This is a much anthologized piece,
very famous poem
and before I do the read through of it,
I want to address four issues.
These four issues may seem
blindingly obvious to those of you who
know the poem well,
but I'm doing this for someone who
who is just looking at the poem,
it's the first time they've read it.
If I say anything that you
already know, I apologize.
But here we go. First thing.
Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess'.
In this poem, Robert Browning
is the author of the poem.
He is the guy who wrote it.
Robert Browning is not
the narrator of the poem.
The narrator of the poem
is an Italian Duke.
That, I know is blindingly obvious,
if you know it.
Never assume everybody
always knows these things.
So the poem is being narrated
through the mind of an Italian Duke.
Now, because Robert Browning is not
the narrator of this poem,
and it is being narrated
through the mind of the Duke,
what we get to find out in this poem
is the way the Duke's mind works.
And this allows us to look at -
or in fact, this necessitates that
we understand a literary technique
which we call, 'showing, not telling'.
In fact for me, Robert Browning's
'My Last Duchess' is one of the
classic ways of teaching the
literary technique of showing, not telling;
and I'll explain it to you now.
I'm going to tell you a piece of information.
The man walked into the room,
he was a strong and violent man.
I've just told you that piece of information.
How strong and how violent is that man?
Now you've got an image in your head
of how strong and how violent that man is,
who has just walked into the room.
And that image is dependent
on what you see of me,
because you're looking at me and saying,
what would that guy think
is a strong and violent man?
Now this is very helpful
because you can see me,
and you can trust that what I think is a
strong and violent man
is probably very similar to what
you think is a strong and violent man.
But what if the person giving you this information
was a six-year-old child.
A six-year-old child says,
'the man walked into the room,
he was a strong and violent man.'
What does a six-year-old child think
is a strong and violent man?
To a six-year-old child,
a strong and violent man
can be a ten-year-old child
having a temper tantrum.
Imagine the person giving you this information
is a seasoned war veteran,
and the seasoned war veteran tells you
'the man walked into the room,
he was a strong and violent man'.
That man coming into the room
would have to be a giant,
near psychopathic,
to be described as strong and violent
by someone who is exposed to violence
and sees extreme strength on a regular basis.
So whenever you are told
a piece of information,
the way that information reaches you
is dependent on your interpretation
of the person who is
giving you that information.
Dependent on your knowledge of
that person who is giving you the information.
Now let me show you something.
The man walked into the room,
he picked up a 200-pound chair,
and smashed it over the head of ---
a kneeling nun.
Right, how strong is he?
Well, he's strong enough to
pick up a 200-pound chair.
How violent is he?
Well, he's violent enough to
smash a kneeling nun over the head
with a 200-pound chair.
Now, at no point there did I
tell you that he was strong,
at no point did I
tell you he was violent.
What I did was show you two instances
which would require a great deal of strength
and an extraordinarily violent personality.
There's a Creative Writing 101 thing
which likes to explain that
showing is always better than telling.
Showing is better than telling,
except when it isn't,
this is one of those things.
But in this, we get a great example
of getting to the character
through what we are shown.
This is the Duke's interpretation of events,
but it shows us the way the Duke thinks.
Okay a third point I want to raise, is,
this is to do with location,
and I don't usually introduce
these things in a Mycroft lectures.
I read the poem through
and then explain the poem.
But the location of this particular poem
isn't made apparent to us
until the end of the poem.
And it helps with our understanding of it -
and it's quite a long poem -
and it helps with our understanding of it
if we know right at the start
where the poem is taking place,
and the events leading up to the poem.
I rarely do this, but this
is the location of the poem.
We are in a big house,
we are at the end of a staircase
and a messenger has come
from a Count who is presumably
either outside the house or,
waiting downstairs in a room.
And this Count is there
with his daughter,
and his daughter is going to be
betrothed to the Duke,
the man who owns the house.
And the Count has sent a messenger
to go and meet the Duke.
So the Duke meets the messenger,
and the Duke is going to walk down some stairs
and meet the Count and presumably,
his new bride and off they go.
But before this occurs,
the Duke stops the messenger
and points out something to him.
And that is the point where the poem starts -
where the Duke stops the messenger
to tell him the story that
the poem is going to be.
The fourth thing is this thing about -
this poem is a dramatic monologue.
Now the point of me pointing out
that it's a dramatic monologue
is that there's only one person speaking.
'Mono' means one.
This is the Duke speaking
all the way through this poem,
and, it being dramatic, means that it is
very dependent on the way you say it.
