Musee des Beaux Arts

By W.H. Auden
SUMMARY
It turns out that when bad things happen to people, other
people are usually looking the other way. At least, that's
what our speaker starts to think as he looks at Pieter
Brueghel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," a painting
that depicts a lovely spring morning by the seaside
complete with a tiny pair of legs splashing around in the
water. That would be Icarus. He fell out of the sky (it's a
long story read about it in the "Symbols, Imagery,
Wordplay" section.)

Seeing the beautiful landscape coupled with a drowning gets

our speaker to thinking. See, as far as he can tell, this
Brueghel guy has got it just about perfect. Bad things tend to
be surrounded by well, by lots of good things. Sunny
skies. Beautiful trees. Pretty, pretty people. With all of that
good stuff around, who's going to notice when something
bad is going on a few feet away?

That's not necessarily a bad thing, is it? After all, kids don't
care when big events happen. At least, that's what our
speaker realizes. Thinking about all the surroundings in
Brueghel's painting leads him to free-think a bit about all of
the ways that suffering is surrounded by the hustle and
bustle of everyday life.

Finally, though, our speaker pulls his attention back to the

painting. You could think of this poem as a bit of a
backwards logic. Usually we move from description to
analysis. Here, Auden slams us with analysis before giving
us context. In other words, we're forced to think about the
ways that it's relevant for us before we figure out why it
matters to him. Pretty nifty, huh?

we'd probably read the poem all over again just to

get to that line. Auden's descriptive language isn't
at all fancy or flowery. In fact, it's just plain silly.
But we all know immediately what he means. And
that, folks, is pure genius.

Lines 19-20: OK, this is about as understated as it

gets. "Calmly" sailing away from disaster? 1)
That's pretty plain language. No fancy descriptions
of their thoughts or opinions on the matter. 2)
WHAT? Seriously? We're betting that these folks
don't win any prizes for civil service. But Auden's
plain language seems to suggest that such actions
are commonplace.

Symbol Analysis
Even though Auden keeps his language pretty simple and
straightforward, he does build up a fairly elaborate network
of references and allusions to places, people, and things
happening behind the scenes. Put all of these references
together, and you'll start to get a sneaking suspicion that the
real story is happening elsewhere, outside of the poem's
frameworkwhich is exactly what this poem is trying to get
you to see!

Title: Auden's title, "Muse des Beaux Arts,"

probably has you scrambling for a computer to
figure out just what he's talking about. (Don't
worry. We've got you covered. Check out what we
have to say in "Setting" for more details.) Here's a
quick and easy tip, though: anytime an author
references something or someone that you might
have to look up, chances are he's building a set of
references to objects outside the realm of the
poem's world. It's like having your cake and eating
it, too he gets us to think about the museum
without actually saying anything about it.

No need for fancy language here. No, sir. Doesn't even

matter that we're talking about the snootiest of all snooty
subjects, art. In fact, kind of like us here at Shmoop, Auden
seems to think that you don't need to break out every SAT
word you ever knew in order to talk about the Big Stuff like
art, culture, and human nature.
Line 4: Layering multiple images of everyday
occurrences on top of one another, Auden creates
something like a composite portrait of everything
that you might see people doing at, say, 2:07 on a
Tuesday afternoon. It's like one of those montages
that you see at the end of Grey's Anatomy. Except
without all that cheesy music.

Lines 16-18: There starts to be a strange discord

between the cataclysmic events described here and
the relaxed tone of the verse. Plain starts to become
eerie, we've got to be honest: a boy's legs silently
disappearing? Ack!

Symbol Analysis

Line 11: A dog's "doggy" life? We love it! In fact,

Line 2: Back to the computer! Auden alludes to the

"Old Masters" without saying exactly who they are.
Way to drum up (ambiguous) authority, Auden! We
bet you can probably figure out who he's talking
about, thoughthere are a few Ninja Turtles names

after some great ol' painters. Folks in the art world

tend to refer to pre-1800 all-stars as the Old
Masters. At least, that's what we hear.

Line 13: Now we've got something to put directly

into our search engine! Auden references Pieter
Brueghel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," the
painting which will occupy his speaker's mind for
the rest of the poem. In a weird way, this allusion is
actually comforting: it gives us a specific image on
which to concentrate our speaker's rambling and
ever-expanding set of references.

Symbol Analysis
There's a heap of references in "Muse des Beaux Arts" to
folks who think bigand end badly. Like Icarus. And the
martyrs. Here's what we mean:

Line 9: See? We promised you martyrs. Notice,

though, how the vagueness of this reference doesn't
allow you to think that a person is
suffering because of one thing or another. They're
justsuffering. Which makes the feeling a bit
more universal.

