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...
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.