The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

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The Passionate Shepherd to His Love is a poem written by the English poet Christopher Marlowe in the 1590s.

In addition to being one of the most well-known love poems in the English language, it is considered one of the earliest examples of the pastoral style of British poetry in the late Renaissance period. It is composed in Iambic tetrameter (four feet of unstressed/stressed syllables), with six stanzas each composed of two rhyming couplets. It is often used for scholastic purposes because the poem is a good example of regular meter and rhythm.

The poem was the subject of a well-known "reply" by Walter Raleigh, called The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. The interplay between the two poems extends into the the relationship that Marlowe had with Raleigh. Marlowe was young, his poetry romantic, rhythmic, and in the Passionate Shepherd he idealises the love object (the Nymph). Raleigh was an old courtier, and an accomplished poet himself. His attitude is more jaded, and in writing the Nymph's reply it is clear that he is rebuking Marlowe for being naive and juvenile in both his writing style and the Shepherd's thoughts about love.

Separate from the Marlowe/Raleigh debate is the issue of the Shepherd's Love's Identity. It is Raleigh, not Marlowe, who identified the Love as a Nymph, and in fact the poem says nothing about a Nymph. It has been suggested that "the Love" is a homo-erotic euphemism, since Marlowe was familiar with the wooing of young boys by older men from ancient Greek scripts. (Based both on analysis of his works and writing, and on widespread consensus in the comments and writings of his contemporaries, Marlowe himself is today considered to have been homosexual.)

The poem was used as the lyrics of 1930s-style swing melody in the 1995 movie Richard III based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, who was a contemporary of Marlowe.

[edit] Analysis of The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

A Breakdown of The Passionate Shepherd to His Love The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Theme

• The message from Marlowe was one of ideal love, and also taking life at leisure.
  • “Come live with me, and be my love,/And we will all the pleasures prove (experience)(line 1)
  • “And I will make thee a bed of roses,/And a thousand fragrant posies.” (line 9)
  • “And we will sit upon the rocks,/Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks” (line 5)

Tone

• The narrator gives off a sense of extreme optimism, as if he believes everything will work out between him and his love.
  • “A gown made of the finest wool/Which from our pretty lambs we pull” (line 13)
  • “And if these pleasures may thee move,/Come live with me and be my love.” (line 19)

Structure

• The poem is twenty-eight lines, which are broken up into seven quatrains, and each quatrain is divided into two rhyming couplets.
  • “Come live with me, and be my love,/And we will all the pleasures prove/That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,/ Woods, or steepy mountain yields.” (line 1)
• It is written in the pastoral tradition.
  • “And we will sit upon the rocks,/ Seeing shepherds feed their flocks/By shallow rivers, to whose falls/Melodious birds sing madrigals. (line 5)

Diction

• Composed in iambic tetrameter
  • “A belt of straw and ivy buds,/With coral clasps and amber studs,” (line 17)
• Has an AABB rhyme scheme
  • “The shepherd swains(young boys)--shall dance and sing/For thy delight each May morning.” (line 21)
• Some of the couplets only rhyme with British pronunciation
  • “If these delights thy mind may move,/Then live with me, and be my love.” (line 23)

[edit] See also

• Arcadia