The two poems,
Cristopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Sir Walter
Ralegh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”, have contrasting views of
pleasure. The shepherd asks his love to “Come live with me and be my love, /
And we will all the pleasures prove” (Marlowe lines 1 to 2). Marlowe uses
nature images in the last two lines of the first stanza to say that the
shepherd wants to see what pleasures nature “yields” (lines 3 to 4). He wants
his love to experience all that nature has to offer or more importantly, all
that he has to offer. The shepherd describes the time period as being in “May”
(Marlowe line 22). The shepherd is saying that the season of spring will be
gone soon, so let us indulge in it. There is an urgent tone used in this poem.
He wants the two of them to seize the day.
The nymph is not easily taken in by this
glorified version of life that the shepherd offers her. She replies to him
that:
If all the
world and love were young,
And truth in
every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with
thee and be thy love. (Ralegh lines 1 to 4)
The nymph starts
her argument by talking about the influence time has on people and their
feelings. She knows that everything might be great right now, but things change
as time goes on. People grow older and uglier, and they also can fall out of
love with one another. She also believes that the shepherd could be lying to
her about all the pleasures he promises her.
The shepherd tells his love that “we will sit
upon the rocks, /Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks” (Marlowe lines 5 to
6). However, the nymph knows that they cannot do this forever because “Time
drives the flocks from the fields to fold” (Ralegh line 5). Snow will cover the
field, and the flock will have to go into a pen. She further describes time’s
affect on the “shallow rivers” that the shepherd speaks of by saying that the
“rivers” will eventually “rage and [the] rocks [will] grow cold” (Marlowe line
7, Ralegh line 6). The setting that the shepherd is describing will be turned
upside down. She is talking about the winter and the change in the season. She
is trying to show the shepherd that everything changes. The “Melodious birds”
that the shepherd speaks of will also go away when the winter comes (Marlowe
line 8, Ralegh line 7).
The shepherd offers his love “beds of roses/
And […] posies,” but the nymph knows that “The flowers do fade, and wanton
fields/ to wayward winter reckoning yields” (Marlowe lines 9 to 10, Ralegh
lines 9 to 10). Again she throws this problem of time into his plan. At the end
of that same stanza she says that his ideas sound good, but they will not last
through time. She has a skeptical attitude towards everything he says.
The nymph describes all of the things the
shepherd has promised her by saying that they will “Soon break, soon wither,
and soon forgotten” (Ralegh line 15). As time goes on the shepherd will grow
tired of the nymph and forget about how much he loves her. The fancy clothing
that the shepherd offers his love has little affect on the nymph (Marlowe lines
13 to 18). She says that “All these in me no means can move/ To come to thee
and be thy love” because she is not impressed by material or superficial goods
(Ralegh lines 19 to 20). Everything that the shepherd is offering the nymph
might seem good, however they are “In folly ripe, [and] in reason rotten”
(Ralegh line 16). The nymph knows that to go with the shepherd because of
superficial reasons would be making a big mistake.
If the world is unchanging, the pleasures that
the shepherd speaks of would not lose there value. The nymph describes this by
saying, “But could youth last and love still breed, / Had joys no date nor age
no need, / Then these delights my mind might move” (Ralegh lines 22 to 24). She
is trying to show the shepherd that her beauty and her ability to procreate
will not last forever, therefore love has different needs at different times.
The shepherd seems to be naive by believing that the two of them will always
wake up to a “May morning” (Marlowe line 22).
The difference in gender in the poems is not
the main reason for the difference in the two positions. The gender of the
shepherd’s poem makes somewhat of a difference in the cultural context because
women were not supposed to initiate any intimate offer with a man. The
positions taken on both sides of the argument are not gender based at all. The
issues that the poems deal with are carpe diem verses time’s inevitable
changing process. Marlowe’s poem takes the stance that there is no time to
waste, but Ralegh’s response is that time is all we have. Ralegh takes the view
that anyone would take in response to Marlowe’s poem, and it is not restricted
to a female role. The messages sent by both of the poems are more about
contrasting viewpoints than love affairs. The messages are universal to anyone
and are not limited to a strict male-female interpretation. The literal
meanings of this courting process may cloud the messages of seizing the day
like in Marlowe’s poem and of time’s inevitable affects like in Ralegh’s poem.
Ralegh does not produce a believable female speaker because he did not limit
any of his response to being a strictly female characteristic. He simply took
the contradicting view. He uses a didactic method of taking everything that
Marlowe uses to try to win his love and switching it around to show the
insignificance of it in the broader picture. The items that Marlowe and Ralegh
talk about are slightly gender related, but they are not necessary to the theme
of both of the poems. Although men did wear gowns, skirts, fancy belts and
slippers at the time of these poems, we usually associate these things with
women (Marlowe lines 11 to 17). Men, at the time, wore clothing similar to what
the shepherd was offering his love, so even these things are not limited to
gender. The difference in the positions taken by Marlowe and Ralegh are not
gender based. One is simply a logical argument against the other.
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