Introduction and Thesis
‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning is a very famous and much-anthologized poem. It is a dramatic monologue written in rhyming iambic pentameters – that is to say the poet adopts the voice of someone else and speaks throughout as that person. It was first published in 1842 and is one of many dramatic monologues that Browning wrote. This poem is based on real historical events. Duke Alfonso II of Modena and Ferrara (1559 – 1597) married Lucrezia de Doctors and she died four years after the wedding in mysterious circumstances. This is the starting point for Browning’s poem. Victorian Britain was ...