Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Selected Poems
British
Early Realism (Victorianism)
Robert Browning was an unknown poet when he fell in love with one of the most famous poets of his time, Elizabeth Barrett. Their relationship was the stuff of love poems; he fell in love with her, although he had never met her, by reading her poetry. At the time, she was an invalid who was kept pretty much a prisoner by her tyrannical father, who had decided never to allow any of his twelve children to marry. After a secret correspondence over twenty months, they eloped to Italy. She recovered enough of her health that she was able to give birth to a son, and they lived in Italy until her death in 1861. It was really only after her death that Robert Browning started to acquire fame as a poet, eventually becoming one of the most respected poets of the Victorian era. Although he wrote poems and plays on a range of topics, some of his most famous poems are his dramatic monologues, often with narrators who have extreme or even psychotic personalities. At first, audiences were startled by the dark humor and occasionally grotesque situations in many of the monologues, unaccustomed to reading about the human psyche in this way. In “My Last Duchess,” the Duke addresses a silent representative of a Count whose daughter he wants to marry. The Duke is the epitome of an entitled snob, but his monologue slowly reveals that these qualities led him to become an unrepentant murderer, with a terrifying possessiveness that continues long after his first wife’s death. “Porphyria’s Lover” contains one of the best twists (the pun will become clear after reading it) in the monologues; it is again a study in psychotic self-absorption, as well as a technical triumph (try reading it without stopping at the end of the lines, but instead by stopping only at punctuation marks). The third monologue presented here is “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” a nightmarish quest with an ambiguous ending. The poem inspired many other writers, including Stephen King, who based his Dark Tower series (1978-2012) on the poem.
Consider while reading:

1. In “My Last Duchess,” the Duke is speaking to a representative of a Count, and he is trying to marry the Count’s daughter. Imagine the entire monologue from the perspective of the Count’s representative. Why does he want to go downstairs before the Duke does?
2. Look up “porphyria” in a dictionary. How does the meaning of the word affect your reading of the poem?
3. Where does Childe Roland find the Dark Tower? In what ways can the ending be interpreted?

Written by Laura Getty