ANALYSIS:

Christopher Marlowe's (1564-1593) pastoral love lyric "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" is believed to have been written in 1588 when he was a student at Cambridge. It was published posthumously in 1599. The poem is the "passionate" appeal of a young shepherd to his beloved lady love "to come and live with him." It is not a marriage proposal but an overt appeal by the shepherd requesting her to spend some time with him so that he can use her as a means of satisfying his desire for passionate sex with her. The tone of the poem is both idealistic and idyllic. The shepherd lists out only the pleasures and not the drawbacks or dangers of a pastoral life to tempt her into accepting his offer. In the first stanza he describes the places in a very romantic manner where they could make love:
COME live with me and be my Love, /And we will all the pleasures prove /That hills and valleys, dale and field, /And all the craggy mountains yield.

In the second stanza he tells her how they will happily while away their time sitting on the rocks and watching the other shepherds feed their flocks as they listen to the melodious birds:
There will we sit upon the rocks/ And see the shepherds feed their flocks,/ By shallow rivers, to whose falls /Melodious birds sing madrigals.

In the next three stanzas he tempts her with attractive gifts like, a bed of roses, a cap of flowers, a flowery skirt, a gown of the finest wool, a beautiful belt with "corals clasps and amber studs" and slippers with golden buckles and repeats his offer which he made at the beginning of the poem. He concludes the poem by telling her, in the last two stanzas, that although he is only a shepherd he will ensure that she enjoys a royal life style with her food being served on silver plates set on an ivory table and by promising her that every "May-morning" (every day in the month of May) country youths shall dance and sing and entertain her if she agrees to "live with him and be his love." Marlowe's lyric is a universal (all times and all places) example of how young men tempt pretty girls with fantastic offers - slippers with golden buckles! -to make them yield to fulfill their sexual desires.

( SECOND STANZA) The next stanza suggests that the lovers will take their entertainment
not in a theatre or at a banquet, but sitting upon rocks or by rivers. They will watch shepherds (of which the titular speaker is ostensibly one, except here it is implied that he will have ample leisure) feeding their flocks, or listening to waterfalls and the songs of birds. The enticements of such auditory and visual pleasures can be seen as a marked contrast to the "hurly-burly" (a phrase Marlowe used in his later play, Dido, Queen of Carthage, Act IV, Scene 1) of the London stage plays which Marlowe would write. These are entirely bucolic, traditional entertainments; the idea of Marlowe, the young man about town who chose to live in London, actually enjoying these rustic pleasures exclusively and leaving the city behind is laughable. Again, these invitations are not to be taken literally. Marlowe may well have admired pastoral verse, and the ideals of it (such as Ovid's ideals of aggressive, adulterous heterosexual love) were not necessarily those he would espouse for himself.

The third, fourth, and fifth stanzas are a kind of list of the "delights", mostly sartorial, that the Shepherd will make for his lady love. Here it becomes clearer that the "Shepherd" is really none of the same; indeed, he is more like a feudal landowner who employs shepherds. The list of the things he will make for his lady: "beds of roses" (a phrase, incidentally, first coined by Marlowe, which has survived to this day in common speech, though in the negative , "no bed of roses" meaning "not a pleasant situation") "thousand fragrant posies," "cap of flowers," "kirtle embroidered with leaves of myrtle," "gown made of the finest wool/Which from our pretty lambs we pull," "fair-lind slippers," "buckles of the purest gold," "belt of straw and ivy buds," "coral clasps," and "amber studs") reveal a great deal about the situation of the "Shepherd" and what he can offer his love. While certainly many of the adornments Marlowe lists would be within the power of a real shepherd to procure or make (the slippers, the belt, possibly the bed of roses (in season), the cap of flowers, and the many posies, and possibly even the kirtle embroidered with myrtle and the lambs wool gown,) but the gold buckles, the coral clasps, and the amber studs would not be easily available to the smallholder or tenant shepherds who actually did the work of sheepherding. This increasingly fanciful list of gifts could only come from a member of the gentry, or a merchant in a town.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 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. And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle; A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold; A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs: And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me, and be my love. The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my love.

Christopher Marlowe[1] (baptised 26 February 1564 30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day.[2] He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse, and their overreaching protagonists.

Christopher Marlowe contributed greatly to English literature. He developed a new metre which has become one of the most popular in English literary history, and he revitalised a dying form of English drama. His short life was apparently violent and the m an himself was supposedly of a volatile temperament, yet he managed to write some of the most delicate and beautiful works on record. His writing is representative of the spirit of the Elizabethan literature in his attitude towards religion, his choice of writing style and in the metre that he used.

Melodious- having a tune that is pleasant to the ear Madrigals- A song for two or three unaccompanied voices, developed in Italy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Embroidered -To ornament with needlework Myrtle- Widely cultivated as a groundcover for its dark green shiny leaves and usually blue-violet flowers