Both 'My Last Duchess' and 'Tombs of Westminster Abbey' are about death. One is mostly about the characters dead wife ('My Last Duchess') and the other leans more towards burial and more than one death ('Tombs of Westminster Abbey'). Both poems are set in different time periods and have a different view of death, yet they remain similar in some ways, like the way the poems doesn't use stanzas and the way they are not regular, typical poems. In 'My Last Duchess', the poet takes on a persona and a monologue and yet, the poem falls under many possible groups for illustration as family, death and sadness for his wife. Although the poem shares no sign of sadness, it suggests to me as a reader, that in my own view of the persona he takes on, he seems cynical and arrogant and does not in the least bit care about his wife and gets angry when she smiles too much, but I see it as he obsesses about her too much now she's dead.
English: Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. Copyrig...
English: Westminster Abbey, Tombs
English: Westminster AbbeyOn the other hand, 'Tombs of Westminster Abbey' is seen as rhetorical and satirical, as if it was trying to persuade us. To conclude the similarities and differences of the poem, I just have another point to bring up, it seems that in 'My Last Duchess', the character/poet is trying to sound heartless, yet in 'Tombs of Westminster Abbey', the content of death is explained and laid out so as we understand it and don't get the impression of cruelty.
My first poem of comparison is 'My Last Duchess'. Firstly, the Duke in question during this poem lived in the 16th century at the time of the Renaissance. In 'My Last Duchess', one man...
Poetry Comparison
You've analyzed two poems which most people wouldn't think to compare. I might compare "My Last Duchess" to Browning's other famous dramatic monologue "Porphyria's Lover." Also, I would more likely compare Shelley's "Ozymandias" to "On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey" (please note the correct title of Francis Beaumont's poem). You've got the rhyme scheme wrong of "My Last Duchess" which uses heroic couplets. I also disagree that the tone of Browning's poem is calm and relaxed. Browning uses caesura and enjambment to lend a sort of unbalanced haste to the Duke's practiced speech. The tone is unnerving as a despicable man brags shamelessly of the murder of his wife so that his bride to be might be informed to behave herself. Unlike you, I am not likely to partly agree with the Duke, who was a monster in every sense of the word. As for Beaumont's poem, it uses full end rhymes, not half rhymes. It speaks of the vanity of human ambition which is laid waste by death. I'm going to rate your essay as average but I think it needs more work.
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