Alliteration In My Last Duchess

An In-Depth Look at My Last Duchess

In the poem “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning, the main character, the Count speaks about his deceased wife and a painting of her to a mysterious listener at his private party. The Duchess’s story revolves around the internal conflicts between her and the Count. The main threads include the jealousy and self-importance of the Count, as well as the compassion of the Duchess. He subtly insinuates to the party-goer that his wife’s early death was caused by him, and asks them to share some time with him to explain his problems with his prior Duchess, and his intent to find a new partner.
On the surface, “My Last Duchess” is a simple poem about a saddened widow speaking about his late wife. The Count shows …show more content…
The reader is therefore intentionally left to wonder if the poem as spoken by the Count has a deeper subliminal meaning; that it reflects his own dysfunctionality. Simultaneously, alliteration and assonance are present throughout the entire poem, giving a series of smooth transitions from line to line, despite the Count actually being in a monologue for the entire poem. Robert Browning used the A-B rhyme scheme throughout “My Last Duchess” to intentionally pair with the assonance of the O’s of each word being stretched. This gives giving the appearance of deliberate, slow speech from the Count, building up his character throughout the poem without explicitly describing his personality. An air of education and class is clearly present in the Count’s character, and it shows the contrast between his appearance and the dirty methods he employed to achieve his goals. However, the appearance of any onomatopoeias or phonetic sounds at all were clearly lacking from “My Last Duchess”, again showing the persona and tone of the Count: serious, dangerous, and powerful, and yet somehow elegant in