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A dramatic monologue is a poem in which a single speaker who is not the poet recites the entire poem at a critical moment. The speaker has a listener within the poem, but the reader of the poem is also one of the speakers listeners. In a dramatic monologue, the reader learns about the speaker's character from what the speaker says. Robert Browning is said to have perfected this form of writing. One of his most famous dramatic monologues is "My Last Duchess." The speaker in the poem is an Italian duke who ordered the murder of his wife and is at the offset of the poem showing off the portrait to his future son-in-law. Browning lets the reader know in a roundabout way that the duke only shows the portrait of his late wife to select strangers. In doing this, the speaker is able to show off his wealth to the stranger and he seems to enjoy telli