answers: Nikolaus Madruz
context: Even in death the Duke wished to hide her away behind the curtain where no other man could admire her beauty. The Duke then resumes an earlier conversation regarding wedding arrangements, and in passing points out another work of art, a bronze statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse by Claus of Innsbruck, so making his late wife but just another work of art. In an interview, Browning said, "I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death ... Or he might have had her shut up in a convent." My Last Duchess "My Last Duchess" is </s> Lady Elizabeth, and his three Beaufort sons. Mary privately worries to Katherine that the King will never forgive her husband's participation at Radcot Bridge and the loss of his "dear friend" Oxford. Mary and the children travel to London to greet the recently travelling Bolingbroke – "a handsome, jolly knight, richly caparisoned, splendidly horsed" – who is very popular with the city's residents, unlike his father. The Earl of Derby pays homage to King Richard, who decides that Harry will become his squire. Gaunt succeeds in getting Arundel ousted from court. Mary dies of the plague, as does Queen Anne </s> Tyrol, Ferdinand II. The count was in charge of arranging the marriage; the chief of his entourage, Nikolaus Madruz, a native of Innsbruck, was his courier. Madruz is presumably the listener in the poem. The other characters named in the poem - painter Frà Pandolf and sculptor, Claus of Innsbruck - are fictional. The poem is set during the late Italian Renaissance. The speaker (presumably the Duke of Ferrara) is giving the emissary of the family of his prospective new wife (presumably a third or fourth since Browning could have easily written 'second' but did not do so) a tour
question: who is the duke speaking to in the poem my last duchess