Mode and Tone in "My Last Duchess"

We view he is artful and supreme when he expressed that only he is in charge of who now sees his former wife's countenance, "?since none puts by / The render I have drawn for you" ( brownnessing 1842, 9-10). The Duke has put a mantlepiece everywhere his short wife's portrait and only he reveals it when and to whom he choose.

We see that the Duke is materialistic through Browning's use of his references to the things that brought a make a face to the dead Duchess' lips. She took great pleasure and smiled heartily at the "dropping of daylight in the West", "the bough of cherries", and her "white mule" (Browning 1842, 26-28). We see that the Duke is materialistic and cannot appreciate his wife's pleasure in such things as a sunset or cherry bough when he proclaims in reference to such natural phenomena, "?as if she ranked / My put of a nine-hundred-years-old name / With anybody's gift" (Browning 1842, 32-34). Thus through playscript choice and speech, the poet shows the irony between the Duke's impression of himself and the reader's perceptions of him. Perrine (1982) defines irony as "saying the opposite of what one means" (98).

Written in AABB couplets and iambic pentameter, the song also uses rhythm to reveal a good deal about the vocalizer's persona. The AABB rhyme and the iambic pentameter copy the flow of music or melody. The use of run-ons and end moolah also mimics music. As Ciardi (1959) main

The speaker often pauses during the poem, and by the use of what is called caesura we see the Duke's controlling nature. through and through the rhythm and structure of the poem we are again reminded of the Duke's controlling and manipulative personality, despite his protestations that he is an ab employ and misused husband. He speaks as if he is performing a dramatic monologue, so far though he is in the company of another. Further, the structure of the poem illustrates the speaker's controlling nature. He often directs or gives orders to the person to whom he is public speaking like "Will't please you sit", "Will't please you trick up", and "Nay, we'll go / Together down, sir" (Browning 1842, 5, 47, 53-54).

The structure of the poem also is used to show that the speaker may have feelings of anxiety everywhere the knowledge that he murdered his former wife. Browning uses a technique known as enjambment, in which the lines run over each other. He uses this most notably when the speaker is referring to his dead wife, as if such talk makes him quite nervous, "Looking as if she were alive. I call / That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's turn over / Worked busily a day, and there she stands" (Browning 1842, 2-4). The speaker against demonstrates his controlling and manipulative behavior when, near the end of the poem, the person to whom he is speaking attempts to go down the stairs but the speaker insists he will accompany him.

My Last Duchess, Analysis. Classic Literature. Viewed on Apr 12, 2004: hypertext transfer protocol://classiclit.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm ?site=http%3A%2F%2Fbarney.gonzaga.edu%2F%7Ejoliver%2Fmylastduchess1.htm

Perrine, L. (1982). Sound and backbone: An Introduction to Poetry, (Sixth Edition). New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Kennedy, X. J. (1982). An Introduction to Poetry, (Fifth Edition). Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Company.

tains, "The lines seem to be not simply quantities of notes, but circumspect and sufficient musical phrases: stop them anywhere short of thei
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