Line 11: Hehe. OK, this isn't exactly a heroic end.

In fact, it's just a horse's "end." But it sure does
lighten up the mood! Plus, it's a huge, huge contrast
to the big, heavy stuff happening behind the scenes
which makes that stuff (like torture) seem all the
more unnatural.

Line 17: More of the same. A decryption without

and references. It's actually quite the opposite of
how you usually hear about heroes or mythic
figures, right?

Icarus was a big dreamer. He wasn't satisfied

with just escaping from a horrible labyrinth in which he and
his father were being held captive. Oh, no. He wanted to
escape in style. Icarus actually had some help, though his
father, Daedalus, was a pretty talented craftsman. He
fashioned two pairs of wax wings so that he and his son
could fly away from their place of captivity.
They take off. Everything's going fine. In fact, Icarus is
enjoying flying so much that he decides he's going to get
higher and higher and closer and closer to the sun. After all,
that's what flying is all about, right?
Well, not really. Especially not when you happen to be
wearing wings of wax. The closer Icarus gets to the sun, the
melt-ier his wax wings become. Pretty soon, they aren't even
wax wings anymore. They're just big, melty blobs attached
to Icarus's back. And without wings, Icarus starts to fall.
.and that's where our poem picks up. Icarus is plunging
towards the water. And by the end of the poem, he's in the
water. Not exactly a happy ending, huh?

ANALYSIS: SPEAKER

Line 15: We don't even really know that it's Icarus

in the water at this point, do we? Auden tends to
back into his allusions, allowing us to see what's
happening before he lets us know exactly what it's
all about.

Icarus is referenced throughout this poem, and since he does

have a pretty amazing backstory, we thought we'd tell you a
bit more about him. This guy goes all the way back to Greek
mythsand believe us, those Greeks went through some
pretty wild stuff.

Line 19: Even now, once we've heard the whole

story, Icarus is just "a boy." He could be anybody.
That's not exactly the sort of treatment that
mythmakers usually get. Maybe that means that
there are no more heroes. Or maybe it just means
that anybody could be in his shoes. Or, erwings.

Symbol Analysis

What's interesting about our speaker is that he's pretty

absent from the poem as a whole. No references to what he
thinks or believes or ate for breakfast last Tuesday. No
mention of his cats or his mother. In fact, the only way that
we're able to learn anything at all about him is the fact that
the poem's title tips us off to where he is: in the Muse de
Beaux Arts. And that's not necessarily the speaker's doing.
Come to think of it, the word "I" never once enters this
poem. Which should tell you something. Whoever this
speaker is, he's keeping a very low profile.
So why have a hidden speaker? Well, that's a good question.
You could think of this guy as the voice in your ear when
you rent an audio tour to the museum. He sounds
authoritative precisely because he doesn't let on that he's a
real person with petty thoughts and a sincere desire to get
out of the art gallery and into the museum coffee shop as
fast as he possibly can. In other words, he's the closest thing
to a Voice from On High as you might get.
In a novel, he'd be a third-person narrative voice. In a

Disney movie, he might just be a Conscience. In this poem,

however, he's a speaker who doesn't ever move outside of a
tight frame of reference. He's sitting before a single
painting, and his mind is completely absorbed in what's
before him.

dynamic that his poem describes which is only proper.

After all, if we take Auden's word for it, everyone ignores
something sometime. And right now, it's us.

ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH THE TITLE?

ANALYSIS: SETTING
Where It All Goes Down
OK, folks. Buckle your seat belts. This'll be a bit of a bumpy
ride. Here are some of the settings that this poem brings into
play:
1.

The Muse des Beaux Arts, a fine arts museum in

Brussels, Belgium. We can tell that from the title.
Funnily enough, though, Auden never mentions it
again. It just sort of hangs in our minds through the
rest of the poem. It's a setting that's only a setting,
nothing more. Don't worry it only gets more
complicated from here.

2.

Sixteenth-century Belgium. That's where the

plowmen come in. And maybe even the little kids
skating on the pond. Definitely the ship.

3.

Ancient Greece. Maybe even mythic Greece. That's

where Icarus, the boy flying to the sun with wings
of wax, hails from. You just don't run into that
every day.

4.

But here's the important one: the speaker's mind.

See, that's where all of these wonderful worlds
collide. Only a painter could pair myth with
absolutely, totally ordinary. And only Auden's
speaker can filter theexperience of that poem
through an individual's consciousness.

Ironically, all of these jumbled settings only reinforce the

speaker's earliest point: that suffering occurs anywhere,
anytime and while all sorts of other things are going on.
Have you noticed the one setting that we didn't describe? It's
the sky which is where Icarus falls. Even as Auden is
describing the ways that we never pay attention to the
suffering around us, his poem manages to avoid describing
that suffering outright. Pretty great trick, huh? It's almost
like Auden tricks us into participating in exactly the sort of

"Muse des Beaux Arts" is sort of like an occasion piece

that is, Auden could have called it something like "I
happened to be at this art museum and saw this one picture
and this is what I thought"
Why didn't he call the poem that? Well, for starters, it's a lot
harder to type. Try it sometime. For another, naming the
poem after a particular museum (it happens to be in
Brussels, Belgium) makes it a bit like inviting us into the
speaker's world. Believe us, it's the only invitation we'll get.
After this, he's all philosophy and free-thinking. He's not so
interested in helping us figure out things about him but
we'll talk more about that in our "Speaker" section. You
could think of this as the breadcrumbs that Hansel and
Gretel use to get themselves back home (OK, we know that
the breadcrumbs didn't work so well. But run with us for just
a second.) Auden wants to spend a few minutes at the
beginning of the poem thinking big so the title helps to
ground us while he thinks about life, the universe, and
everything.
Then again, this title hearkens back to all the poems that
poets wrote immediately after seeing/doing something like
"Upon Reading Chapman's Homer" or "Lines Composed a
Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of
the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798." It's like Twitter for
the early twentieth century. Want to know what I've just
been up to? Read the title of my poem!

Line 16: In this line, the sea is part of an

historical allusion. The speaker uses the sea
(in this case the Aegean, which is part of the
Mediterranean) to connect him to the ancient
playwright Sophocles. In this passage the
sound of the rising and falling tide is used as
an analogy for the "ebb and flow of human
misery" (line 17).

Line 21: This is one of the major, go-for-broke

metaphors in "Dover Beach." The speaker
uses the idea of the sea that he's spent so
much time building up, but this time he turns it
into a metaphor for the human belief in a
higher power. The real sea of the English
Channel is reimagined as a "Sea of Faith."

DOVER BEACH SUMMARY

"Dover Beach" opens with a quiet scene. A couple
looks out on the moonlit water of the English Channel,
and listens to the sound of the waves. Then, all of a
sudden it zooms out. And we mean way out.

Symbol Analysis
See, the sound of the waves makes the speaker think
first of ancient Greece. Yep, Greece. Then he turns the
sound of the surf into a metaphor for human history,
and the gradual, steady loss of faith that his culture
has experienced. The poem ends on a gorgeous,
heartbreaking note, with the couple clinging to their
love in a world of violence and fear and pain.
Symbol Analysis
The sea is everywhere in "Dover Beach." It shows up
in different places and in different forms, but we feel its
power all over the place. Sometimes it's a physical
location, something you can actually see, like the
English Channel or the Aegean Sea, and sometimes it
morphs into a metaphor for the fate of humanity.
Heavy stuff, for sure.

poem. The slow, steady, endless movement of water,

in and out, in and out, becomes a symbol of eternity. It
also, though, comes to represent change and loss.
Let's turn to the play-by-play.

Line 8: Another powerful image, this time of

the sea meeting the land. It's important to
notice how much time Arnold spends making
us really see this vision of the coast of
England in the moonlight. The sea is going to
turn into a huge metaphor in this poem (so
stay tuned), but for now it's just a pretty spot.

Line 2: Here the tide is just the tide. It's part of

the landscape at the beginning of this poem.
At the same time, the fact that our speaker
describes it as "full" contributes to the feeling
of calm and happiness in these first few lines.

Line 17: Here the "ebb and flow" of the tide is

used as a metaphor for the way that
unhappiness rises and falls in human life. We
think the rising and falling of the tide makes for
a kind of guiding rhythm all through this poem.

Line 1: This is a really simple opening line,

focused on a really simple image. We think
that's a key part of this poem's effect. We start
with this calm, vivid picture in our heads, and
from there everything slowly dissolves away.
Over 37 lines, the speaker strips away our
illusions, and shows us the nightmare behind
this calm ocean.

The image of the tide shows up repeatedly in this

Line 25: Here's another metaphorical tide,

representing human faith. In this case, though,
it doesn't go in and out. It just rolls back
forever, deserting the world and leaving us
confused and alone. Yay?

Symbol Analysis
The moon makes a couple of cameos at the beginning.
Even though its role in this poem is pretty brief, we
think it's important. The opening parts of "Dover
Beach" are so much about the world that we see, and
the moon is one of the crucial features of that first
scene. It helps to establish a feeling of calm that will
later be completely shattered.

Line 2: Here the moon is part of the happy

natural imagery that opens the poem. In this
line the moon is described as being "fair"
(lovely or beautiful). If we only read this first
stanza, we might think we were dealing with a
simple little nature poem, or a happy sonnet,
perhaps. Our speaker has bigger and darker
plans than that, though.

