How does Browning catch the essence of an age through the words of a single character in "My Last Duchess?"

Within the 56 lines of his dramatic monologue, Browning exposes not only Duke Ferrara but also the age in which he lived. That age was a time when a large number of landed aristocrats ruled over their own small city-states in Renaissance Italy. The control these men asserted over their society is captured in the poem as Duke Ferrara displays the "power, art, sophistication, [and] pitiless tyranny" (Allingham) typical of the time. 

Ferrara shows his power, and therefore the power that such aristocrats wielded in his age, by referencing his hiring of the artists Fra Pandolf and Claus of Innsbruck to do his bidding. He also runs an estate which employs people, such as the "officious fool" who broke off a cherry bough for the Duchess, raising the Duke's ire. Keeping the Duchess' painting behind a curtain and only drawing it back personally is a metaphor for the power Ferrara exercises over the minutest details, and he also demonstrates his controlling nature by the way he treats the Count's envoy, saying, "Nay--we'll go together down, sir" when the envoy tries to leave before he receives permission. Here Ferrara pulls rank on the ambassador but also on the Count, who was of a lower level of aristocracy than a duke. Obviously the greatest example of the Duke's power is that he has been able to do away with his "last Duchess" without suffering any consequences.

The art that played such an important role in Renaissance culture is amply represented in the poem by the extended reference to Fra Pandolf's act of painting the portrait and by the Duke's deliberate pointing out of the sculpture he commissioned. The bronze statue of "Neptune taming a seahorse" is symbolic of the Duke's ability to dominate not only the artist, but also his wife and anyone else because of his own status that is god-like in his society.

Ferrara shows the sophistication of his age by giving the tour of his personal gallery and also by his elevated diction. Although he ironically claims to not have "skill in speech," his discussion of the dowry with the envoy uses pretentious language: "The Count your master's known munificence is ample warrant that no just pretense of mine for dowry will be disallowed." 

Finally, the "pitiless tyranny" that aristocrats were able to exercise, and historically did exercise in the 16th century, is made clear by the Duke's assertion that "I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together." 

Browning brilliantly captures not only the mindset of an individual man in "My Last Duchess," but also that of the Renaissance age in which the poem is set.