This poem written by the British author Robert Browning engages readers on a couple of different levels through the use of irony, repetition, and symbolism. Narrated by the Duke of Ferrara readers follow along as he negotiates with an agent to marry a niece of the Count of Tyrol. By taking a look at a few crucial formal attributes of this passage from the poem, I will analyze its overall structure and how the passage contributes to the larger goal of the poem which is to be swept away by the Duke’s charm that we overlook the fact that he is somewhat involved in the death of his last wife.
Irony is the main literary device of this poem and can be observed in the passage I chose to analyze, which is in lines 32-45 on page 329. Objectively, it might be easy for readers to write the Duke off as a monster, since he reveals in line 45 that he may have had her killed, but his use of language is engaging enough that his intended audience (the agent) and Browning’s audience (the reader) are charmed by him.
For example, in line 34 he talks about how he couldn’t “lower” himself to tell the Duchess that she upset him: “Who’d stoop to blame this sort of trifling? Even had your skill in speech–which I have not–to make your will quite clear to such as one”. The duke asks a rhetorical question in order to manipulate his listener to agree with him that it would be “stooping” to address the duchess directly about her behavior and claims he doesn’t have the “skill in speech” to do it, yet he’s speaking skillfully while claiming he lacks said skills. The repetition of the Duke insisting he will never “stoop” is used to emphasize how much he considers himself to be on a high social pedestal. However, despite his arrogance, he speaks with such beautiful diction to engage his listener.
127 our experts are availableright now
Another major theme of the Duke is his excessive demand for control, which comes across as his defining characteristic. In lines 43-46 he basically admits to having his wife murdered because she did not reserve her smiles only for him, but instead shared them with anyone she came in contact with. Not only does the Duke wish to control his next wife, but he also exerts a lot of control over the “story” to the agent which reveals an ironic disconnect. For example, in this passage Browning represents the Duke’s control over the story by using enjambment mixed into the regular meter. The thrown in enjambment works to remind the reader that the Duke will attempt to control everything in his power, including the rhyme scheme of his dramatic monologue to the agent.
The tone of this passage is consistent to the tone of the entirety of the poem in which the Duke comes across as a witty guy who is aware that he’s witty because it is written in iambic pentameter, so it has the calculated flow he was going for, and has several dramatic qualities that we see him as pronouncing his self-importance to the agent. Overcome with the ideals of power and prestige, the Duke cannot understand how his last Duchess could fail to give her attention only to him. To the Duke, the Duchess and everything about her is just another one of his possessions. For example, in lines 33-34 the Duke refers to his union with his last duchess through figures of speech, calling their marriage the “gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name” because he is bestowing her with a valuable, high-class status. He even considers the Duchesses “smiles” as if they were another part of his collector’s items, but the fact that she smiles at anyone insults him and therefore makes her smiles now worthless to him.
As far as the structure of this poem is concerned, it is very lyrical. The way the Duke describes the things immediately around him such as the painting and the way he tells the unseen auditor about his intimate relationship with the Duchesses is all very vivid. Not only are the images clearly seen in the reader’s head, the rhyme scheme of the poem matches up nicely with the light, sing-song way the Duke talks about the Duchess. Browning also uses a lot of run-on sentences but keeps most of them hanging or unclosed to show that the Duke consistently contradictions himself, creating tension in the rhythm. By making the Duke so charming, Browning wants readers to like the Duke despite the way he is able to manipulate language so that even when he mentions murdering his ex-wife we are too charmed by the fun and casual way he speaks.
In conclusion, the larger goal of the work is to get readers to ignore the amoral ways of the protagonist and instead be swept away by his speech. Browning accomplishes this, even in the small passage that I have analyzed, in a couple of ways. One of which is by making Browning’s intended audience (the reader) to feel sympathy for him that his ex-wife would do so much as smile at other men, but also to make the Duke’s intended audience (the agent) to pass on the message to his future wife that he has the power to do the same thing he did to his last duchess to her if she doesn’t obey him.
To further illustrate my point, take lines 32-35 of the passage where the Duke says the following: “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?” He asks that rhetorical question to trick the unseen audience and reader into agreeing with him that it would have been stooping to talk to the Duchess about the way she did not give him all of her attention. “Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whenever I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile?” our protagonist says in lines 43-45, and he says this to make the audience feel bad for him, as if he really was the victim of an unfaithful wife. However, because he speaks in such a light-hearted way, the following lines (45-47) he reveals he may have had her murdered and it goes completely unnoticed: “I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands as if alive.”
Those last lines can be argued to serve as some sort of threat. The Duke may have said it to the agent in order to get him to spread the word to the Duke’s next wife; the threat being that if he fails to have full control over her that he could possibly have her murdered, as well. Overall, this passage I have analyzed is potent and reveals crucial aspects of the Duke’s personality. Instead of presenting his last duchess as an unfaithful life partner through his perspective, readers actually pick up on the fragile insecurities of the Duke that he wanted to fool his audience into thinking does not exist. However, the Duke has become a master at how to manipulate or engage his listeners, distracting them with his charm, so those fragile insecurities he possesses may never be noticed.