It cries out to be acted.
The poem gets to the
personality of the Duke
which begs you to reread it after you've
first read through it and understood it.
It begs you to reread it again
with your interpretation of
what the Duke is actually like.
Now, if I do that the first time I read the poem,
it will tend to give the game away,
as to what type of man the Duke is.
So I'm not going to try and overact this
the first time I read it through.
So. Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess'.
This is the first read through.
After this, we'll go through the poem
line-by-line to point out what the lines mean.
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
''Fra Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart-how shall I say?-too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace-all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,-good! but thanked
Somehow-I know not how-as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech-(which I have not)-to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"-and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
-E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!"
Now, first time you read that through,
I am sure you have no idea
what is actually going on in it.
And I'm pretty confident that
by the end of this lecture,
you will understand each line
and the implications of each line.
Let's see if I can make good on that boast.
So, to explain this to you,
what I need to do is
go through the poem sentence by sentence,
to explain what they mean in simpler English.
And there are some very, very complicated
sentences in this particular poem.
This is one of the poems that
yields the most, most obviously,
from this necessary technique of making sure
you actually know what the poem is saying,
by translating the lines in
English into simpler English.
To translate the complicated English sentences 
that the poet has used into simpler English sentences.
So, let's take the first line of this poem,
and translate it down
to the simplest English that we can.
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive."
What does that mean in the
simplest English we can make?
I can make that sound
pretty simple actually.
What that means is,
'there's a picture of my dead wife'.
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive."
'There's a picture of my dead wife.'
Now you know that,
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive." 
means, 'there's a picture of my dead wife',
it makes the understanding of this poem
much simpler, and we progress in this way.
"I call that piece a wonder, now:"
What's the easiest way of saying
"I call that piece a wonder"?
'It's good, isnt it?'
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
I call that piece a wonder, now:"
'There's a picture of my dead wife,
good isn't it?'
"Fra Pandolf's hands worked busily a day,
and there she stands."
Fra Pandolf is the painter of the
painting of the dead wife
that the Duke shows to the messenger.
The Duke has stopped the messenger,
and this whole poem is going to be
the Duke talking to the messenger.
He stops the messenger,
looks at the painting,
and says,
'there's a picture of my dead wife, isn't it good?
That was painted by Fra Pandolf.'
"Fra Pandolf's hands worked busily a day,
and there she stands."
Fra Pandolf worked very hard
when he painted it.
"Will't please you sit and look at her?"
'Sit down, mate. Have a look.'
All this is very simple stuff.
It gets more complicated now.
Because we get this extraordinarily
long sentence, which is this.
"I said "Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned 
(since none puts by the curtain
I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there;
So, not the first are you to turn and ask thus."
This is a very, very long sentence,
and it's very tricky for us to understand it,
but not impossible if we break this sentence
down into its constituent parts.
Now, there is a piece in this sentence
which is in parentheses, in brackets.
So the first thing we can do there
is take the bit that's in brackets
out of the the story.
But we can do that first.
The line is "(since none puts by
the curtain I have drawn for you, but I)"
"(since none puts by
the curtain I have drawn for you, but I)"
Now, plainly, there is a curtain in front
of the picture of the last Duchess.
And the Duke pulls the curtain aside
to show the painting of
the last Duchess to the messenger.
He is the only one with access to the -
let's imagine it has - a drawstring.
The Duke pulls the drawstring,
and it pulls aside a curtain which reveals
the picture of the last Duchess.
"(since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)"
Only I show that picture to anyone.
So we can omit that bit
from the poem proper,
and get on with the rest of
this extraordinarily long sentence.
"I said " Fra Pandolf" by design,"
I said Fra Pandolf deliberately.
 For never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
 The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned
 And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus."
"Never read strangers like you
that pictured countenance"
Countenance is a look.
A pictured countenance is the look
on the face of the Duchess in the painting.
This painting that the Duke has shown to the
messenger that Fra Pandolf has painted,
there is a look on the face of the Duchess.
He describes it as
"The depth and passion of its earnest glance"
Earnest, honest glance.
"The depth and passion of its earnest glance"
Perhaps the easy way to remember this-
easy way to imagine this,
is to imagine the Mona Lisa.
There's a smile on the face of the Mona Lisa
which is supposed to be very difficult to interpret.
We look at the Mona Lisa and we think
what is she smiling at?
Now, there's a look on the
face of the Duchess in the painting,
and it shows a certain depth
and passion of an earnest glance.
