In order to understand the poetry of Robert Browning, one must first understand the time period in which he lived. It was the middle of the nineteenth century, and the once-rural British population was heading toward more populated, larger cities due to the Industrial Revolution that was taking place. With people living in such close quarters, poverty, sex and violence had become a part of everyday life.
Many authors of the time felt that in order to get a bigger reaction out their audience, they had to shock them in a different, more unique way. Because of this, violence and sex had become symbols of the time in most writing. Browning's two poems where this is shown are "My Last Duchess" and "Porphyria's Lover.".
In order for these poems to have a greater effect on the reader, Browning uses the dramatic monologue. A dramatic monologue is a poem with a speaker, who is not the poet himself. The speaker is talking to an implied audience who, while having no speech, is clearly present at the scene. The speaker addresses no one specifically, instead the speaker just thinks aloud.
"My Last Duchess" is loosely based on Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, and the events surrounding his life. The Duke is the speaker of this poem and says that he is entertaining an ambassador or representative of some sort. The ambassador has arrived to speak with the Duke about his pending marriage to the daughter of another powerful family.
As the Duke takes his visitor on a tour of his palace, he stops in front of a portrait of the late Duchess. The Duchess was a young and lovely woman. The Duke begins to reminisce about the time he had with the Duchess. This reminiscing gives way to an angry monologue about her "disgraceful" behavior - "She had A heart too soon made glad", "She liked upon whate"er She looked upon", "She thanked men as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift.