greykit.poetry — Robert Browning/dramatic-lyrics

• 1842 [robert-browning] My Last Duchess
  Dramatic Lyrics

  A Duke of Ferrara shows an envoy a portrait of his late wife, revealing through oblique self-justification that he had her killed for being too easily pleased by anyone — then turns the conversation to the terms of his next marriage.

  #dramatic-monologue#Renaissance#pride#portraiture#1840s
• 1842 [robert-browning] The Pied Piper of Hamelin
  Dramatic Lyrics

  A child's story — the Pied Piper clears Hamelin of its rats for a thousand guilders, the Mayor refuses to pay, and the Piper leads all the town's children away through a mountain door that closes behind them forever.

  #narrative#children#magic#1840s
• 1836 [robert-browning] Porphyria's Lover
  Dramatic Lyrics

  A lover tells how Porphyria came in from the storm, laid her hair on his cheek and whispered she loved him — and he strangled her with it, to hold that perfect moment forever; all night they sat, and yet God has not said a word.

  #dramatic-monologue#psychology#gothic#1830s