And perhaps the simplest way to
translate this is, 'there's a sexy smile'.
The Duchess has a sexy smile in the look.
"The depth and passion of its earnest glance"
That's the way I choose to interpret it.
If you have a different way of interpreting,
"The depth and passion of its earnest glance",
feel free.
For me, it's a sexy smile on her face.
"for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there;"
What does that mean?
"The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned
And seemed as they would ask me,
if they durst,"
Durst means dared.
If they dared to ask me,
they look like they're about to ask me,
how such a glance came there.
So, there's a certain sexy smile
on the look of the Duchess in the picture,
and the Duke says,
every time I show that painting to someone,
I just know that they're about to ask me,
'how did that look get there'?
Or, put that another way,
what is she smiling at?
There's a sexy smile on the Duchess' face,
and the Duke says,
every time I show this picture to someone,
I know they would ask me,
if they dared to ask me.
But of course the person the Duke
shows the painting to
doesn't dare to ask him,
because you can't say to a Duke,
what's the rather sexy look
on your wife's face, there actually?
What do you think she's smiling at?
But the Duke thinks he knows
that they want to ask him.
They want to ask him but they can't.
'What is causing that sexy look
on your wife's face?'
And then the Duke says to the messenger,
"so, not the first are you to turn and ask thus."
Now, note that the messenger
hasn't actually asked anything here.
The messenger is quiet, 
the messenger is silent
through the entirety of this dramatic monologue.
But the Duke says,
'I know you want to ask me if you dared.
If you dared to ask me, you would say,
what is it that caused your wife to
have that sexy look on her face?
And I know why you can't ask me,
you don't dare ask me,
but you're not the first person
who's wanted to ask that question.'
Very complicated sentence, that one.
But in its entirety, it means the Duke is saying,
every time I show that picture to someone,
I know the person I show the picture to
wants to ask me,
'what caused that sexy look on your wife's face'?
But they don't ask me,
because they don't dare to ask me that.
"Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or
"Paint must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat":
Such stuff was courtesy, she thought,
and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy."
So when the Duke says,
"Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only,
 Called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek"
He's saying, it was not just my
presence that made her smile.
Her husband is him, of course,
the Duke himself.
He's saying, 'that look
you see on the Duchess' face,
which I choose to interpret as a sexy smile,'
he says, 'it wasn't just me
who made her smile like that.
I was not the only one who
could get that look in her cheeks,
that glint in her eye,
that smile upon her face,'
he's alluding to that sort of stuff, I think.
"The depth and passion of its earnest glance,"
which we see on the painting of the Duchess.
"Perhaps Fra Pandolf chanced to say
"Her mantle laps over my lady's wrist too much,"
 or "Paint must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat" 
What the Duke is doing here,
is speculating on
what it might have been
that made his Duchess smile,
so that Fra Pandolf could
see that smile, and paint it.
And Fra Pandolf might have said,
"Paint must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along my lady's throat"
or, "Her mantle laps
over my lady's wrist too much,"
If you imagine fashion photography,
wherein the photographer is saying to the model,
'you're beautiful, darling, you're beautiful.
Show us a bit more leg,
you know, lean forward. Beautiful.'
What this is, is the painter saying to the model,
'your mantel',
a mantel being a cloak,
'your cloak is lapping over 
your wrist too much'.
'Show us a bit more wrist', 
Fra Pandolf says.
Fra Pandolf doesn't say this, of course.
This is the Duke imagining what Fra Pandolf
might have said to get
the look on the Duchess' face.
And it might have been something like,
'Show us a bit more wrist, love.
You're beautiful'
"Paint must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat"
You're so beautiful,
that I can't paint you.
That's the translation of
"Paint must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat"
You look so beautiful at the moment
that I will not be able to capture it in paint.
And the Duchess hears this, and smiles, and
Fra Pandolf, -click- got it, and paints it.
That's Fra Pandolf painting.
Now, remember the Duke is imagining this,
he's speculating on what Fra Pandolf
might have said to get that look on her face.
"Such stuff was courtesy, she thought,"
She being the Duchess.
"And cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy."
When people said things like this to her,
she smiled.
It would be rather unusual you might think,
if she didn't smile.
When someone says something flattering to you,
people have a tendency to smile at it.
But the Duke believes that his wife
shouldn't smile at this, these things.
He believes that she smiles
perhaps too easily,
as he says in his next line:
"She had a heart-how shall I say?-
too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere."
I do like those,
'how shall I say?' bits
that remind us that the Duke
is speaking to somebody else
as he goes through his dramatic monologue.