This is such a pure and utterly bleak image that we

think it deserves special attention. The speaker of this
poem has a bunch of different ways of describing the
desolation of the modern world. For our money, this is
one of the best moments, one of the strongest
expressions of that feeling of hopeless emptiness and
vulnerability.

Line 8: The world is still pretty much okay

Line 28: In this line "shingles" means the rocks

that lie on the shore. So what Arnold is doing
is picking up the imagery of the coastline that
he worked so hard to establish in the first
stanza and turning it into something evilsounding and scary. The coast the speaker
can see is calm and comforting. The naked,
empty metaphorical coast in his mind is
anything but.

when the moon shows up here. Still, we think

there are little hints that not everything is just
great. There's something just a little bit sinister
about the sound of the land being "moonblanched." It makes us think of something
being unnaturally pale, maybe even a little
deathlike.
Symbol Analysis

Symbol Analysis

The night has a few different roles to play in this poem.

In a way, it's kind of a flexible image. At first, it
connects with the feelings of comfort and calm that
dominate the opening scenes of the poem. By the end,
though, it's part of a much more sinister set of ideas,
connected metaphorically with all of the pain and
suffering of humanity.

This is the imaginary landscape where the great final

simile of the poem comes to its catastrophic end. Just
think about how far we've come in such a short poem,
how far we are from the pleasure and calm of the
beginning. We think there's something totally spinechilling about the image of this pitch-dark battlefield.

Line 6: In this line, nighttime sounds pretty

great. The speaker even goes so far as to
describe the air as "sweet" a figure of speech
that fits in beautifully with the relaxed
ambiance of these opening lines.

Line 27: By this point in the poem, the night

has become a symbol not of peace and
happiness but of desolation and fear. The
night-wind (in comparison with the night-air in
line 6) sounds kind of evil and threatening to
us. Rather than caressing the speaker, it howls
around a lonely and vulnerable world.

Line 37: It's no accident that "night" is the final

word in this poem. With an ending like that,
Arnold leaves us in darkness, abandoned in
the confusion of the faithless world. While
night doesn't always have to symbolize
emotional darkness, it sure does here.

Symbol Analysis

Line 35: The image of the "darkling plain"

opens up the epic simile (notice how he says
"as on a darkling plain") that ends the poem.
The basic idea here is that the speaker is
comparing human existence to a dark
battlefield, where friends and enemies clash
together and fight each other in total
confusion.
ANALYSIS: SPEAKER

We'll be the first to admit that we don't have some

basic facts about this speaker. We don't even have a
name or a gender for this dude. (For the sake of
convenience in cases like this, we use the same
gender for the speaker and the poet, although it's
important to remember that they aren't the same
person.) We don't know how old he is, or what he
looks like.
So what do we know? Well, we know that he's
standing in a room in Dover, England with his lover,
and listening to the ocean. He's also educated enough
to be able to drop a quick allusion to Socrates.

The Devil's in the (Lack of) Details

Still, that sounds like a lot of missing pieces to
Shmoop. But that might just be the point. "Dover
Beach" isn't really about superficial details like names,
hair color, age, or background. It's a whole lot more
universal than that. We don't want to blow this too far
out of proportion or anything, but here goes: we think
this speaker wants us to know how he understands
The Entire World. And we think, in 37 lines, he does a
pretty good job.
He shows us that he has a deeply bleak view of the
present state of mankind, with little faith that human
happiness can survive against the chaotic darkness of
life. He believes that the world "Hath really neither joy,
nor love, nor light." He's nostalgic for a time when
there was more faith in the world, and he tells us that
"The Sea of Faith / was once at the full" (21-22) but it's
hard to even tell when that was. He holds out some
hope for love (29-30) but that doesn't look good. When
it comes down to it, we might say this speaker sounds
a little depressed. But we also think he should cheer
up. After all, there's still poetry to read. And love to fall
in.

ANALYSIS: SETTING
Where It All Goes Down
Seems like we're golden on this one, since the setting
of the poem is in the title. This poem is set at the
beach in Dover, on the southeastern coast of England.
Our work here is done, right?
Ah, not so fast, Shmoopers. In the first stanza, we get
some more detail about the scene. First, the speaker
lets us know that the ocean is "calm" (1). He also tells
us that it's high tide (2) and the there's a moon lighting
up the water (2-3). He's also with someone else, whom
he asks to "come to the window" (which lets us know
that he's not alone, and he's indoors). The speaker can
hear the sound of the waves crashing on the shore,
and see a light "on the French coast." From there, we
take off into historical and metaphorical worlds inside
the poet's mind. Still we come back, in the final stanza
(29-33), to the speaker and his "love" (29) and his
room on the English Channel.

