Essay Database

OVERVIEW: This is probably Browning most famous dramatic monologue. It is often used as a prime example of the form. In this poem the speaker, the duke of Ferrara, is addressing a second character, an agent of an unnamed count whose daughter the duke plans to marry. The situation is take from the life of an actual sixteenth-century Italian duke, but Browning has imagined the specific incident. The duke is showing the count's agent a …

…y own version of the poem. First-person narration, addressing readers directly, allows me to insert myself into the performance as a listener/peeping tom/judge. The deciphering of speech invokes a fluid set of codes and experiences that are further conditioned by my own understanding of the Duke's character. In this way there are as many poems as there are readers, since the audience -- placed in the poem -- is an infinite variable.