The Laboratory

Question 1

Summary of this poem

Answer 1

Dramatic monologue of a woman speaking to an apothecary as he prepares a poison, which she intended to use to kill her rival in love.
She is a wealthy woman, used to attending court, rich in jewels, and she will use any resource for revenge.
Her revenge is not on the man who rejected her, but rather on his new lover.

Question 2

Context to this poem

Answer 2

Robert Browning was an important poet due to his dramatic monologues.
He was writing in a time when Darwinism and regard for scientific progress was increasing and religious influences were decreasing.
This poem was inspired by the life of Marie Madeleine Marguerite D’Aubray who planned to poison her husband.

Question 3

What is a dramatic monologue?

Answer 3

Poem written in the form of a speech of an individual character; it compresses into a single vivid scene a narrative sense of the speaker’s history.

Question 4

Techniques in stanza 3

Answer 4

Shocks reader with violent verbs which capture an inhuman desire to inflict suffering. The speaker denies her victims any level of dignity by reducing them to the simplicity of chemical elements.
Also monosyllabic language with a break between each word which slows pace, this is not a fleeting pang of jealous revenge but a fatal release of bitter hatred.

Question 5

Techniques in stanza 5

Answer 5

Wistful lilting aural effect is created by fricative sounds “them, thee and thy treasures”, as the speaker relishes the thought of inflicting further torment, she has no intention of stopping at one victim and refusing to seek redemption she opts instead for a hopeless spiral of destruction.

Question 6

Techniques in stanza 10

Answer 6

Hell imagery by plosive alliteration “brand, burn up, bite”, speaker is rejecting the human need to forgive and instead she becomes an agent of suffering as the inhuman nature of her hatred is underlined by canine zoomorphism (Three headed dog which prevented denizens of the underworld from escaping their torment).

Question 7

Structure and tone of this poem

Answer 7

Twelve quatrains in this poem. The even spacing helps give the poem a calm, controlled feeling even though the lines turn out to be about blood and guts and poison and death.
Tetrameter with unusual emphasis.

Question 8

Themes

Answer 8

Jealousy
Revenge
Science
Women and femininity
Death

Question 9

What does the title of this poem mean?

Answer 9

Refers to the poem central setting, a secretive laboratory where the speaker prepares to comminut murder.
Speaker describes laboratory as a “devil’s smithy”