Background Information 1

• Christopher Marlowe (baptized 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.

• Marlowe was born in Canterbury to shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Catherine. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptized on 26 February 1564, and is likely to have been born a few days before. Thus he was just two months older than his contemporary William Shakespeare, who was baptized on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon.

• Marlowe attended The King's School in Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied on a scholarship and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. In 1587, the university hesitated to award him his Master of Arts degree because of a rumor that he intended to go to the English college at Rheims, presumably to prepare for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest.

• Of the dramas attributed to Marlowe Dido, Queen of Carthage is believed to have been his first, and performed by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors, between 1587 and 1593. The play was first published in 1594; the title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Thomas Nashe.

Background Information 2• Marlowe's first play performed on the regular stage in London, in 1587, was Tamburlaine the Great, about

the conqueror Tamburlaine, who rises from shepherd to war-lord. It is among the first English plays in blank verse, and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, is generally considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theater. Tamburlaine was a success, and was followed with Tamburlaine the Great, Part II.

• Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy. In 1587, the Privy Council ordered the University of Cambridge to award Marlowe his degree of Master of Arts, denying rumors that he intended to go to the English Catholic college in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified “affaires” on “matters touching the benefit of his country.”

• Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist.

• In early May 1593, several bills were posted about London threatening Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands who had settled in the city. One of these, the “Dutch church libel,” written in blank verse, contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays and was signed, “Tamburlaine.” On 11 May, the Privy Council ordered the arrest of those responsible for the libels. The next day, Marlowe's colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested. Kyd's lodgings were searched and a fragment of a heretical tract was found. Kyd asserted that it had belonged to Marlowe. A warrant for Marlowe's arrest was issued on 18 May. Marlowe duly presented himself on 20 May, but, there apparently being no Privy Council meeting on that day, was instructed to “give his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary.” On Wednesday 30 May, Marlowe was killed.

• Various accounts of Marlowe's death were current over the next few years. One rumor was that Marlowe had been “stabbed to death by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love” as punishment for his “epicurism and atheism.” In 1917, in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Sidney Lee wrote that Marlowe was killed in a drunken fight, and this is still often stated as fact today.

• The official account came to light only in 1925 when the scholar Leslie Hotson discovered the coroner's report of the inquest on Marlowe's death. Marlowe had spent all day in a house in Deptford with three men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres, and Robert Poley. These witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had argued over the bill, exchanging “divers malicious words.” Marlowe snatched Frizer's dagger and wounded him on the head. In the ensuing struggle, according to the coroner's report, Marlowe was stabbed above the right eye, killing him instantly. The jury concluded that Frizer acted in self-defense, and within a month he was pardoned. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford immediately after the inquest, on 1 June 1593.

• One of the main reasons for doubting the truth of the inquest concerns the reliability of Marlowe's companions as witnesses. As an agent provocateur for the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Robert Poley was a consummate liar, the “very genius of the Elizabethan underworld,” and is even on record as saying “I will swear and forswear myself, rather than I will accuse myself to do me any harm.” The other witness, Nicholas Skeres, had for many years acted as a confidence trickster.

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love is a poem written by Marlowe and published in 1599 (six years after the poet's death). The poem was the subject of a well-known “reply” by Sir Walter Raleigh, called The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. The interplay between the two poems reflects the relationship that Marlowe had with Raleigh. Marlowe was young, his poetry romantic and rhythmic, and in The Passionate Shepherd he idealizes the love object. 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.

