Murder, mystery and intrigue all describe Robert Browning's poem, "My Last Duchess." From the speakers' indirect allusions to the death of his wife the reader is easily lead to think that the speaker committed a vengeful crime out of jealousy. His elaborate speech confuses and disguises any possible motives, and the mystery is left unsolved. Even if he did not kill his wife, he certainly has something to hide. Based on the poem's historical references, style and structure, the Duke's controlling and jealous nature becomes evident.

An ambiguous quality about the Duke is his historical character. The incident the poem dramatizes clearly references the historical Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, who married Lucrezia, daughter of a man who later became pope, the Medici, in 1558 (Rudy 169). Within two years of their marriage she suspiciously died. We know that Browning's Duke has a nine-hundred-years-old name of which he was very...