First off, thanks for giving my essay a look over. I really appreciate any help I might get. This essay is due Thursday, yeah, I realize, that leaves me with a day to finish off all my thoughts and improve this rough draft. That's my bad for letting things pile up. The essay is for an honors 10th grade class. Sophomore in highschool. I realize my grammar is probably offensive to English teachers, and for that I apologize. I'm not looking for grammatical corrections, though those would be welcome if you're feeling daring, so much as general suggestions to improve the content of my essay. I'm new to poetry explication, but even so I'm not particularly pleased with the outcome of this rough draft, so if you could give me some suggestions that'd be great.(Also, I'll be posting as a registered member just as soon as I get the email.)

In dramatic poetry, the speaker in the poem relates a story through his own recollections of the events. The bias the speaker imposes on the story can often make for a sinister and layered story that the reader or listener must pick through to grasp the full meaning of the poem. Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is such a dramatic poem, for its speaker, the Duke of an Italian city, is telling the story of his last wife, and her portrait which is painted on the wall, to a servant of the man whose daughter the Duke wishes to take as his second wife. As the Duke speaks on, the listener and the reader has to unravel the hidden meanings behind the Duke’s words to understand the true story of “My Last Duchess.”
The beginning of the poem is significant for what it reveals about the Duke and the rest of the poem. The first four words in particular “That’s my last Duchess” hold a great deal of importance for the poem. ‘That’s’ is a very conversational word that helps to set up “My Last Duchess” as a dramatic poem. The fact that Browning also uses enjambment, or the practice of having the sentences run over multiple lines and verses to create a conversational effect, also helps the reader realize that the poem is a dramatic poem. The phrase ‘My last Duchess’ shows that the Duke holds a sort of ownership for his old wife by use of the word my, and ‘last Duchess’ shows a sort of callous disregard for wives and love in general, as the Duke seems to indicate that she was an older wife, and that he now has another or is about to get another, and it also sounds like the Duke believes that wives are disposable and replaceable commodities. The next few lines says that the painting, which the Duke calls a wonder, was painted by the fictitious artist Fra Pandolf, and that the painting is something the Duke enjoys showing to strangers, for he says “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).” It almost seems like the Duke likes to brag about the portrait and the tell the dark story it holds for him to strangers and friends, as he admits he has told the story to strangers, and that he alone is allowed to reveal this piece of art to those in the hall. Lines 13-21 tell how the Duke believes the conversation would go between his last wife and the artist, and how the flattery and courtesy of the artist would have caused a spot of joy, or a blush, to appear in the Duchess’s face. By line 21 the introduction material to the poem is over, and the poet has established the Duke as the narrator of the poem with a semi-callous attitude towards his last wife.
After line 21, the poem becomes more cynical as the narrator discusses the inappropriate behavior of his last duchess. The listener has two stories to follow, the tale the Duke tells the reader about his wife, and the true story of how the Duchess died that the listener must decipher from the cryptic words of the Duke. It is important to note that the story is being told by the Duke alone, which makes the information provided questionably accurate at best, as it will be spoken from the Duke’s perspective and memory alone. On lines 21 into 22 “She had a heart-how shall I say?- too soon made glad”, the Duke begins to use euphemism, or the practice of substituting a more tactful phrase for what might an offensive word choice. The Duke realizes that he could not call his last Duchess a horrible flirt or offensively affectionate in polite company, so he instead says she had a heart too soon made glad to keep from offending the listener. Lines 23-24 “Too easily impressed; she liked wate’er/ she looked on, and her looks went everywhere” indicate that the Duke believed she was an improper flirt, for he is essentially saying that she liked anything, and anyone, she looked upon, and not just he. In lines 25-30, the Duke says that she thanked all men the same way for the same gift, be it the Duke himself and how he favored her with his gifts and his name, a white mule she rode, and the sunset. They were all equal in the way that she responded with a blush and happiness. When the Duke says on lines 31-34 “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” the reader is able to surmise that the Duke believes she should treat the gifts he has bestowed upon her, namely that of marriage into royalty, with more importance than those of other men. His tone suggests that he is actually quite offended that she would treat him and his gifts in this fashion. The Duke later says “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’”(Lines 34-39) which shows that he would like to reprimand her for her actions, but lines 42 into 43 “But e’en then would be some stooping; and I choose/ Never to stoop” indicate that the Duke believes he is too good to lower himself to such a level as to criticize his own wife, whom he expects to behave without having to be reprimanded.
The last third of the poem reveals an even darker side to the Duke’s jealous and callous personality. The duke alludes to the fact that he believes his last Duchess favored him as much as any man when he says “Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,/ whene’er I passed her; but who passed without/ much the same smile?”(Lines 43-44) The Duke immediately follows this question with “This grew; I gave commands;/ Then all smiles stopped together.”(Lines 45-46) The listener might at first think that the phrase “I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together” was meant to mean something to the effects of “I told her what to do to please me, and she stopped respecting and loving me” but the listener would quickly realize that there was a darker meaning behind the words. At this point in the poem, the listener knows that the Duke’s last wife is dead, for divorce was unheard of in that time period, and that the Duke was most displeased with her flirtatious attitude and how she seemed to disregard the gifts that he had given her. Knowing that the wife had died mysteriously, it would hardly be a stretch for our listener to deduce that the words “I gave commands” was actually a euphemism for “I hired an assassin.” This thinly veiled threat of violence against his wives actually makes sense when one remembers that the Duke is conversing with a servant of the Count, the man whose daughter the Duke wishes to take as his second Duchess. The reader of the poem knows that the man listening to the Duke is a servant of the Count because lines 47-53 deal with the Duke asking the man he is with to rise and follow him downstairs so that they might converse with the Count, the generous master of the listener. The Duke is doing his best to convince the servant that the girl he plans on marrying better be a tamed woman as he is not likely to treat a second loose wife any better than the first. In this way, the Duke is using the story of how he hired an assassin to kill his last wife because she was ungrateful to make sure both dowry and bride are to his liking. The macabre story of the Duke ends with the final three lines of “My Last Duchess” “Notice Neptune, though,/ Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,/ which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!”(Lines 54-56) These last three lines are important in that the statue of Neptune taming the wild sea-horse is most likely meant to symbolize the Duke’s own tendencies for dominating and controlling those he has relations with.
The hidden meanings and the questionable information provided in “My Last Duchess” makes the poem harder to understand, requiring the reader to carefully read and analyze all possible meanings of Browning’s words. Browning did a masterful job of creating a morbid story from the few facts concerning the real Duke of Ferrara and of portraying the Duke as a sly, controlling, and callous man. Although all dramatic poems have a sense of intrigue caused by the biases of the speaker, “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning will most likely continue to be used world-wide for the rich, layered story and characters he has created off of the actual life of the Duke of Ferrara.