Background Information 3

   

Falls = (1) waterfalls; (2) cadencesMadrigals = (1) songs for two or three unaccompanied voices, developed in Italy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries; (2) short poems, often about love, suitable for being set to musicPosies = (1) bouquets of flowers; (2) brief verses or sentimental phrasesKirtle = dressMyrtle = an evergreen shrubSwains = country youths

Come live with me, and be my love, a And we will all the pleasures prove a

That valleys, groves, hills and fields, b Woods, or steepy mountains yields. b

And we will sit upon the rocks, c Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks c

By shallow rivers, to whose falls d Melodious birds sing madrigals. d

And I will make thee beds of roses e And a thousand fragrant posies, e

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle fEmbroidered all with leaves of myrtle, f

A gown made of our finest wool, g Which from our pretty lambs we pull, g

Fair linèd slippers for the cold, h With buckles of the purest gold, h

A belt of straw and ivy buds i With coral clasps and amber studs: i

And if these pleasures may thee move, a Come live with me, and be my love. a

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing j For thy delight each May morning: j

“If these delights thy mind may move, aThen live with me, and be my love.” a

Analysis 1

The poem also goes by the title “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” and it constitutes a prime example of a pastoral poem (= a genre of poetry wherein rural life is idealized).

THEME: The poem records Marlowe’s attempts at persuading his beloved to live with him in the countryside. Of secondary interest to readers, but perhaps as important as the theme of love, is Marlowe’s focus on nature and the delights of rural life, both of which are presented in a quixotic fashion, following the pastoral style of the time.

TONE: Although the poet’s intentions are not entirely of the innocent variety, he does not adopt a tone of seduction, but rather of persuasion.

The poem is composed in iambic tetrameter. Instances of catalexis and hypercatalexis occur throughout the poem—specifically in lines 3-4 (catalexis), 8-9 (hypercatalexis), 11-12 (hypercatalexis)—mirroring the multifarious delights of the countryside, as well as its springy freshness. The poem also features rhyming couplets, with the aa structure seen in the first stanza being repeated in the fifth and sixth stanzas as well. The couplets echo the wealth of reasons Marlowe employs in hopes of persuading his love interest, and their sheer number implies that she is somewhat recalcitrant. The repetition is likewise used for persuasion, re-acquainting the lady with the poet’s request, but it also hints at desperation on Marlowe’s part: being continually rebuffed, he takes to reiterating the gist of the poem, and moves from a confident proposal in the first stanza to an uncertain appeal in the last two stanzas, as evidenced by the use of the word “if” (lines 19 and 23).

Enjambment is interwoven with end-stopped lines to maintain a light, appealing tone suited to persuasion. Feminine rhymes (= rhymes between words in which one, two, or more unstressed syllables follow a stressed one) appear twice in the poem, and both times in the third stanza: “roses”-”posies” (l. 9-10); “kirtle”-”myrtle” (l. 11-12). They mark the beginning of the list of gifts Marlowe promises to give his beloved, and they may be said to make the stanza in question seem more like a suggestion than a demand, as though Marlowe were uncertain of how his new tactic would be received.

Analysis 2 Come live with me, // and be my love, a And we will all the pleasures prove a

That valleys, groves, hills and fields, b Woods, or steepy mountains yields. b

And we will sit upon the rocks, c Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks c

By shallow rivers, to whose falls d Melodious birds sing madrigals. d

And I will make thee beds of roses e And a thousand fragrant posies, e

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle fEmbroidered all with leaves of myrtle, f

A gown made of our finest wool, g Which from our pretty lambs we pull, g

Fair linèd slippers for the cold, h With buckles of the purest gold, h

A belt of straw and ivy buds i With coral clasps and amber studs: i

And if these pleasures may thee move, a Come live with me, and be my love. a

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing j For thy delight each May morning: j

“If these delights thy mind may move, aThen live with me, and be my love.” a

1. The caesura in line 1 lends itself to an interesting connotation: it is almost as if Marlowe were implying that affection on the lady’s part would be the natural result of their living together, rather than the other way around; indeed, the love he bears for her might be unrequited. Moreover, the use of the word “pleasures” (line 2) might be evidence of a purely sexual interest in the lady, rather than real love.

2. Line 5—”And we will sit upon the rocks”—lends a tactile dimension to the poem. As for the alliteration of the letter “m” in line 8—”Melodious birds sing madrigals”—it creates a subtle music to intensify the image implied by the words themselves; this, in turn, is an example of the idealization of nature as birds more often than not do not spend days on end serenading waterfalls. For that matter, life in the countryside entails responsibilities that do not allow one the leisure to gaze at sheep and birds for hours at a time.

