Dramatic Monologue In Robert Browning's Poem, My Last Duchess

Robert Browning (1812-1889) was an English poet, now widely considered one of the most talented and prolific dramatic monologists as well as one of the foremost poets of the Victorian Era. Born in London to a wealthy clerk at the bank of England, he entered the world at a time that was marked by the end of the revolutionary fervor that characterized the Romantic period. Browning was raised in an entirely different atmosphere- one where the major intellectual figures of the time sought stability in political and religious orthodoxy, after distancing themselves from the violence and injustice of Napoleon Bonaparte’s then-powerful empire.
Browning was brought up in a suburban village where the changes associated with urbanization and industrialization were strongly felt.

The dramatic monologue is a poetic tool invented and practiced most famously by Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Rossetti and other poets of the Victorian age. Browning chose to experiment with this new poetic form, moving away from the ‘expressive’ moment contained in lyric poem to the ‘eloquence’ that lay at the heart of drama.
In an essay entitled On Poetry, John Stuart Mill distinguishes between the two terms, poetry and eloquence- ‘Eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard. Eloquence supposes an audience: the peculiarity of poetry appears to us to lie in the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a listener.’ He states that eloquence pours itself into other minds seeking ‘to move them to passion or to action.’ Poetry is therefore the result of solitude, while eloquence is the effect of interaction with the world; this brings in the frequent Victorian dilemma of whether poetry should exclude or include the outside world. By choosing to adopt this dramatic style, Browning began experimenting with the middle class, democratic style of