My own interpretation is to read “said” as “I requested” or “I demanded”. Again the theme is dominance, the Roman god of the sea managing to control the tiny sea-horse, just as the duke controls the picture by being the only one allowed to move the curtain.By mentioning the name of Claus of Innsbruck the duke is showing that he's really in it for the money and prestige. So long as you afford to others the dignity and respect for life and liberty you would afford yourself, it doesn't matter to me where you're from, what language you speak or what truth you believe in. After all, despite the grandiloquence of the statue, a seahorse is a tiny little creature and if it needs to be tamed before it can be ridden, that doesn’t say much for the Neptune riding it.
Her smile was indiscriminate, and that was intolerable to a man with a 900 year old namesake. His poems are published online and in print.It is a powerful piece of psychological poetry, formed in rhyming couplets (heroic couplets) in a single long stanza, and is one of the best examples of Browning's talent for developing character in a persona.Over the years, since its first publication in 1842 in Dramatic Lyrics, many have questioned the character of the fictional speaker, loosely based on a historical figure, the duke of Ferrara.
Eleven years is a long time to “cease all smiles.’ It is difficult to fit this situation into the framework of Fair enough.
the annotation: lines 1-3.
With a kind of nervous obsequiousness, he “repeats” his statement (as though seeking reassurance) that the emissary’s master, the Count, won’t find any pretense to disallow (lessen or reject) the Duke’s Claus of Innsbruck is another fictional character. [All this is to say: Take the identities of the Duke and Duchess with a The old Ducal Palace.
Deliberate use of Looking as if she were alive. He is variously described as:Browning is known to have researched into certain aspects of Renaissance Italy, studying well known figures of the time to help with his poetic endeavours.
And grew.He asks the listener to get up. After displaying the portrait, the Duke gets down to business. I use the same color code in all of my scansions. In other words, she will only smile with his permission (when he has pulled back the curtain). The emissary has presumably asked into the striking depth and passion of the portrait. “Will’t please you sit and look at her?” he asks.The next line is one that gives many readers trouble.
One imagines the Duke’s internal conversation:He chose the skill of Frà Pandolf “by design” knowing that no stranger would ever read “that pictured countenance” without wondering at the “depth and passion of [her] earnest glance” – something Frà Pandolf alone, it seems, was capable of. 'My Last Duchess' is set in the Italian Renaissance and focuses on a controlling and possibly insane Duke - how can that possibly link to the poet's own life? “He replied meditatively,” says Corson, “‘Yes, I meant that the commands were that she be put to death.’ Then, after a pause, he added, with a characteristic dash of expression, and as if the thought had just started in his mind. Frà Pandolf has done his job. The Duke’s desire to fix the behavior of his wives could be said to parallel Victorian society’s obsession with individual behavior and reputation. What sort of a man have we here?
He answered: “To have some occasion for telling the story, and illustrating part of it…”Much of the rest of the monologue, as far as the Duke is concerned, is the “illustration” for why he chose Frà Pandolf. At the outset, Friedland rhetorically states: “Hence we have every justification for assuming that Browning joined the word The obvious rejoinder is: OK, then why didn’t Browning entitle the poem “In any event, it is difficult to believe that Alfonso was so rash as to poison the young daughter of the powerful Cosimo, his near neighbor and a man not to be trifled with.”“How was her death occasioned? I’m not going to attempt it, except to say that the topic fills books. As he increasingly familiarized himself with the history of Ferrara (the place) in the course of writing other poems, he might have seen resemblances to real historical figures or, more likely, that the events of When the poem was first published Browning cannot have expected his readers to associate it with any particular Duke and Duchess, or with any particular city. It supports the notion that Browning was less interested in Here’s how I read the the facts.