The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1599

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Devoted Lover

The speaker exhibits unfailing love and devotion toward their lover, focusing on the merriment, joy, and excitement the romance offers. The speaker seems blinded by love, and they make lofty promises despite not having adequate means to provide for the significant other. The speaker evokes nature’s riches and elements from the landscape with which they are familiar. They promise they will make the significant other a “bed of Roses” (Line 9) with “a thousand fragrant posies” (Line 10). Roses symbolize romance, passion, and beauty. Posies symbolize love and dedication. They also symbolize joy. By offering these to the significant other, the speaker promises joy, romance, and passion to the significant other.

The speaker’s devotion and attention to nature transfers to the significant other. The speaker parallels the pleasures derived from nature with the pleasure of loving the significant other. They use words like “Melodious” (Line 8) and “fragrant” (Line 10), which make the romantic experience sensuous. To reiterate their devotion, the speaker also promises riches, including a “gown made of the finest wool” (Line 13). The speaker states, “Come live with me and be my love” (Line 1, Line 20). The repetition forms a plea and communicates the speaker’s unwillingness to believe that the romance is not real. At the poem’s conclusion, the speaker states, “Then live with me, and be my love” (Line 24). As the poem’s final line, the statement again reiterates the speaker’s devotion to the significant other.

Childlike Innocence

Despite the subtle, sexual undertones of the fifth stanza in the poem, Marlowe’s poem describes an escape from society to the countryside, which allows two adults to return to a state of childlike innocence. In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker asks the beloved to simply explore the hilly landscape and wooded corners of the countryside with them, like children might spend a day exploring streams, forests, and fields. The second stanza likewise pictures two carefree observers of the shepherds working in the fields; with no responsibilities of their own, they sit on rocks, follow rivers, and listen to “Melodious birds sing madrigals” (Line 8). In the third stanza, the speaker begins to create a bower out of nature, using roses and posies for a bed, and creating night clothes “Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle” (Line 12), as children might imagine while playing in the woods.

The fourth stanza raises the stakes of this fantasy, as more skill would be involved in creating a gown of wool or slippers adorned with gold. Both items likely reflect courtly tastes more than rural practicality, as the author perhaps seeks to mitigate the rustic nature of the countryside for a more cosmopolitan listener (who might have some doubts about a myrtle kirtle). However, by the fifth stanza, the passionate speaker is weaving a straw belt adorned with “coral clasps and amber studs” (Line 18), both precious elements found in nature and infused with symbolism that is both magical and mystical. By now, the beloved is adorned like a fairy princess, with gold, coral, and amber elements mixed in with more humble materials like straw, ivy, and wool. Like a make-believe princess, the beloved is worshipped each morning by the shepherds of the countryside, in a culmination of this childlike fantasy meant to convince the listener to abandon the complexity of city life for the simple innocence of the countryside. The projection of childlike innocence on the countryside is essential to the speaker’s argument, creating space for freedom, for love, and quite probably for free love, where there is none in the city.

Nature’s Treasures

In many ways, the speaker’s promises to the significant other say more about the speaker’s adoration of nature, since their promises are entirely represented by images from nature. The speaker hopes the significant other will be as enraptured by nature as the speaker is themselves. From the poem’s beginning, the speaker promises “all the pleasures” (Line 2). At first, the speaker only names the pleasures: “The Valleys, groves, hills, and fields” (Line 3). As the speaker continues, the descriptions grow more vivid. The speaker describes the “mountain yields” (Line 4) as “steepy” (Line 4), the “Rivers” (Line 7) as “shallow” (Line 7), and the “birds” (Line 8) as “Melodious” (Line 8). As the poem continues, so do the speaker’s descriptions.

Like other pastoral style works, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” uses the beauty of nature to depict human emotions. In this poem, the beauty of nature is seductive. The riches the speaker promises are not monetary wealth or materialistic riches. For example, the speaker promises “a thousand fragrant posies” (Line 10). They also promise “A gown made of the finest wool / Which from our pretty Lambs we pull” (Lines 13-14). The speaker communicates that everything the couple will need they will find in nature. They also establish that true happiness lies in nature’s simplicity, which humankind cannot replicate. For example, the speaker states that the significant other will wear, “A belt of straw and Ivy buds / With Coral clasps and Amber studs” (Lines 17-18). Coral is symbolic of modesty and happiness. Amber, historically, has been used as a talisman for courage, but it also represents marriage vows. These, however, would have been very expensive and inaccessible for a simple shepherd.

The speaker also evokes the power of the spring season. They state, “Shepherd’s Swains shall dance and sing / for thy delight each May-morning” (Lines 21-22). Spring is also the time when lambs are born, and it is considered a time of rebirth, fertility, and renewal after the winter season. May is the only month explicitly named in the poem. The speaker also focuses on morning, a time of day associated with new beginnings, a time to begin anew. This focus on the spring and rebirth strengthens the persuasive tone of the poem, which asks the beloved to start anew. The speaker’s objective statement “Shepherd’s Swains shall dance and sing / For thy delight each May-morning” (Lines 21-22) also implies that the speaker believes that not only nature, but also others, will worship the significant other’s beauty and presence.