"She had a heart-how shall I say?"
It's as if he's making this up.
"How shall I say? -too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed"
It's as if he doesn't
really want to say this,
but he's sort of forcing himself
to say it to the messenger.
Whether this is true or not,
or whether this is merely
an affectation from the Duke,
we will observe later.
"Too easily impressed," he tells us.
She's too easily impressed.
We don't seem to-
we don't really need to
change those lines in any way.
"She liked whate'er she looked on,
and her looks went everywhere."
So if we translate that down
into simpler English,
it really means,
lots of things made her happy,
and she looked at lots of things.
Now, up to this point,
I've translated this
"depth and passion of her earnest glance"
as a sexy smile,
but a sexy smile can-
it can mean a lot of things, can't it?
It can mean a deliberately provocative smile
from the person who is smiling.
Or a smile that other people find sexy.
Take this as you will,
it's up to each of you
to decide what,
how you see this smile
on the face of the Duchess, but -
think of it, imagine this smile
however you want to,
but make sure you know
how you see this smile,
this, "depth and passion of this earnest glance"
Because the Duke now gives us a list of
things that can make the Duchess smile.
"Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace-all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech
Or blush, at least." 
"Sir, 'twas all one!"
He's going to give us a list.
These are the things that
would make his wife smile.
"My favour at her breast"
He, he would make her smile.
"My favour at her breast", could mean
his prowess as a lover, if you like.
"My favour at her breast."
It could also mean, my company.
Up to you, take which one you like.
My prowess as a lover made her smile.
My company made her smile.
Me being with her made her smile.
"The dropping of the daylight in the West"
is the sun going down.
"The dropping of the daylight in the West"
A sunset.
So, the Duke himself made her smile,
a sunset would make her smile.
"The bough of cherries some officious fool
Brought her from the orchard"
When somebody brought her some fruit,
she would smile.
"The white mule she rode with
round the terrace" made her smile
So, her ponies and horses
would make her smile.
Horse riding would make her smile.
"All and each would draw from her alike
the approving speech, or blush, at least."
So all these things would make her smile,
the Duke suggests.
Now, maybe this is just because
she's a happy girl.
She's the person who,
she's a person who smiles often.
He should be happy
she does smile at him.
Most of us would smile at a sunset.
Who doesn't like fruit when they're hungry?
It makes me smile if I'm hungry
and someone brings me some fruit.
If you like horse riding,
you're likely to smile when you're riding a horse.
But the Duke seems to suggest that there's
something wrong with the
happiness of her nature.
I mean, it could be-
if you really wanted to go this way,
indicative of rather simple nature:
she smiles at everything.
But I don't think it does.
I think she's just a very happy girl.
"All and each
Would draw from her alike
the approving speech,
Or blush, at least."
So, 'the approving speech' which he speaks of,
she says, 'thank you'.
"She thanked men,-good! but thanked
Somehow-I know not how-as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift."
Ah. Now we're getting to
the nub of the matter.
"She thanked men,-good! but thanked
Somehow-I know not how-as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift."
So she's polite.
He hasn't got a problem with her being polite.
But his problem is that,
although he says he doesn't quite understand
how this works, it's as if he
claims he can't put his finger on
specifically the way that
he saw her do this,
but he feels as if,
she ranks his
"gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift"
Of course, the
"gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name"
is the fact that she is a Duchess.
He is a Duke, and when she marries him,
she becomes a Duchess.
This is the "gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name"
that he gives her.
And he thinks that the act of
making her a Duchess,
of making her a member
of the aristocracy,
is only as relevant to her as,
a ride on a horse,
a sunset, or some fruit
that somebody brings her.
But note that he can't specifically state
in what way she does this.
It's as if he intuits this.
"She ranked my gift of a
nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift."
There's a definite pomposity
in what he's saying here.
"Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?" he asks.
Well, who indeed?
"Who would stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?"
To 'stoop' means to bend down,
to lower yourself.
'This sort of trifling' would be,
such silliness, such a small matter.
Who would complain about
such a small matter?
Now, this is of course,
it's a rhetorical question.
It's a question which
we know the answer to,
or the Duke asks it
as a rhetorical question,
"Who would stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?"
expecting the answer,
'well of course,
no one would stoop to
blame that sort of trifling.'
And yet of course, he would.
Who would let this concern them?
Well, it looks like you are
getting concerned by it, mate.
"Who'd stoop to blame this sort of trifling.