3. The third stanza features two allusions to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love: the red rose and the myrtle tree—both of which are referenced in the poem as “roses” (line 9) and “leaves of myrtle” (line 12) respectively—were sacred to Aphrodite. As for the word “posies” (line 10), it may be given two interpretations: firstly, it may be a metaphor for poetry, likening a bouquet of flowers to Marlowe’s verse; secondly, it may be used in its literal sense to refer to flowers, in which case it would be associated with the plague. The symptoms of the plague are allegedly summed up in a popular nursery rhyme: “Ring-a-ring of roses, / A pocketful of posies, / Atishoo, atishoo, / We all fall down.” The second line refers to the belief that the plague was spread by a cloud of poisonous, colorless gas. This could only be stopped, so it was believed, if one carried flowers as their smell would overpower the germs carried by the gas. There was also another benefit to carrying flowers: a victim’s breath started to go off as the disease got worse, and the perfume of the flowers would have covered up this unpleasantness. Marlowe might include the connection with the plague to communicate a warning as to the dangers of urbanization, thereby implying that life in the countryside is superior to that in cities; this ties in nicely with the pastoral origin of the poem as it idealizes rural life. Alternatively, the poet may be hinting at the fact that he is protective of his beloved, wishing to spare her the horrors of the plague by living in the countryside.

Analysis 3 Come live with me, and be my love, a And we will all the pleasures prove a

That valleys, groves, hills and fields, b Woods, or steepy mountains yields. b

And we will sit upon the rocks, c Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks c

By shallow rivers, to whose falls d Melodious birds sing madrigals. d

And I will make thee beds of roses e And a thousand fragrant posies, e

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle fEmbroidered all with leaves of myrtle, f

A gown made of our finest wool, g Which from our pretty lambs we pull, g

Fair linèd slippers for the cold, h With buckles of the purest gold, h

A belt of straw and ivy buds i With coral clasps and amber studs: i

And if these pleasures may thee move, a Come live with me, and be my love. a

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing j For thy delight each May morning: j

“If these delights thy mind may move, aThen live with me, and be my love.” a

The fourth stanza is the point where Marlowe’s promises leave the realm of feasibility. For example, providing his beloved with “buckles of the purest gold” (line 16) would be nigh on impossible for a shepherd. (Remember that the poem was originally titled “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”) Yet another groundless promise is the one in line 21: “shepherd swains” are likely to have more lucrative endeavors to attend to on a May morning, and it is preposterous to assume that they would drop everything to frolic for the lady; furthermore, whilst the idea of dancing and singing alludes to country festivals and all the activities they entailed at the time—namely, lively games, community bonding, and obscure traditions—the very rarity of a festival labels the poet’s pledge as void. The ridiculous nature of Marlowe’s promises may imply that his beloved remains stoically unimpressed, her rejection making him slightly desperate and willing to sugarcoat the truth.

The fourth and fifth stanzas are written in the style of a blason (= a genre of poems that praises a woman by singling out different parts of her body and finding appropriate metaphors with which to compare them).

The mention of “May” in line 22 is interesting: the first day of May—dubbed “May Day”—was considered to be the first day of summer in Elizabethan England, and many pagan festivals were introduced to celebrate it; said festivals almost always entailed debauchery. The inclusion of such connotations may be construed as veiled criticism of Puritanical views.

While line 19—”And if these pleasures may thee move”—implies a physical response on the lady’s part, line 23, with its mention of “[her] mind,” gives the impression of an emotional response as well. However, Marlowe’s allusions throughout the poem are of a strictly physical nature, and the fact that he addresses his beloved’s emotions only in the very last stanza of the poem, as though they were an afterthought included as a last resort to persuade his stubborn love interest, may imply that Marlowe’s professed love is, in fact, just lust; it may also be said that the poet spins fanciful tales of devotion only out of a desire to achieve his own ends, rather than affectionate feelings toward the lady.