Hero and Leander

The poem is written in couplets. A couplet consists of two lines of verse that contain end-rhymes: “At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair / Whom young Apollo courted for her hair” (Lines 5-6, emphasis added). This is an example of what is called the “closed couplet”; its meaning does not depend on what comes before or after it and it has a complete grammatical structure. There are many closed couplets in the poem. Two more examples are, “Upon her head she wore a myrtle wreath / From whence her veil reached to the ground beneath” (Lines 17-18), and “She stayed not for her robes, but straight arose / And, drunk with gladness, to the door she goes” (Lines 719-20).

However, the verse is flexible in this respect, and many of the couplets are open rather than closed; the sense and grammatical structure extend into the following couplet. An example is “Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove / Where Venus in her naked glory strove” (Lines 11-12), which is followed by “To please the careless and disdainful eyes / Of proud Adonis, that before her lies” (Lines 13-14). In other words, Marlowe employs enjambment at the end of the first couplet (“strove”). There is no punctuation at the end of the line, and the grammatical structure and the meaning carry over into the next line. The following couplet provides another example of enjambment (sometimes also known as a run-on line): “Even as delicious meat is to the taste / So was his neck in touching, and surpassed” (Lines 63-64). The reader must quickly move to the next line to find out what Leander’s neck surpassed—it is “The white of Pelops’ shoulder” (Line 65).

Marlowe uses many similes. In a simile, one thing is compared to a different thing in order to bring out a similarity between them. Similes can often be recognized by the introductory words “as” or “like” (usually the latter in Hero and Leander). Many of these similes are simple and straightforward, such as, “Ah, simple Hero, learn thyself to cherish! / Lone women, like to empty houses, perish,” and “For every street, like to a firmament / Glister'd with breathing stars (Lines 97-98, emphasis added). Other similes are more extended, although they do not quite reach the level of complexity of the epic similes that are found in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad. The following example occurs when Leander has gone home to Abydos but desperately misses Hero. The simile compares beauty, when accessible, to the sun when it shines straight down:

Like as the sun in a diameter

Fires and inflames objects removèd far,

And heateth kindly, shining lat’rally;

So beauty sweetly quickens when ’tis nigh (Lines 607-10, emphasis added).

Another example follows shortly thereafter, this time comparing Leander’s impatience to see Hero again, and his readiness to do anything to make it happen, to a horse that resists the controls imposed on it:

For as a hot, proud horse highly disdains

To have his head controlled, but breaks the reins,

Spits forth the ringled bit, and with his hooves

Checks the submissive ground; so he that loves,

The more he is restrained, the worse he fares (Lines 625-29, emphasis added).

These similes thus act as a means to illustrate and explain key qualities, ideas, and events that occur throughout the poem through the power of vivid comparisons.