My Last Duchess - what’s not to like?
Categories: General
I happened to notice today that 17% of the total vote for Robert Browning’s MY LAST DUCHESS has been “No” - a lot of people don’t seem to like this poem and that just may be the highest percentage of No votes on any one poem so far. Just wondering if it’s the poem or the Duke they don’t like.
It’s really a very clever poem and one has to admire Browning’s style, even if they think the emissary should knock the Duke down the stairs right into Neptune, run back to his mistress and her daddy post-haste, and say don’t marry that guy!
We also have Robert Browning’s terrific PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN. Again, Browning’s ability to convey the Pied Piper story in this most amusing way is very clever. That particular reading is not the complete poem, but it IS a very long poem. The entire poem in an illustrated book from 1888 is online at The Indiana University Library site. Very cool.
We also just added a Yeats poem, Are You Content?, in which he ponders the meaning of a line from Robert Browning’s first work.
More Robert Browning resources:
My Last Duchess: A Fascinating Dramatic Monologue Based Upon Real People
Robert Browning on the Author’s Calendar
Erin’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning page - dedicated to their love.