My Last Duchess

A grand Duke, speaking to an agent who has come to arrange a new marriage, stands before a painted portrait of his late wife and talks about her. As he leads his visitor past the artwork, he describes what the picture reveals of her, and in doing so exposes his own pride, his expectations and the control he expected from her. Written as a dramatic monologue, the poem lets the speaker's words carry the scene, leaving the listener silent and the reader to piece together what happened and what the Duke values most. Set in a palace in Renaissance Italy, the poem is a short, tightly built study of a powerful man's view of love and possession.