Even had you skill
In speech-(which I have not)-
To make your will
Quite clear to such an one,
And say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me;
Here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"-
And if she let herself be
lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth,
and made excuse,
-E'en then would be some stooping;
and I choose never to stoop."
And once again, we're in
one of those very long,
actually quite complicated but
extraordinarily relevant sentences
you've got to understand to
understand what is going on in this poem.
"Even had you skill in speech-
(which I have not)-
To make your will
Quite clear to such an one"
""Even had you skill in speech-"
Well, the whole poem so far
that we have heard
is the Duke's monologue,
so I think it's fair to say
he has got some skill in speech.
But this is not modesty,
that is making him say that he has not.
"Even had you skill in speech-
(which I have not)-to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say,
"Just this or that in you disgusts me"
Even if I was very eloquent,
and I was good at explaining myself,
and I could say to the Duchess,
'this is what you're doing wrong',
even if I could do that,
and he gives examples where she
might be doing something wrong,
he says, "here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"
"Here you miss" means,
there you don't do enough,
and "there exceed the mark" means,
there you do too much.
Even if I was good at explaining things,
and I could have told my wife,
this is where you do too much,
and this is where you don't do enough,
"Just this or that in you disgusts me"
"Here you miss or there exceed the mark"
If I could explain all that to her,
if I could explain what she's doing wrong,
"-and if she let herself be
lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth,
and made excuse,
-E'en then would be some stooping;
So he says, if I could
explain things to her,
explain what she was doing wrong,
she would then have two courses of action.
One course of action would be to say,
'yeah, fair enough, I do do that wrong,
I will try and improve'
That would be to let herself
be lessened so.
To let herself be taught.
To do what he says.
To let herself be lessened so
means to agree with him
and do what he says.
Or she may "plainly set her wits to yours,
forsooth, and made excuse,"
Now if she were to have plainly set
her wits to his and made an excuse,
that means she would have
given a reason for why
she has behaved as she has behaved,
she would have explained herself,
and said, 'well yeah I did do that,
but the reason why I did that
is because of this'.
So even if he could
explain himself to her,
the only two things
she could have done
is agree with him,
or disagree with him.
Follow that?
The only two things
she could have done is
either agree with him,
or disagree with him.
But the very act of
having to explain himself
to his wife, he describes as
"-E'en then would be some stooping;"
That would be beneath me.
Even if I could explain myself to my wife,
even if she would agree with me,
or even if she would disagree with me,
it doesn't matter.
The very act of having to explain myself
to my wife is beneath me.
"-E'en then would be some stooping;"
All of that would be to stoop.
"and I choose never to stoop."
I never do anything that is beneath me.
It is beneath me to have to explain myself
to my wife about what it is
she does that annoys me.
"And I choose never to stoop."
I will never do anything that
I consider to be beneath me.
Explaining myself to my wife is beneath me,
and I choose never to do anything
I consider to be beneath me.
"Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; 
but who passed without
Much the same smile?"
And note even here,
the Duke admits that
the Duchess smiled
every time she saw him.
Every time the Duchess saw the Duke,
she smiled 'whene'er I passed her'.
His problem is not that she ignores him.
His problem is "but who passed without
Much the same smile?"
His problem is not that
she is happy in his presence,
his problem is that she is
happy in other people's presence as well.
He seems to believe she
should only smile in his presence.
"This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together."
Now it is vital, vital for your
understanding of this poem
that you understand
what happens in this part.
"This grew".
This intolerable situation of
my happy wife going around
being happy, this continued,
this got worse, she got even happier.
"This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together."
"I gave commands"
I ordered something.
When do all smiles stop together?
When you die.
I ordered my wife's death.
I could not take her smiling
and her happiness of character,
so I ordered my wife's death.
And now we get this wonderful part here,
this stroke of genius that,
after this very solemn, very eerie,
scary bit that the Duke tells us,
"This grew"
"I choose never to stoop"
"This grew"
"I gave commands then all smiles stopped together."
This chilling piece of writing,
Browning has the Duke say,
"There she stands as if alive."
Obviously he's pointing to the picture,
and the Duke points to the picture and says,
there's my dead wife,
she was a really happy girl,
always smiling, drove me mad,
I had her killed.
"There she stands as if alive."
It's the absolute indifference to his wife's death
that is so wonderful in this place.
"Will't please you rise?" he tells us.
So obviously the Duke has asked the messenger
to 'stand up now, and off we go.'
"Will't please you rise?"
He now gives us this
very long, courtly synopsis
of what's going to happen next.
