A Discussion of My Last Duches

Robert Browning and Mathew Arnold’s poems may be compared on the grounds of the personality of the speakers and the themes. The personality of the speakers is on the basis of being contradicting. The duke in Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is a proud man only interested in rank and order. He believes his “gift of a nine hundred year old name” should be honored above all else. He believes that he should be …

…long ago/ Heard it on the Aegean, and brought/ into his mind that turbid ebb and flow / of human misery.” Browning and Arnold poems contradict in personality and themes, where Browning enforces possessions above all and Arnold seeks love and religion because those are the only things that have certainty. The dramatic monologue style that is present in both poems has been molded into pieces of artwork that is as different as night and day.