Construct in imagination the scene and the action of the poem.  What has brought the Duke and the envoy together?  What things indicate the Duke’s pride?  Was his jealousy due to pride or to affection?  Does he prize the picture as a work of art or as a memory of the Duchess?  What faults did he find in her?  What character do these criticisms show her to have had?  What did he wish her to he?  Note the anti-climax in lines 25-28:  what is the effect?  What shows the Duke’s difficulty in breaking his reserve on this matter?  What motive has he for so doing?  Where does the poet show skill in condensation, in character drawing, in vividness, in enlisting the reader’s sympathy?

The Flight of the Duchess should be read as a development and variation of this theme.

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED’S. (PAGE 107.)

Ruskin gives this poem high praise:  “Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages....  I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit—­its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin.  It is nearly all that I have said of the central Renaissance, in thirty pages of The Stones of Venice, put into as many lines; Browning’s also being the antecedent work.”

It is not, however, for its historical accuracy that a poem is mainly to be judged.  The full and imaginative portrayal of a type, belonging not to one age only, but to human nature, is a greater achievement.  And this achievement Browning has undoubtedly performed.

5. =Old Gandolf=.  Evidently one of the Bishop’s colleagues in holy orders, and like him in holiness.

31. =onion-stone=.  See the dictionary for descriptions of this and other stones named in the poem.

41. =olive-frail=.  A crate, made of rushes, for packing olives.

42. =lapis lazuli=.  A very beautiful and valuable blue stone.

46. =Frascati=.  A town near Rome, celebrated for its villas.

56-62.  Such mixture of Christian and Pagan elements was a common feature in Renaissance art and literature.

58. =tripod=.  The triple-footed seat from which the priestesses of Apollo at Delphi delivered the oracles. =thyrsus=.  A staff entwined with ivy and vines, and borne in the Bacchic processions.

77. =Tully=.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher.

79. =Ulpian=.  A celebrated Roman jurist of the third century.

99. =Elucescebat=.  Late Latin, from =elucesco=.  The classical or Ciceronian form would be =elucebat=, from =eluceo=.  Here appears the Bishop’s love of good Latin.

108. =Term=.  A pillar, widening toward the top, upon which is placed a figure or a bust.

Who are grouped about the Bishop’s bed?  What does he desire?  Why?  What tastes does he show?  Point out evidences of his crimes, his suspicion, his sensual ideals, his artistic tastes, his canting hypocrisy, his confusion of the material and the immaterial, and the persistency of his passions and feelings.  Note the subtlety with which these things are suggested, especially lines 18-19, 29-30, 33-44, 50-52, 59-62, 80-84, 122-125.