A dramatic monologue is a poem in which a single speaker who is not
the poet recites the entire poem at a critical moment. The speaker
has a listener within the poem, but the reader of the poem is also one
of the speakers listeners. In a dramatic monologue, the reader learns
about the speaker's character from what the speaker says. Robert
Browning is said to have perfected this form of writing. One of his
most famous dramatic monologues is "My Last Duchess."

The speaker in the poem is an Italian duke who ordered the murder of
his wife and is at the offset of the poem showing off the portrait to
his future son-in-law. Browning lets the reader know in a roundabout
way that the duke only shows the portrait of his late wife to select
strangers. In doing this, the speaker is able to show off his......

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Title: My Last Duchess
Approximate Word Count: 1340
Approximate Pages: 6 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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