The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe - Essay Example

Research proposal for "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" Without doubt, Christopher Marlowe’s poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is one of the most esteemed literary piece in English poetry not only for its smooth sing song narrative of the idyllic milieu of a pastoral life but also because of the obvious romantic theme of the shepherd’s cajoling of a nymph to be his love with the proposal of the catalogue of pleasure presented that includes “sitting by a river, watching the shepherds with their flocks and listening to the birds sing to the accompaniment of a waterfall; second, of rosy beds and flower-adorned garments (Forsythe 692) that it exudes idealism and romance which “highlight its realistic sense of the transience and vulnerability of love” (Schubert). Taken as a whole that includes Sir Walter Raleigh’s reply, the poems were unique in its format yet highly organized according to the discipline and exactness of structure of poem during his time that it consisted of six stanzas of 4 quatrains written in octosyllabic lines arranged in quatrains and rhyming alternately at a pattern of a-a and b-b. Upon close examination of the poem however, one can tell that there is more than what meets the eye in Christopher Marlowe’s "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love". It is not merely a sing song courtship poem of a young shepherd offering the beauties of rural life but extends beyond the narrative of romance and pastoral life. Forsythe had this observation that the joys that were employed as an enticement to the nymph to be the shepherd’s love were not always pastoral as what the popular idea suggests (693). It is not merely “Come live with me and be my love” but rather extends beyond the seeming idealism of the poem. They are the luxuries and extravagance which are by no means within the means and taste of a shepherd such as the invitation of the gown made of wool and the buckles of the purest gold (Marlowe). It is not to belittle the occupation of the shepherd but these objects are just contradictions in the circumstances of a shepherd and not logical. It would have been more acceptable that in addition to the rivers, roses, hills, fields and mountains, the gold and the wool would have been replaced by similar rural objects to make the objects used as devices to entice the nymph to be consistent. These inconsistencies in Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" did not only earned praises and subsequent followers but also also criticism and close study of his work. One of the scholars that studied Marlowe’s work “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" hypothesized that the formal invitation (objects used to cajole or seduce the object of his love – the nymph) is sometimes omitted; and the joys themselves are by no means always pastoral, but are perhaps merely extravagant exaggerations designed to appeal to the luxurious tastes of the lady (693). Thus we can we infer that the Shepherd in the poem was aiming or dreaming for an unattainable lady that the poem was actually a recital of a daydream. Or It can be taken as an exaggeration of what the Shepherd is a capable of in wooing the nymph. Another author looked beyond the romantic connotation of the poem and extended his purview to the economic as well as political dimension of the narrative in an attempt to contextualize the poem. Patrick Cheney argued beyond the obvious of the catalogue of pleasures offered to the nymph if she agrees to be his love is actually a plea for political patronage quoting; “The evocations encourage us to see beneath the"cosmopolitan" wooing of a nymph by a shepherd a complex generic configuration, a politic plea for patronage, a concern for the telos of poetry, fame, and a sexual configuration mixing heterosexual with homoerotic desire (327-328). Such, the study of Cheney suggests that Marlowe’s poem is in fact a device of seduction and not just to have the nymph as his love but rather as an implement to gain political favor. The same research also suggests that the poem was a mere progression of a writer which Cheney called Marlowe’s "The Passionate Shepherd" as a first of Marlowe’s literary career which begun at a the "youth- fully lyric phase" of "libido sentiendi" or "the pastoral fields of Ovidian lyricism" (523) which explains why the poem is “hormonally” charged. Nevertheless, both Forsythe and Cheney intersect at the idea that there are inconsistencies in the poem because the milieu and offerings of objects cited in the poem are beyond the means of a shepherd which includes the; Gown made of wool . . . fair lined slippers for the cold, with buckets of the purest gold; a belt of straw and ivy buds, with coral clasps and amber studs; (Marlowe) It was suggested that the Shepherd in the poem is not the type which gathers the flock of sheep but rather a feudal owner of flocks of sheep to afford such refinement and luxury as expressed in the poem. In addition, it would also seem inconsistent that the poem could be written by an uncouth shepherd considering the discipline and organization used in the meters of the poem. It could be more likely that the poem was written by a gentleman of education and means. The employment of pastoral devices in courtship is not new because there are also other occurrences that used similar pastoral devices of “sitting by a river, watching the shepherds with their flocks and listening to the birds sing to the accompaniment of a waterfall; second, of rosy beds and flower-adorned garments; waterfall; second, of rosy beds and flower-adorned garments;” (Forsythe 692). Among these poets are John Maynard Keats with his Endymion offering to his "Indian bliss" with the same catalogue of pleasures that will be given if only she will dwell with him and D. Carey’s "Oberon, King of the Fairies" as contained in the Pleasures of Nature which is similar to Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" not only in theme but also in meter (726). These inconsistencies and various s interpretation of the poem that goes beyond the obvious pronouncement of the work remain unclear and it will be an interesting research of this paper proposes to figure out if indeed there are indeed other dimensions in the poem other that what Marlowe had written. Works Cited Cheney, Patrick. CAREER RIVALRY AND THE WRITING OF COUNTER-NATIONHOOD: OVID, SPENSER, AND PHILOMELA IN MARLOWE'S "THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE" The Johns Hopkins University Press. Vol. 65, No. 3 (Fall, 1998), pp. 523-555 Forsythe, R. S. THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD; AND ENGLISH POETRY. Modern Language Association. Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1925), pp. 692-742 Marlowe, Christopher. The Passionate Shepherd to his Love Schubert, Franz. Sixty Songs. Ed. J. A. Kappey. London: Boosey, n.d. Read More