He tells us, "We'll meet the
company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object."
This is the man who tells us
he has no skill in speech.
He has excellent skill in speech.
If I translate this into simpler English,
it's 'we'll go downstairs, now and
meet the people who are waiting for us,
The Count, the guy you work for,
his generosity, his "known munificence",
his generosity and wealth tells me that I'll get
a large enough dowry
when I marry his daughter,
though it is his daughter herself
that I really want.
It's the courtly language of his class
and he executes it very well.
But we now get a very comic moment.
If you imagine you're
in the messenger's position
and you've gone to get the Duke
to meet his new wife,
and he stops you on the stairs
and he says,
'there's the painting of my last wife,
good, isn't it?'
'She was a very happy girl,
used to drive me insane,''
'I had her killed in the end,
I just couldn't take it anymore.'
'There she stands as if alive.'
'Let's go and meet the Count
and the next wife then, shall we?'
And you can imagine
if you're the messenger,
the first thing you're going to do
is balk down the stairs
and go and tell the Count and his daughter,
'Get out of here, quick!
Whatever you do, don't marry this guy.'
'He's a lunatic,
he murdered his last wife.'
But we have the-
I don't say that flippantly either,
but I believe that that is why
this next line is so funny.
We have the Duke say,
"Nay, we'll go together down, sir."
So obviously, this is exactly what the
messenger has decided to do,
he's tried to run down the stairs.
And I imagine the Duke sort of
leaning forward and going like,
'Nay, hang on, mate; wait up;
we'll go together down, sir."
As he walks down the stairs
with the messenger,
the Duke points out another
one of his possessions.
"Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck
cast in bronze for me!"
So, 'there's a picture of my dead wife,
that one's good that.
Uh, I killed her eventually.
That's another one of my possessions there,
that's by Claus of Innsbruck,
nice sculpture that one, isn't it?'
Now, this is the telling, not showing part
which I mentioned at the start.
We are never told that the Duke
is a psychopathically jealous murderer.
But we know that the Duke
is a psychopathically jealous murderer
because we are shown
the thought processes of a
psychopathically jealous murderer.
Somebody who sees in a
painting of his last wife,
all that made him have her murdered.
And what made him have her murdered
was her continual happiness.
Now, when I say 'sexy smile' here,
don't get too carried away with
the idea that she's flirtatious,
or cheating on him
or something like that.
Some people have a sexy smile,
some people do not.
This doesn't mean that she's being
sexually provocative or sexually promiscuous.
It means that the Duke, the mere sight
of her smiling at people arouses him to-
well I'm tempted to say,
insane jealousy,
but I don't really believe
that's part of his character.
He doesn't seem to care
that he's killed her.
In my reading of this,
he is affronted that she has the
audacity to not pay
absolute attention to him.
"My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name"
The very fact that
he makes her a Duchess
seems to justify the monopolizing
of her time, and more her emotion.
She shouldn't smile at anything else,
apart from him.
And when she has the
general joie de vivre,
the general joy of being to
smile at other things like a sunset -
he hates this.
And I don't think we can
really call this jealousy.
If your girlfriend or wife
smiles at the sunset,
and you are jealous of the
smile at a sunset, you have got
something wrong with you.
If your wife or girlfriend goes
on a horse ride and is smiling
because she's riding a horse,
and you are jealous of that,
you really have got
something wrong with you.
And if you have her murdered
because of things like this,
you have definitely got
something wrong with you.
As the Duke is the representative
of the aristocracy in this poem,
I think we can't avoid the fact that
Browning is making some comment
on the way the aristocracy of his time
have lost touch with the actual
human relationships within the real world.
Okay, now,
I read the poem through once more.
After having heard this
line-by-line reading of it,
you should understand
what the Duke is actually saying,
and I'll try to act it a little bit more
so you can imagine the
insanity of the man saying it.
But bear in mind that
the insanity of the Duke in this
is the insanity of someone
who doesn't realize he's insane.
He actually believes he has
the right to have had his wife killed.
'' My Last Duchess'. 
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. 
Actually, if I were to do that correctly,
it would be...
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
I call that piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart-how shall I say?-too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace-all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,-good! but thanked
Somehow-I know not how-as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift.
Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?
 Even had you skill
In speech-(which I have not)-to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"-and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
-E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but
Who passed without much the same smile?
This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.
There she stands as if alive.
Will't please you rise?
We'll meet the company below, then.
I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!"
That was the Mycroft lecture on
Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess".
Hope you enjoyed it.
