“My Last Duchess” is a dramatic monologue that first appeared as part of Robert Browning’s landmark collection of 1842, Dramatic Lyrics. Browning was particularly fascinated with abnormal psychologies, and the speakers in his dramatic monologues tend to be rather sinister. In the case of “My Last Duchess,” the speaker is a historical figure: Alfonso II, the duke of Ferrara. Alfonso’s first wife, Lucrezia, was a young woman who died just three years into their marriage, after which Alfonso negotiated a new marriage. In Browning’s poem, the Duke  addresses an emissary who has been sent to his palace in Italy to discuss terms for this new marriage. While on the way to the negotiating table, the Duke pauses before a portrait of his late wife, pulls back the curtain concealing it, and invites the emissary to look. The Duke begins by boasting that a famous (but imaginary) painter made the portrait. As he continues to speak, he implies that he had her killed for being excessively flirtatious. But even though he used his political power to silence her, she continues to exert emotional control by haunting him from the portrait, where she sits “looking as if she were alive” (line 2).

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