Passionate Shepherd to His Love

¶ … Passionate Shepherd to his Love and the Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd form a set of poems that discusses love and its role in the world. The initial poem, wherein the shepherd addresses his love, is full of passion and romantic, carefree imagery. The Nymph's Reply is a response to the first poem, where the respondent is taking a more realistic -- even cynical -- view of love, describing in particular the temporary nature of love using the same metaphors that the Shepherd uses.

The two narrators are therefore engaged in a dialogue. This is an interesting device on the part of the second poet in particular. The Passionate Shepherd, authored by Christopher Marlowe, uses a time-honored love letter structure for his poem, wherein the shepherd is courting a potential lover. The response is creative, in that it is much less frequently found. Marlowe's shepherd is clearly hoping for a response with the same romance as his letter, but instead receives a cold, hard slap of reality, stripping the original of its idealism specifically by turning the metaphor's that Marlowe's shepherd uses on their ear.

The use of metaphor in the first poem is in the tradition of romantic poetry and ballads, as the narrator paints the natural world with a lot of romance, using its imagery as a metaphor for the blossoming of love. Raleigh's Nymph responds with the same metaphors, but pointing out that the natural world's beauty is fleeting, and likewise so is love. The choice of narrator is also important in each half of this pairing. The shepherd is passionate and well familiar with the natural world, but as a (presumably young) shepherd is perhaps simple and naive. The nymph, by contrast, is also well familiar with the natural world, so is in a position to dialogue with the shepherd using the same metaphors, but a nymph is more timeless and experienced than a young shepherd would be. As such, the second poem seems intended to portray a more mature, realistic view of love than would be understood by an idealistic young shepherd whose emotions are running away with him. However, there is some cynicism and bitterness that enters into the rebuke as well, indicating that it may be not as mature a view as perhaps it feels at first. A line like "In folly ripe, in reason rotten" is taking a very cynical view of love.

We can see, therefore, the role of the setting. The setting in these poems provides fodder for the metaphors, and is used by both poets to highlight the universal truths that they are seeking to convey about the nature of love and life. The natural world is a strong metaphor for both life and love, because our lives our set in this world and nothing states that more clearly than nature; likewise the wanton nature of love in the natural world is surely intended as a device by Marlowe to convey the passion of the shepherd.

The physical structure of the poem is also interesting with these two poems. Naturally, as Raleigh's nymph is turning Marlowe's shepherd's letter of its ear, the same structure is used for the second poem, along with the same metaphors. The imperfect rhyming is also consistent between the two poems. It is unclear what the purpose of the imperfect rhyming ("love" and "move") might be, unless pronunciations were different when these poems were written. If the pronunciations where not different, they could perhaps indicate that the shepherd is not the most literate, and is guided more by passion than by impeccable verse.

The response is effective in part because it contradicts the heavily romantic imagery that the shepherd is using -- madrigals, beds of roses, fragrant flowers. That these are directly argued against in the nymph's reply ("flowers do fade," for example) makes the point that no matter how glorious romance might be at first, the glory of it will wane and cold reality will set in.

The fact that the second poem is a direct reply to the first is interesting. Raleigh could have made the same points independent of Marlowe's work, and so it is interesting that he felt his points could be made more effectively by contrasting them directly with an example of unbridled romantic poetry. In doing this, Raleigh imbues his own poem with the context that strengthens the argument. Without this context, Raleigh's poem might read as universally bitter. Such a poem would be less effective, because the reader would have no context from which to view the narration, but with the context of young love, Raleigh's bitterness has more meaning.