It also allows individual readers to experience the powerful emotions described in the poems, letting the reader visualise the proceedings depicted in the poems in their minds eye. The function of the dramatic monologue is not so much to narrate an occurrence, as to reveal the character of the speaker. The dramatic monologue of ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ captures the moment after the primary incident of the poem; Porphyria is dead before the narrator commences. The poems are different in that they have contrasting rhyme schemes. ‘My Last Duchess’ is written in rhyming couplets (although you cannot always hear the rhyme) and is written in a single stanza.
Shakespeare quite obviously plays with the conventions of Petrarchan characters and their views of desire throughout the play but most significantly towards the beginning. Romeo is introduced as a character that seems to be blinded by love, his desire for Rosaline is over powering, shallow and foolish – “He that is strucken blind cannot forget / The precious treasure of his eyesight lost” (1.1.225-226). Shakespeare has created Romeo to resemble the typical ‘Petrarchan lover’ speakers that are found in Petrarch’s sonnets, we hear Romeo obsessing over Rosaline whom like ‘Laura’ from Petrarch’s sonnets is unattainable to Romeo, as she is choosing to remain celibate - "She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow / Do I live dead that live to tell it now” (1.1.216-217) Shakespeare has purposefully created Romeo and Rosaline with these similarities to Petrarchan conventions in mind as he is able to successfully critique the discourse of desire through the growth of Romeo in the play and the introduction of Juliet. Shakespeare also relies on the fact that his audience are aware of ‘what’s in store’ for Romeo, allowing him to create a clichéd and conventional character - “The theatre audience knows that
Through Friar Lawrence, Shakespeare shows us how shortsightedness will avert our true responsibilities. Friar Lawrence only sees the good effects, but pays no mind to possible mishaps, which causes him to make bad judgments. When Romeo and Juliet fall in love and want to get married, they seek Friar Lawrence to fulfill their desires. At first, Friar Lawrence opposes because he believes that the pace of their relationship is going too fast, but gives in “For this alliance may so happy prove to turn your households’ rancor to pure love”(Act 2.3 #98-99). Despite the fact that Friar Lawrence had already thought through some of the consequences, like their relationship is not actual love, he only thought through half of it.
Perrine uses evidence from the poem, as well as pieces of Jerman’s work to argue in favor of an intelligent, shrewd Duke of Ferrara. As readers in the 20th century, we may view the Duke as a senseless and vain character. As the Duke confesses to the murder of his late wife, we immediately peg him as a bad guy, regardless of his title and nobility. Jerman judges the Duke similarly, adding that the Duke must be an idiot for confessing to the Count’s emissary (Perrine, 157). Perrine reminds us that Browning’s “The Last Duchess” is set during the 16th century during a time when nobility ruled over actions.
Is Benedick the comic hero of the play? How far do you agree with this statement? Suggesting if Benedick is the comic hero of Much Ado About Nothing is difficult to pin point a precise hero as each character possess a different comical trait. For the reason that each character during the play being a character to laugh at or with for respite after tragic events, for instance Dogberry’s use of malapropism mocks authority and makes fun of those who are in it. Devices that are used by Benedick and Beatrice are Bawdy language, word play and puns, which are very different compared to Dogberry’s According to Aristotle the idea of comedy comes from speculation concerning men dancing, signing and cavorting around the image of a phallus.
06/14/2012 YASH PANCHAL Love and Seduction “My Last Duchess” by Browning and “To His Coy Mistress” by Marvell are examples of two men searching for the right words to express their emotions towards a woman. The speakers in both poems are talking about love and seduction. Even though they both are written in two different centuries, both pieces have remarkable similarities as well as some of the common expected differences. “To His Coy Mistress” values women and their love they give, while “My Last Duchess” totally humiliates the role of women in society. “My Last Duchess" and "To His Coy Mistress" shows the act of the men in these two poems.
A group of aristocrats try to get Cyrano off the stage but he challenges them all to a duel. Valvert is the first person he fights. Valvert happens to be the person who has been selected to be Roxane’s husband. Ad they fight Cyrano improvises a poem about the duel. He says, “ Enterprising: What a sign for some perfumer!
Throughout the poem Marvell’s man uses many different techniques to encourage the woman. Initially he uses extreme praise to win her over, then straight flattery, moving on to almost threatening her, and finally he begins to boast about himself to her. Robert Browing’s poem My Last Duchess is about the relationship between a Duke and his Duchess. In this poem, the Duke is speaking to his envoy, and I think that within the poem he describes how he killed her, what her personality was like and how he is arranging for his envoy to find him another Duchess. Already, there is a clear pattern shown in these poems in the relationships between men and women; the man has little respect for the female.
The dramatic irony of the story is held in tension by the fact that the Duke reveals more to us as readers than he knows to be telling his listener. Though he is able to suspend the disbelief of his listener, as he directs the emissary’s eyes to the painting of the Duchess and asks him “please” to “sit and look at her”, he is ultimately unable to suspend our own; the self-reflexive nature of the poem, which is sustained in Browning’s heroic couplets, forces us to interpret the Duke’s story as a self-conscious performance rather than a truthful account of his late wife. The Duke’s preface to the story behind the portrait of the Duchess is an attempt to hide the fact that he has murdered his late wife, and to seduce the emissary into his authoritative interpretation of her character as revealed in the painting. Though he flatters his inferior by speaking to him as a familiar “you” and “Sir”, his polite condescension does not “stoop” to the emissary’s level, but rather establishes who is in charge. While he paints over his command to sit – “Will’t please you sit and look at her” – with flattery, he does not hesitate to remind his listener of the privilege he has to be shown the painting in the first place: “since none puts by/The curtain I have drawn for you, but I”.
He didn’t invent the dramatic monologue as it was used before in “to his coy mistress” but he brought the form a new level of complexity . The whole poem is a dramatic monologue which is a kind of poem in which a fictional or historical character other than the poet speaks to a silence audience of one or more persons. Such poems reveals not the poet’s own thoughts but the mind of the impersonated chr , whose personality is revealed unwittingly, this distinguishes a dramatic monologue from a lyric . This dramatic mo. reveals not only the reason of the duke’s disapproval of his former duchess behavior, but aspects of his personality as well.