We know for sure that Arnold himself went to Dover,

and some critics have suggested that this poem is
based on his experiences on his honeymoon. From
what we can gather, it sounds like that's not quite
settled, though. For more on that check out Victorian
Web.

Jump into the second stanza, and the stakes have

changed. The mirror is no longer a mirror, but a lake,
which also shows reflections. And we get to see a
whole new character: a woman. We saw faces in the
first stanza, but now we focus on one face in particular.
This woman, we find out, isn't very happy with her
reflection in the lake, so she tries to find a kinder
reflection under the light of a candle or the moon.
When the lake reflects her faithfully anyway, she cries
and gets upset.
In the last two lines of this poem, we see why this
woman is so upset: in her watery reflection, her past is
drowning, and a horrible future is rising to meet her.
Symbol Analysis
From the beginning of the poem, where we find out

MIRROR SUMMARY

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that the mirror is "unmisted" and "swallows"

everything, to the end of the poem, where a girl is
drowning and a fish is rising, this poem revolves
around water. Here, water is both a reflecting surface
and an actual lake. So, water, in this poem, is both
clear and mysterious.

address water, it uses the word "swallow" as

a metaphor for reflecting. The word makes us
think of water, which can itself swallow things,
taking them beneath its surface.

This poem is not a riddle, speaking with the voice of

some mysterious "I" until the end, where the reader is
shocked to find out that it's a mirror, and not a person
speaking. Instead, the poem lets us know from the
start that we're hearing from a mirror, with its title,
"Mirror," and its first line, "I am silver and exact."

Line 3: Again, a water-related term is used as

a metaphor. "Unmisted" stands in here for
"unchanged."

Lines 10-11: Here we find out that the mirror is

a lake. It's a cool image, shifting from the silver
of a mirror to the silver of clear water. Then we
hear that a woman is searching the reaches of
the water for what she really is; if you've ever
spent some time peering into water, you'll
know that it can be mesmerizing like this. The
mythical Greek figure Narcissus even died
looking into his reflection in a pond.

The first stanza describes the mirror, which seems to

be like one of those people who doesn't tell white lies
it's truthful and exact, but not cruel.
As the first stanza personifies the mirror, showing us
some of its human characteristics, we also find out a
little about the mirror's life. Most of the time, it reflects
a pink speckled wall, which could be found in any
bathroom, but it also sees a lot of faces, and a lot of
darkness.

Line 2: While this line doesn't explicitly

Line 14: The tears are another form of water,

and the woman is physically interacting with
the water of the lake by stirring it up with her

hands. She's taking her frustration out on the

water.

poem, but it is only appropriate, in a poem

about reflections, that we'd see what is lighting
up the reflection. However, we only hear that,
when it comes to reflections, candles and the
moon are liars, that the light they provide is
false. The mirror's declarationpersonifies the
candles and the moons, giving them human
qualities, like the ability to lie.

Lines 17-18: This drowning and rising up is,

yet again, a metaphor. With the young girl
drowning, and the old woman rising, it seems
most likely that the water is a metaphor for
time, or aging. Also note that because the old
woman rises up "like" a terrible fish, this part of
the line is a simile.

COLOR, LIGHT, AND DARKNESS

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Symbol Analysis
In talking about mirrors, the sense of sight is pretty
important. So, of course, colors and darkness figure
into this poem. From silver to pink to moonlight, this
poem uses colors and light to give the reader images
as they read about a mirror.

Line 1: The color in this line gives us the major

clue that ah ha! the speaker is not a
person, but a personified mirror. Since this is
the first line, we think of the color silver
throughout the poem whenever we think of the
mirror.

Symbol Analysis
In a poem about a mirror, we can expect a lot of
reflections. Plath only uses the word "reflect" once,
though. Instead of just repeating this word again and
again, she uses personification and metaphor to get
her point across. Moreover, the reflections in this poem
aren't those of someone checking to make sure she
doesn't have anything stuck in her teeth. The
emphasis on reflections in this poem shows the
importance of appearance to the woman in the poem,
and, perhaps, to women in general.

Line 2: "Swallow" is a metaphor for reflecting.

This line is also an example
ofpersonification mirrors don't see or
swallow anything but Plath's poem makes
this character so believable that we have to
remind ourselves that mirrors don't have eyes
or mouths.

Line 6: Again, we
see personification and metaphor teaming
up to mean reflection. The metaphor is that the
mirror is reflecting the opposite wall, not
"meditating on" (or thinking about) it, and the
personification is that mirrors don't meditate,
people do.

Line 9: In this line, we get our first glimpse of

darkness, which separates the mirror from the
pink wall it believes is part of its heart. The
mirror also mentions that faces play a part in
this separation. What does this mirror feel
about human faces if it sees them on the same
plane as darkness?

