the portrait of his first wife, usually kept out of
public view, hanging on the wall, ‘as if she were alive’? What does it reveal about the
Duke’s nature?
4. What is ironic about the portrait that continues to irritate the Duke?
5. Can you identify the three major motives the Duke has for interviewing the emissary? All
of them are accomplished with great rhetorical skill. What do we learn of the Duke from
this?
6. Examine the moments where the Duke is clearly responding to a question or comment
made by the unheard emissary. What is the effect of this one-sided dialogue? Choose
two such moments in the play and explain the effect achieved.
7. How is language used to suggest marriage is a commercial transaction and women mere
possessions to be bargained away?
8. How do react to the Duke as a person? Examine his character with reference to his
language, his characterization of his wife, and his own pretensions. Consider the
complexity of the character in your response and what it reveals to us about human
nature. (eg he loves art and yet has no qualms in having his wife killed.) Does this
challenge your assumptions about human nature?
9. What is the effect of the use of understatement in the abrupt statement ‘then all smiles
stopped together...’?
10. Some critics have said that it is unnatural for the Duke to betray himself so entirely to
the emissary who is there to negotiate a new marriage as to give the man the same
opportunity as we have been given to see his cold austerity and pride, let alone the
circumstances of the death of his first wife. What do you think of this criticism of the
poem?
11. Some readers, when asked to describe the rhyme in the poem, describe it as blank verse
(ie unrhymed) It is in fact written in a succession of rhyming couplets. What does this
suggest of Browning’s art?
12. Examine the way in which the Duke describes his first wife. What type of person does he
intend the listener to judge her to be, and how do we in fact regard her? What
techniques are used to achieve this dissonance? Eg. why is her love for her donkey
referred to?
13. In what way do the rhyming couplets suggest the emotional frigidity of the Duke? Can
you find other evidence of this quality in the poem?
14. Why did the Duke behave as he did to his wife? (see lines 22-46) What was the nature of
such behavior, in your view?
15. Do you agree with some critics who say that we have some sympathy for the Duke? Why
or why not?
16. There is an analogy relating to his first wife in the final three lines of the poem. Explain
this analogy.