Read "Meet the Author" on Robert Browning on page 944.
Read "My Last Duchess" on pages 946-948.
Answer the following questions.
1. The time is the Italian Renaissance, as Browning
establishes by references to art and the dowry, which the Duke is negotiating
with the Count of Tyrol, as well as by the Duke's "thousand-year-old
name." Why is this "name" so important to this Renaissance Duke?
2. The Duke eliminated (divorced? sent to a convent? had
executed or poisoned?) his last duchess because (he felt) she undervalued him
and treated him much as she treated other men. Which trivial incidents in
particular seem to have produced this response in the Duke?
3. Based on the clues that Browning provides in the poem,
explain both what happened before the opening of the poem (i. e., what fate
befell the Duchess and how) and what will happen just after the poem closes.
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