Line 16: Again, in this line, we see faces and

darkness. But instead of the faces separating
the mirror from the pink wall, faces replace the
darkness. We'd expect the sky, in the morning,
to replace the darkness, but instead, the
woman's face is the first thing reflected in the
lake.

Lines 7-8: So the mirror is silver, but now we

get the image of the pink, speckled wall, which
the mirror reflects most of the time. This pink,
speckled image is less exotic and exciting than
the mirror's silvery surface. But then in line 8,
we find out that this speckled pink wall is like
part of the mirror's heart and hearts often
make us think of the color red.

Line 13: We hear a lot about darkness in this

Lines 7-8: Mirrors don't see, and they don't

look; hence we have another example
of personification used to create
a metaphor for reflection. This time, we find

out that it's possible for the mirror to feel that

whatever it reflects is a part of its heart, further
personifying the mirror.

Line 11: Here we see the importance of

reflections. Now, the mirror is a lake, and a
woman is searching its waters to learn
something about herself. This line is starting to
dive into the wider function of reflection in this
poem. The woman is treating her reflection in
the water as if it could reveal something about
herself, and not just her appearance.

Line 13: Ah ha! We caught you, Plath, you

used the word reflect! But not without
some personification, of course. The mirror is
providing an accurate reflection, as if it takes
pride in what it does, or as if it has some
loyalty to this woman.

Lines 18-19: These two lines give reflections

physical power. Of course, this power is
abstract only a figurative young girl and a
figurative old woman are in the waters of the
lake, but it's a very cool image nonetheless.
This line takes reflections from being about
present appearances and makes them about
past and future appearances, all through
the metaphor of drowning and rising in the
waters of the lake.
ANALYSIS: SPEAKER

It might seem that a poem written from the point of

view of a mirror would have a pretty boring speaker,
but that's not true of this poem. This mirror has a lot of
human-like qualities, which keep us interested. In
addition, the speaker's voice remains the same
throughout the poem, although it changes in form
between the first and second stanza from a mirror to a
lake.
We can see the mirror clearly in the first stanza: it's
silver, four-cornered, and situated across from a pink
speckled wall. We can imagine the mirror hanging in a
woman's bathroom, perhaps remaining there for years
as different women move in and out of the house; we
don't hear too much about the humans in the first
stanza except that their faces separate the mirror from
its beloved pink wall. We'd think a pink speckled wall
would be a little suffocating to look at for the majority of

your life, but the mirror feels as if the wall is a part of

its own heart. This mirror is also proud of its reflecting
skills, calling itself the "eye of a little god," reflecting
truthfully exactly what it sees. We could imagine the
mirror as an artist in the school of realism, bragging
about how true to life it is.
When the mirror switches into a lake, it holds onto
these same characteristics, calling less exact
reflections, like those influenced by the moon or
candles, liars. It claims to be important to the woman it
reflects, and she seems to be important to the lake it
reflects her back "faithfully" and seems upset when it
sarcastically says she "rewards" it with tears. Yet this
women isn't elevated to the status of the pink wall,
which the mirror thinks is a part of its heart. In a poem
spoken by an inanimate object, we can expect some
partiality to other inanimate objects, right?
While we still get a clear picture of the characteristics
of the lake, unlike we did with the mirror, we don't
really know what the lake looks like, though it must be
still enough to show a reflection. We imagine this is a
small lake, within a morning's walk from where the
woman in the poem lives close enough that she can
peer at her reflection there every morning.
ANALYSIS: SETTING
Where It All Goes Down
This poem has two distinct settings. In the first stanza,
the setting is probably a bathroom, because the wall is
speckled pink, and there are a lot of faces and
darkness in the room. If the room were bigger, we're
guessing that the opposite wall would be a little more
interesting, and the lights wouldn't be off so much. But
the mirror could be anywhere a bedroom, a hallway?
It's left up to our imagination. We do know that it's a
four-cornered mirror, and not an oval one, so this
mirror is probably just practical, and not super fancy.
Also, the detail that the wall is pink might hint that
there are women in the house, and that the mirror is in
an area they use. We imagine this mirror in a
bathroom, with perfume and hair gel right underneath
it. Where do you picture the mirror hanging?
In the second stanza, the setting changes. We know
that our speaker is now a lake, but we don't know how
big it is, or if it's in a field, by a forest, or even in the
middle of a suburb. We're guessing it's a small, clear

lake, somewhere mystical and moonlit, but close

enough to a house that the woman who looks at her
reflection can come and go easily and often.

