s about how some "officious fool" brought her cherries from the orchard. The duke also could not stand the fact that the duchess treated everyone and every gift equally; "all and each / Would draw from her alike the approving speech, / Or blush, at least" (lines 29-31). The duke thought of his wife as one of his possessions and she could never be treated as his equal; "E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose / Never to stoop" (lines 42-43). Now her portrait is behind a curtain and he has absolute power over it, just like he thought he should have had over his wife while she was alive. In lines 54-56, Browning alludes to Greek mythology while making the comparison of how the duke tamed his wife like Neptune and the sea-horse; "Notice Neptune, though / Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, / Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!" The duke tried to have control over his household at all times and it seems like he is trying to convey that to his future son-in-law. He is also talking to a servant as the reader finds out at the end of the poem. The reader could take that as the duke trying to tell the people in his household that he is the ultimate power of the house as well the people that live in it....
