My Last Duchess Essay

Robert Brownings poem My Last Duchess, is a great poem about a very colorful character and his trials with jealously, control, and marriage. Throughout the poem the reader is able to gather that it is about a Duke who is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate the Dukes next marriage. As the Duke is entertaining the emissary, the he takes the opportunity to show a portrait of his late wife, or as the poem titles says his last duchess. The Duke upon showing the portrait, almost immediately begins to reminisce about her, and the reader begins to find that maybe the Duchess didn’t get such a happily ever after with the Duke. That being said, the poem is much more then just a story of a Duke reminiscing about his last duchess to a visitor, but a cautionary tale of what happens when someone (in this case the Duke) fails to control their jealousy. As mentioned, once the Duke shares the portrait of the Duchess with the emissary, he begins to reminisce about her. However, it’s not hard to gather through the text, that the Duke was highly jealous, and the Duchess appears to have met an untimely demise because of it. In the poem Browning gives, the first real feel for the Dukes jealousy when Browning writes “For calling up that sport of joy. She had / A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad” (lines 21-23). Within these lines the
As Browning writes, “Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, / —E’en then would be some stopping; and I choose / Never to stoop” (ll.41-43). It would appear here that the Duke would rather continue to be jealous of his wife's flirtation and wandering eye, then to just talk about it with her, because that would be considered stooping and that is something the Duke who is usually in high standing cannot even