Duke takes the servant upstairs into his private art

gallery and shows him several of the objects in his
collection.
The first of these objects is a portrait of his "last" or
former duchess, painted directly on one of the walls of
the gallery by a friar named Pandolf. The Duke keeps
this portrait behind a curtain that only he is allowed to
draw. While the servant sits on a bench looking at the
portrait, the Duke describes the circumstances in
which it was painted and the fate of his unfortunate
former wife.
Apparently the Duchess was easily pleased: she
smiled at everything, and seemed just as happy when
someone brought her a branch of cherries as she did
when the Duke decided to marry her. She also blushed
easily. The Duchesss genial nature was enough to
throw the Duke into a jealous, psychopathic rage, and
he "gave commands" (45) that meant "all smiles
stopped together" (46). Were guessing this means he
had her killed although its possible that he had her
shut up somewhere, such as in a convent. But its way
more exciting if you interpret it as murder, and most
critics do.
After telling this story to the servant of the family that
might provide his next victim er, sorry, bride the
Duke takes him back downstairs to continue their
business. On the way out, the Duke points out one
more of his favorite art objects: a bronze statue of
Neptune taming a seahorse.
FR PANDOLF'S PAINTING OF THE DUCHESS
Symbol Analysis

MY LAST DUCHESS SUMMARY

The Duke of Ferrara is negotiating with a servant for
the hand of a counts daughter in marriage. (We dont
know anything about the Count except that he is a
count. And that hes not the Count from Sesame
Street different guy.) During the negotiations, the

The most obvious symbol in "My Last Duchess" is the

one that the Duke spends most of his time talking
about the portrait of the Duchess painted by Fr
Pandolf on the wall of his private gallery. Intriguingly,
the Duke doesnt say much about the painting itself,
except that its lifelike and that it seems to capture the
Duchesss emotional state. We dont get any sense of
what pose the Duchess is in, what shes wearing, or
what the color scheme or brushstrokes. What we do
learn about the painting is that its painted directly on
the gallery wall, and so the Duke has to keep it
covered by a curtain so that he can control who views
it.

Lines 1-2: The Duke points toward the portrait

crosses the face of the Duchess. The fact that

her blushing is referred to as a "spot" makes it
sound blameworthy.

of the duchess using the language of this first

sentence "that" and "painted on the wall"
start setting the scene for the reader.

Lines 3-4: When the Duke describes the hard

work that went into the painting of the
Duchess, he uses a synecdoche, making Fr
Pandolfs hands, not Fr Pandolf himself, the
subject of the sentence. By reducing the
painter to the part of his body that does the
work, he dehumanizes Fr Pandolf, turning
him into a tool instead of a person.

perceives the Duchess as flirtatious, the Duke

comes up with a euphemism "too soon made
glad," which is a roundabout way of saying
"easily pleased" or maybe just "easy."

Lines 17-19: Imagining the way the painter

might have complimented the Duchess, the
Duke uses elaborate imagery.

Symbol Analysis
Along with blushes, the Duchess bestows pleased
smiles on anyone and anything that brings a little bit of
joy into her life. The Duke thinks of these smiles
almost the way you might think of collectors items
theyre worth less (maybe even worthless) because
she gives out so many of them. In fact, it seems like
the Duke thinks that the Duchess should only smile for
him. Taking pleasure in your life, let alone in its subtle
details, just doesnt fit with his prestige-and-power
philosophy.

Lines 13-15: The Duke uses a tongue-in-cheek

In these lines, he uses innuendo together with

metonymy "her looks went everywhere" to
suggest that she herself "goes everywhere"
too. (Aninnuendo is a seemingly innocent
statement that implies something bawdy, sexy,
or racy. Basically, anything you could follow
with "nudge, nudge" or "thats what she said"
counts as an innuendo.)

Lines 31-34: The Duchess isnt the only one

reduced to an intangible thing associated with
her the Duke describes his marriage to her
using metonymy, calling it the "gift" of his
"nine-hundred-years-old name."

understatement to emphasize how many

things cause the "spot of joy" to appear in the
Duchess's cheek.

Lines 23-24: The Duke continues to use

indirect language and figures of speech to
imply that the Duchess is too flirtatious without
saying so directly.

Symbol Analysis
When the Duchess is happy about something and
we really mean anything, her marriage, her dinner, the
weather, anything at all she smiles and blushes, and
the Duke describes her blush s a "spot of joy" (21) that
appears in her cheek. The spot of joy is an involuntary
signal of the Duchess's pleasure, something that she
cant control, that betrays her inner feelings to the
world. The Duke thinks of it as a "spot" a stain, a
symbol of her tainted nature.

Of course, that may not be an accurate

characterization of the Duchess but thats
how the Duke perceives her. Since the
Duchess isnt here to defend herself, all we
have to go on is the Dukes claim.

