A Comparison of the Dramatic Monologues of Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess by Robert Browning

A Comparison of the Dramatic Monologues of Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess by Robert Browning

Robert Browning (1812-89) was, with Alfred Lord Tennyson, one of the

two most celebrated of Victorian poets. His father was a bank clerk,

and Browning educated himself by reading in the family library. He

published many verse dramas and dramatic monologues (poems, like My

Last Duchess, in which a single character speaks to the reader),

notably the collections Men and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae

(1864). His greatest success came in 1868 with The Ring and the Book -

a verse narrative in twelve books, spoken by a range of different

characters. In her lifetime his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(1806-61) was more famous. She was a semi-invalid, following an

accident in her teens. In 1846 she and Robert ran away from her father

(who tried to control her) and eloped to Italy

Two of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues are 'Porphyria's Lover'

and 'My Last Duchess' in both of these monologues are from the view of

a partner in a relationship where they are jealous of their lovers and

them being with other men. In 'Porphyria's Lover', the speaker is

Porphyria's lover, he is talking to himself, and in 'My Last Duchess'

the Duke is the speaker and he is talking to a servant.

The Duke is a very proud man, being a Duke he is higher than working

class, and his family goes back for generations 'My gift of

nine-hundred-years old name' he thinks that the duchess should have

been very proud to be marrying in to his family.

Porphyria's Lover is a very possessive, love poems often express the

wish that time would stand still, Porphyria's lov...

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...what the painter

said that would cause the 'joy into the duchesses cheek'. The duke

does not object to the artist's showing such courtesy. But he thinks

his wife should be more serious and not so easily impressed. The

poem's ending recalls its beginning as the duke points out another

treasure. A bronze sculpture of Neptune taming a sea horse. This is

like the start of the poem. But it is also quite unlike it, Frà

Pandolf's masterpiece is a portrait of a real person, to whom the duke

was married, yet she is never named, only identified by her relation

to the duke.

The poem is in one long stanza because mono means one, and a monologue

is a long conversation. It is also so it is an outburst, because the

speaker had not thought about his action just acted with out thinking,

the poet wanted the reader to realise this.