browning

Instructor's comments:

"My Last Duchess" and "The Bishop Orders His Tomb . . ." and "Child Roland . . ."

"My Last Duchess" and "The Bishop Orders His Tomb . . ." by Robert Browning are dramatic monologues that emphasize the materialism of the Victorian age.

In "My Last Duchess," the Duke is standing before a painting of his last wife, the last Duchess, who is now dead. The Duke is talking to an emissary from a nobleman who has a daughter the Duke is interested in marrying. As marriages were arranged at the time of the poem, the Italian Renaissance, there were intense negotiations that went on between the families. The Duke is trying to warn the emissary (messenger) that the Duke's last wife, the last Duchess, displeased her husband by flirting with not only the painter of the her portrait but that she was friendly to everyone. The Duke did not like that because she seemed not to appreciate her husband and his noble position more than everyone else. The Duke gave "orders" and the smiles stopped, meaning that he ordered her killed. The implied threat is that if the new Duchess acts the same way, the same fate awaits her. No doubt the emissary will take this message back to the prospective bride's father. Let's hope they don't continue the negotiations for marriage!

The bishop in "The Bishop Orders His Tomb . . . " is on his death bed and speaking to his children, especially asking after his favorite son, Anselm. Of course, the bishop, as a priest in the Catholic faith, is not supposed to have children as he has taken vows of celibacy (no sex), poverty, and obedience. Far from embracing poverty, however, he is fantastically materialistic and is busy planning the richness and grandeur of his burial tomb that will be erected in the church, St. Praxed's. He is obsessed with a rival bishop, Gandolf, and is reminiscing at the beginning of the poem about his mistress ("Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!) and is trying to make sure that his tomb will be made with richer stone and have better bas relief sculpture than Gandolf's tomb in the "corner south" made of inferior "onion stone." All the time the bishop is speaking he is unaware that he should be worrying about the state of his soul; thus, Browning, through the bishop, criticizes not only the Catholic church but all organized religions.

I'm not sure that "Childe Roland . . ." really means anything. It's just mysterious, full of atmosphere, spooky, and fun, I think.

"Dover Beach" refers to the loss of faith in these lines:

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled,

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, (21-25)

In these lines he compares past ages' belief in god to the "full" incoming tide of the sea. The present age's doubt is compared to the tide's ebb.

Arnold compares being without faith to being on a battlefield: "And we are here as on a darkling plain/ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/ Where ignorant armies clash by night" (35-37). Your text book note tells you of the possible night battles Arnold might have been alluding to, but readers in the twentieth century may feel that he feels something about his age that will lead to a future war: The First World War, 1914-18.