N & Q on Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"

1. Not only did Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd to His Love" evoke Ralegh's "Nymph's Reply" and John Donne's "The Bait" (cf. both in NAEL), but e.e. cummings' "come, gaze with me upon this dome" (which also alludes to a famous poem by English Romantic poet P.B. Shelley), C. Day Lewis's "Song: 'Come Live with Me'," and Ogden Nash's "Love Under the Republicans (or Democrats)." Many of the reply poems introduce the element of social criticism; what in Marlowe's poem evokes or provokes this response?

2. (a) Why is the repetition, virtually a refrain, in lines 1, 20, and 24, appropriate to a lover speaking to his intended? What has rhetoric or persuasion to do with love? In our time, as well as in the English Renaissance? (b) How does the poem exemplify the pastoral* genre? Why is pastoral an appropriate genre for a lover's persuasive purposes? What intentionally nonrealistic elements does the speaker introduce, indicating that he and his auditor aren't ordinary shepherds? How are these nonrealistic elements appropriate in the speaker's strategy or persuasion? (c) Where in the poem does the imagery fuse art and nature (cf. the comments in the section on art and nature in the NAEL intro to sixteenth century literature), and for what persuasive purpose or purposes? (d) How does the speaker in his imagery symbolically fuse his beloved intended with the landscape, and for what persuasive purpose or purposes?

3. (a) How does the speaker create a sort of timelessness in the poem, and how is this creation appropriate for amorous persuasion? (b) How is the timelessness of the poem an ironic contrast to Marlowe's life? (c) How are the couplets used in the rhyme scheme as well as generally iambic pattern appropriate to the poem's content? (d) The pun on posies (10) is frequent in English Renaissance poetry: (a) bouquet(s); (b) poems (cf. poesies); (c) amorous inscription on the inside of a ring given by one romantic partner to another (such rings are still available, though often the inscription is on the outside); how does this pun work in this poem? (e) How do assonance*, alliteration*, and euphony* occur in line 8? With what thematic appropriateness? (f) How does the alliteration on s (sibilance*, sigmatism*) help express or describe the content of the second quatrain? (g) How do we know that the NAEL editors (or proofreaders) have slipped up in not providing a diacritical mark to indicate that lined in line 15 should be disyllabic?

4. As noted previously, besides the answers by Sir Walter Ralegh ("The Nymph's Reply") and John Donne ("The Bait"), Marlowe's poem has continued to evoke poetic responses, down to the present day. Compare and contrast the following answers with Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply," as well as the object of their satire, Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd to His Love."

Henry Austin Dobson (1840-1921), "The Passionate Printer to His Love"

Ogden Nash (1902-1971), "Love Under the Republicans (or Democrats)" (1931)

Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of a marriage conducted with economy
In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.

We'll live in a dear little walk-up flat
With practically room to swing a cat
And a potted cactus to give it hauteur
And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.

We'll eat, without undue discouragement,
Foods low in cost but high in nouragement
And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily,
The peculiar wine of Little Italy.

We'll remind each other it's smart to be thrifty
And buy ojur clothes for something-fifty.
We'll stand in line on holidays
For seats at unpopular matinees,

And every Sunday we'll have a lark
and take a walk in Central Park.
And one of these days not too remote
I'll probably up and cut your throat.

C[ecil]. Day Lewis (1904-1972), "Song" (1935)

Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board
That chance employment may afford.

I'll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We'll hope to hear some madrigals.

Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain: not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.

Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone--
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), "A Further Proposal" (1947)

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some old pleasures prove.
Men like me have paid in verse
This costly courtesy, or curse.

But I would bargain with my art
(As to the mind, now to the heart),
My symbols, images, and signs
Please me more outside these lines.

For your share and recompense,
You will be taught another sense:
The wisdom of the subtle worm
Will turn most perfect in your form.

Not that your soul need tutored be
By intellectual decree,
But graces that the mind can share
Will make you, as more wise, more fair,

Till all the world's devoted thought
Find all in you it ever sought,
And even I, of skeptic mind,
A Resurrection of a kind.

This compliment, in my own way,
For what I would receive, I pay;
Thus all the wise have writ thereof,
And all the fair have been their love.


Paul Engle (1908-1991), "A Modern Romance" (c. 1959)

Come live with me and be my wife
And we will lead a packaged life,
Where food, drink, fun, all things save pain
Come neatly wrapped in cellophane.

Peter De Vries (1910-1993), "Bacchanal" (1959)

"Come live with me and be my love,"
He said, in substance. "There's no vine
We will not pluck the clusters of,
Or grape we will not turn to wine."

It's autumn of their second year.
Now he, in seasonal pursuit,
With rich and modulated cheer,
Brings home the festive purple fruit;

And she, by passion once demented
-- That woman out of Botticelli --
She brews and bottles, unfermented,
The stupid and abiding jelly.

 

Delmore Schwartz (1913 - 1966), "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"