my last duchess
robert browning
Published: 1842
Birth - Death: 1812 - 1889
Monarch: Victoria
Prime Minister: Robert Peel (Conservative)
Nationality: English
what is my last duchess about?
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The poem is set during the late Italian Renaissance.
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The poem is spoken by "Ferrara:", indicating that the speaker is most likely Alfonso II d'Este, the fifth Duke of Ferrara (1533–1598), who, at the age of 25, married Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici, the 14-year-old daughter of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Eleonora di Toledo.
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The Medici family was becoming the most powerful and wealthy family in Europe, during those times.
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Lucrezia was not well educated, (Alfonso II d'Este's remark regarding his gift of a "nine-hundred-years-old name" clearly indicates that he considered his bride beneath him socially).
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She came with a sizeable amount of money, and the couple married in 1558.
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He then abandoned her for two years before she died on 21 April 1561, at age 17. There was a strong suspicion of poisoning.
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The Duke then sought the hand of Barbara, eighth daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary and the sister of the Count of Tyrol, Ferdinand II. The count oversaw arranging the marriage and the leader of his group, Nikolaus Madruz, a native of Innsbruck, was his courier. Madruz is presumably the listener in the poem.
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Although the Duke is on his best behavior, the Duke of Ferrara demonstrates many sociopathic tendencies as he recalls the time he shared with his now-deceased Duchess.
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Even in death the Duke wished to hide her away behind the curtain where no other man could admire her beauty.
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The Duke then resumes an earlier conversation regarding wedding arrangements, and in passing points out another work of art, a bronze statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse by Claus of Innsbruck, so making his late wife another work of art.
who is robert browning?
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Robert Browning was a poet.
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Son of a clerk in the Bank of England in London, Browning received only a slight formal education, although his father gave him a grounding in Greek and Latin.
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He attended classes at the University of London but left after half a session.
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Browning’s first published work was Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession. It was attacked by John Stuart Mill who condemned him for revealing his emotions. This caused Browning to be determined to not expose his feelings in poetry ever again, instead being objective.
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In May 1845 he met Elizabeth Barrett where they discovered their love for each other.
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Barrett’s father, moreover, was a dominant and selfish man, jealously fond of his daughter, who in turn had come dependent on his love.
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When her doctors ordered her to Italy for her health and her father refused to allow her to go.
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The lovers, who had been meeting regularly, were forced to act. They were married (1846 – 1861) secretly in September 1846 and a week later they left for Pisa.
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In 1868–69 he published his greatest work, The Ring and the Book, based on the proceedings in a murder trial in Rome in 1698.
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While staying in Venice in 1889, Browning caught cold, became seriously ill, and died on December 12. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
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After his reading of Shelley, he is said to have briefly become an atheist. he is said to have admired Byron's poetry "as a Christian". Poems such as "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" seem to confirm this Christian faith, strengthened by his wife.
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He was an English poet and playwright who was a master of the dramatic monologue. His poems were known for irony, characterisation, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax (arrangement of words).
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He died on the 12th December 1889 in Italy.