What techniques are used in the poem My Last Duchess by Robert Browning?
My Last Duchess is a poem by Robert Browning, frequently anthologised as an example of the dramatic monologue. The poem is written in 28 rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter. The poem is preceded by the word Ferrara:, indicating that the speaker is most likely Alfonso II, fifth Duke of Ferrara (1533–1598) who, at the age of 25, married the 14-year-old Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici, the daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Eleonora di Toledo. “My Last Duchess” puts in the mouth of a Duke of Ferrara, a typical husband and art patron of the Renaissance, a description of his last wife, whose happy nature and universal kindliness were a perpetual affront to his exacting self-predominance, and whose suppression, by his command, has made the vacancy he is now, in his interview with the envoy for a new match, taking precaution to fill more acceptably. In an interview, Browning said, “I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death . . . Or he might have ha
