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Browning'S Witless Duke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

B. R. Jerman
B. R. Jerman*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

Anumber of critics who have written on Browning believe that the Duke's little chat with the emissary of the Count in “My Last Duchess” constitutes a clever man's instructions as to the sort of behavior he expects of his next wife. Mrs. Sutherland Orr, for example, says that the Duke's “comments on the countenance of his last Duchess plailnly state what he will expect of her successor.” Others, like Edward Berdoe, S. S. Curry, Ethel C. Mayne, William Lyon Phelps, and Ina B. Sessions, not to mention numerous editors and anthologists, find a similar purpose in the Duke's monologue. Although Berdoe's reading of the poem (p. 282) is perhaps not typical, it summarizes what the other critics have in mind: “When the Duke said ‘Fra Pandolf’ by design, he desired to impress on the envoy, and his master the Count, the sort of behavior he expected from the woman he was about to marry. He intimated that he would tolerate no rivals for his next wife's smiles. When he begs his guest to ‘Notice Neptune—taming a sea horse,‘ he further intimated how he had tamed and killed his last duchess. All this was to convey to the envoy, and through him to the lady, that he demanded in his new wife the concentration of her whole being on himself, and the utmost devotion to his will.” Browning himself is often quoted in support of at least the first part of this argument. Asked what the Duke meant by the words “by design,” the poet answered briefly but equivocally, “To have some occasion for telling the story, and illustrating part of it.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , June 1957 , pp. 488 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

Note 1 in page 488 See William C. DeVane, A Browning Handbook (New York, 1955), pp. 102–103, 107–109, for details of publication. First entitled “Italy,” the poem is said to catch the temper of the Italian Renaissance. Edward Dowden, The Life of Robert Browning (London, 1915), p. 79, observes that “the Duke is Italian of Renaissance days; insensible in his egoistic pride to the beautiful humanity before him.” Pearl Hogrefe, Browning and Italian Art and Artists (Lawrence, Kans., 1914), p. 19, says that the poem sums up “the entire decadent Renaissance attitude toward art so fully that no historical names could improve it.

Note 2 in page 488 A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning (London, 1939), p. 251.

Note 3 in page 488 The Browning Cyclopaedia (London, 1892), p. 282; Browning and the Dramatic Monologue (Boston, 1908), p. 98; Browning's Heroines (London, 1913), pp. 173–174; Robert Browning (Indianapolis, 1932), p. 175; “The Dramatic Monologue,” PMLA, LXII (1947), 510. It should be clear that I have not made a collection here of the variant interpretations of “My Last Duchess.” I cite only a handful to illustrate what seems to be the prevailing interpretation of the poem, however.

Note 4 in page 488 A representative few are Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, edd. The Complete Works of Robert Browning (New York, 1901), iv, 384; William H. Rogers, ed. The Best of Browning (New York, 1942), pp. 518-519; James Stephens, Edwin L. Beck, and Royall H. Snow, edd. Victorian and Later English Poets (New York, 1937), p. 1198; R. R. Kirk and R. P. McCutcheon, edd. An Introduction lo the Study of Poetry (New York, 1934), p. 20; Cleanth Brooks, John P. Purser, and Robert Penn Warren, edd. An Approach to Literature (New York, 1952), p. 293.

Note 5 in page 489 See A. Allen Brockington, “Robert Browning's Answers to Questions Concerning Some of his Poems,” Cornhill Mag., xxxvi (1914), 316-318. On 22 Feb. 1889 Browning answered in writing the queries put to him by a member of The Day's End Club of Exeter, a literary group studying contemporary writers. The queries dealt with not only “My Last Duchess,” but also “In a Gondola,” “Earth's Immortalities,” and “Parting at Morning.” Brockington reprints this information in his Browning and the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1932), pp. 117–118.

Note 6 in page 489 On his reticence, see Richard D. Altick, “The Private Life of Robert Browning,” Yale Rev., XLI (1951), 247–262.

Note 7 in page 489 Such statements abound in Browning scholarship, perhaps reinforcing the often repeated idea that what a poet has to say about his work is frequently not the most revealing word on the subject. One of Browning's comments on “My Last Duchess” should illustrate the poet's point, however. An American professor once asked him if the Duke's commands were that the Duchess be killed. Browning “made no reply, for a moment, and then said, meditatively, ‘Yes, I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death.’ And then, after a pause, he added, with a characteristic dash of expression, and as if the thought had just started in his mind, ‘Or he might have had her shut up in a convent’.” This interviewer wisely points out that when Browning wrote the poem he most likely had not thought out exactly what the commands were. His art purpose was satisfied, nevertheless, in having the smiles stopped, whatever the method. See Hiram Corson, An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry (Boston, 1886), pp. vii–viii.

Note 8 in page 489 Letter to W. G. Kingsland, dated 27 Nov. 1868 in Letters of Robert Browning, ed. Thurman L. Hood (New Haven, 1933), pp. 128–129.

Note 9 in page 490 Louis S. Friedland, “Ferrara and My Last Duchess,” SP, xxxiii (1936), 656–684, convincingly establishes the Duke as Alfonso n, 5th Duke of Ferrara (1553–98); the Duchess as the daughter of Cosimo I de Medici, the Duke of Florence; the Count as the Count of Tyrol; the envoy as possibly one Nikolaus Madruz of Innsbruck, etc. It is useless to suppose that Browning had all of these people in mind as the actual personages in the poem. Nevertheless, since he located the poem in Ferrara, there is every reason to believe that he meant the speaker to be the Duke of Ferrara and not some other Italian grandee, as John D. Rea suggests in “ ‘My Last Duchess’,” SP, xxix (1932), 120–122. If the envoy is not patterned after Madruz, Browning surely intended him to be an intelligent and respected commoner, say, a scholarly diplomatist, and not an ordinary servant, as some readers might believe him to be.

Note 10 in page 490 Elizabeth Nitchie, “Browning's ‘Duchess’,” Essays in Criticism, iii (1953), 475–476, once again calls attention to “my” in the title and the first line of the poem as being significantly in keeping with the Duke's pride of possession. We may add that a reading of the poem aloud with increased emphasis on the personal pronouns should reveal this important aspect of the Duke's character.

Note 11 in page 491 One can hardly resist the temptation to agree that “It was the deadly monotony [of her smile] that got on the man's nerves.” See Margaret H. Bates, Browning Critiques (Chicago, 1921), p. 84, for this spirited note. Browning told The Day's End Club (q.v.) that the Duke used her shallowness “As an excuse—mainly to himself—for taking revenge on one who had unwittingly wounded his absurdly pretentious vanity, by failing to recognise his superiority in even the most trifling matters.”

Note 12 in page 493 H. V. Routh, Towards the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Eng., 1937), p. 107.