The Passionate Shepherd to His Love | Critical Essay on “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Metzger has a doctorate in English Renaissance literature. She teaches literature and drama at the University of New Mexico, where she is a lecturer in the University Honors Program. In this essay, Metzger discusses the silent voices of the women who inhabit Elizabethan seduction poems.
A quick reading of Christopher Marlowe’s poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” offers a brief though descriptive argument that the shepherd hopes will convince the object of his affections to agree to come and live with him. If the reader considers merely the projection of the woman who is only seen through the shepherd’s imaginings, she is reduced to little more than a caricature, ridiculously clothed in floral tributes. Of course, the shepherd cares little for this problem, since the emphasis of the poem is only on his “passionate” desire to possess the...
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