Browning

My father was fond of Robert Browning's work. He had a soft leather bound book containing most of his works (which I have lost, damn it). He also had a copy of "The Yellow Book" and Browning's poem based on the case (mislaid those too when we moved house). I know little about that poem or the original book from which it came; but I do know that my father is the only person I have met who read them both.
There was a radio programme on 4 a couple of days ago about a favourite Browning poem of mine - no, the favourite - "My Last Duchess". And a very good programme it was. First the poem, or as they called it, the "dramatic monologue" was read superbly by Timothy West, then came some detective work, meeting various fans of the work, trying to find out who the characters in the poem were in real life (the narrator was none other than Lucretia Borgia's grandson), wondering if the poem's admirers thought him to be the central character of the work - one thought the lady in the portrait was.
The last time I heard the poem read on radio was some years back; it was read beautifully and dramatrically by Marius Goring.
In many ways it's a nasty poem: here is this Duke showing an emmisary (I take it) of someone whose daughter he wishes to marry, showing him a portrait of his former wife whom he had had killed. Rather unlikely I think. But while that may be a flaw in the story, the poem itself is scintillatingly dramatic and bristling with tension.
Browning (like Dickens) seemed attracted to murder, grotesque tragic happenings - even The Pied Piper, written for children, is quite a horrid tale. Having read the opening of a study of Browning some time ago I was drawn to a passage about how he read so much "lierature" about torture in his youth.
I read "My Last Duchess" many times before I discovered that it rhymed throughout; it reads like prose yet you can feel the rhythm beneath the prose; then when you realise it rhymes, it works new wonders on you.