Marlowe and Raleigh’s Pastoral Poetry

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ENGL200 July 26th 2013 Marlowe and Raleigh’s Pastoral Poetry In 1599 Christopher Marlowe wrote a lyrical poem titled “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” that was significant in a few ways, one of which was that it was his first foray into pastoral poetry. According to the authors of ENG200: Composition and Literature, Gilbert Mueller and John Williams, pastoral poetry is “a conventional mode that celebrates the innocent life of shepherds and shepherdesses” (253). The poem is written in first person from the Shepherd's point of view, all but begging the woman he loves to come be with him for eternity. Obviously influenced by this lyric, in 1600 C.E. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a response to Marlowe's poem called "The Nymph's Reply." This poem was written in the exact same format as Marlowe's work, using "quatrains (4 line stanzas) of iambic tetrameter (8 syllables per line, 4 measures per line with 2 syllables in each measure)" (Magee). Raleigh's portrayal of the Nymph's reply illustrates a far different attitude towards a possible utopia with the shepherd. The authors of these two poems incorporated a similar theme and effectively used symbolism to illustrate a connection of differing ideas about love and how outside influences can affect the perspective of the persons speaking in the poems. The authors of these two poems incorporated a similar theme in these two examples of lyrical poetry. While Marlowe portrays the Shepherd's fervent love for the Nymph, Raleigh's piece addresses love as well but from a completely different perspective. One might say that Raleigh's character takes the more realistic approach accounting for how time affects everything. Since Raleigh wrote this to mirror Marlowe's poem from the opposite perspective, examples of this relationship abound but one example is when in the fourth stanza of his poem Marlowe writes, "A gown made of the

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