Line 8: Its a tough call on this one, but you

could think of the painting of the Duchess as
personified. After all, paintings themselves are
just paint on a surface, but this painting is
looking at the viewer it has an "earnest
glance" and it almost seems like it has
feelings "depth and passion." However,
because the painting is an image of a person,
you could also interpret the Dukes comments
as being about the subject of the painting,
instead of the painting itself in which case
this wouldnt be personification.

Lines 21-22: In order to convey that he

The phrase "spot of joy" itself is a startling

juxtaposition of images that makes the reader
think differently about the kind of blush that

Lines 43-45: The Duke asks a rhetorical

question, implying that the Duchess bestows
the same smile on everyone around her.

Line 46: The Duke uses synecdoche when he

Symbol Analysis

The speaker of "My Last Duchess" is, of course, the

Duke of Ferrara. But its important to think about him,
not only as a character, but as a speaker. We need to
consider his rhetoric, and syntax, and speech patterns.
We know what kind of a man the Duke is, but what
kind of an orator is he?

Its important to notice that when the Duke describes

something that he thinks of as inappropriate or base
for him to do, he does so by calling it "stooping." He
considers himself to be on a high social pedestal, with
his "nine-hundred-years-old name" and his wealth. He
cant "lower" himself, even to tell someone that hes
angry with them. Normal communication and behavior
are out of the question for him, because they fall into
the category of "stooping."

First of all, the Dukes speech is highly formalized,

using strict rhyme and meter to organize itself into
couplets (AABBCC etc.). Hes a man who appreciates
control, and he takes pains to control his own
statements. But the syntax, or sentence structure, of
the poem pulls against its rhyme scheme. The lines
are paired in rhymed couplets, but these couplets are
"open" that is, the sentences dont finish at the same
time the lines do. For example:

admits to his murder of the Duchess; instead

of saying that he killed her, he mentions that
all of her smiles have stopped.

Lines 34-35: The Duke uses a rhetorical

question to force his listener to agree with him
that it would be "stooping" to talk to the
Duchess directly about her inappropriate
behavior.

Line 36: A paradox: the Duke claims that he

doesnt have "skill in speech," even though
hes speaking skillfully in order to say so!

Lines 42-43: In these lines, as the Duke

repeats his belief that communicating with the
Duchess would be "stooping," Browning uses
assonance, or the repetition of vowel sounds,
to bring emphasis to the lines.

Symbol Analysis
The final art object that the Duke points out to the
Counts servant as they leave his gallery is a bronze
statue of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, taming a
seahorse. The Duke emphasizes that this statue was
cast for him specifically and names the sculptor, Claus
of Innsbruck which presumably means that this
sculptor is well-known. As readers, we have to
consider this statue as a foil to the only other art object
that we see in the gallery the portrait of the Duchess.

Lines 54-56: Browning uses alliteration and

consonance to unify and structure the lines
describing the statue of Neptune.
ANALYSIS: SPEAKER

The Duke of Ferrara

I repeat,
The Count your masters known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughters self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. (48-53)
This statement is one sentence and contains two
couplets, but the sense of the lines continually spills
past the rhyming words. The Duke can shape his
speech into couplets, but his thoughts strain against
that structure and try to break it. Theres a sense of
struggle in his lines, as though hes just barely
managing to rein things in and about to lose it at any
moment. Given what happened to his "last Duchess,"
were frightened of what will happen when he finally
loses control.
Where It All Goes Down
A Private Art Gallery in the Palace of the Duke of
Ferrara
Unlike some lyric poetry, and very much like a play,
"My Last Duchess" has a very definite physical and
geographical setting: a private art gallery in the palace
of the Duke of Ferrara in mid-sixteenth-century
Renaissance Italy. The modern day country of Italy
didnt exist during the Renaissance the many citystates in the region werent unified until the late
nineteenth century. But Ferrara was a city-state in
what is today northern Italy, sort of near Bologna.
Browning even tells us this setting in the epigraph, as
though he were listing the location of the scene in a
play. Whats interesting is that the real historical details

of life in sixteenth-century Ferrara are much less

important to the poem than the connotations and
stereotypes of an Italian Renaissance palace.
Browning was writing for a nineteenth-century
audience (even if that audience didnt always "get" his
poetry), and that nineteenth-century audience would
have immediately made certain assumptions about a
place like Ferrara. You know how, if we say
"Transylvania," you immediately think of Dracula,

werewolves, and creepy moonlit castles? Well, for

nineteenth-century British readers, saying
"Renaissance Italy" would have made them think of
fantastic art objects, extravagant living, lavish palaces,
and sinister political ideas of the Machiavelli sort. In
this way, that simple epigraph "Ferrara" suggests a
whole cluster of themes even if some of those
themes might be inaccurate stereotypes.