The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Questions and Answers
by Christopher Marlowe

Recently Answered Questions

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What are some comparisons and contrasts between "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" by Christopher Marlowe and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh?
  The most obvious point of both comparison and contrast between these two works is that Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is an invitation while Sir Walter Raleigh's "The...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  How does Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" reflect the characteristics of pastoral poetry?
  Pastoral poetry, also called bucolic (relating to pleasant parts of country life) or idyllic (happy and peaceful in an idealized way), is characterized by references to nature, usually involving...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What are the figures of speech in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"?
  Throughout the poem, nature is employed to symbolically represent the beauty and purity of the speaker's love. For example, he promises his love "beds of Roses" and "A gown made of the finest...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  In what way is "The Nymph's Reply" an expression of the philosophy of tempus fugit, or "time flies"?
  The expression tempus fugit comes originally from a book by the Roman poet Virgil in which he wrote: "Fugit inreparabile tempus," or, "It escapes, irretrievable time." We usually translate tempus...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  In what way is "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" an expression of the philosophy of carpe diem. Carpe diem is Latin for "seize the day": meaning take full advantage of present opportunities. This sentiment is found not only in classical...
  The poem is an example of the genre in that the passionate shepherd is encouraging his lover to seize the moment and make the fateful decision to be with him forever. There's no sense in which he...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  How does Marlow use the concept of carpe diem in this poem—"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"?
  “Carpe diem” (seize the day) poetry is love poetry whose main function is to seduce the loved one, the recipient of the poem (a nymph, according to Sir Walter Raleigh’s reply), and to convince her...

  4 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Who is the speaker in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love?"
  In the simplest of terms, the speaker in Marlowe's poem is a shepherd who is love with another person. From the title, it becomes clear that the subject of the pastoral poem is an unnamed shepherd...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What is the opinion of the nymph?
  It appears that you are referring to the nymph's reply to the amorous shepherd in Sir Walter Raleigh's The Nymph's Reply To The Shepherd. Sir Walter Raleigh's poem answers Christopher Marlowe's The...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  According to the shepard, if his love agrees, what pleasure will await them? 
  According to the shepherd, if his love agrees, they will enjoy all the pleasures of nature, including valleys, woods, hills, fields, and mountains. While they are enjoying nature, they will sit on...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What is the meaning of all the stanzas in the passionate shepherd for his love?
  This sixteenth century poem is a good example of the pastoral genre. In the pastoral genre, poetry or plays are set in an idealized natural world. Although natural, this world has all the ease of...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What makes "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," by Christopher Marlowe, an example of pastoral literature?
  Pastoral poetry is characterized by its setting and subject. Pastoral poetry is about the "pasture" or rural life in a rural setting. Usually these poems glorify the simple life and work of...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Compare and contrast the subject of love in Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to Shepherd."   
  The passionate shepherd is a pastoral poem with a bit of the carpe diem of the age in it. He says to the young lady, if you like fair weather, simple gifts from nature (beds of flowers, skirts,...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What figures of speech are used in the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"?
  The best way to analyze the figures of speech in Marlowe`s `The Passionate Shepherd to His Love` is to look at treatises on figures of speech written by Marlowe`s near contemporaries such as...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What argument is the shepherd making in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe? 
  The shepherd narrator in Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is making a simple request of the woman he loves: please come and live with me forever. To make this case, the...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Are these the poems "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" sonnets? Why or why not?
  No, both of these poems are not sonnets. First of all, both poems are more than fourteen lines long. Second of all, they do not follow the regular rhyme pattern of either Italian or English...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  In "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" what does the speaker urge his love to do?
  "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe is written in what is called the pastoral style. This was a style of poetry quite common in Marlowe's day, a style that presented an...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Is "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love" a lyric or narrative poem?
  Specifically, this poem is considered a pastoral poem because of its idyllic setting. However, since that isn't one of your options, your better choice here is lyric. The second link I am...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What is your opinion on the gifts that the shepherd offers to his beloved in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"?
  In my opinion, many of the gifts the speaker offers his beloved are pretty ridiculous and are gifts that cannot possibly be given by a simple shepherd. For example, the shepherd can surely not give...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  How is love represented in "A Passionate Shepherd and His Love"?
  Christopher Marlowe wrote this poem in the pastoral style, where the speaker promises the object of his affections an idyllic life if she chooses to become his love. The speaker paints a highly...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What things does the shepherd promise to give his beloved? What do these promises tell you about the shepherd and his love for the woman?
  The shepherd is promising an impossibly perfect natural world to his beloved. He is desperate to have her, so he paints a utopian picture of the world she and he might share together. He supposes...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What is the theme/meaning of 'The passionate shepherd to his love?'
  "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," by Christopher Marlowe, is a beautiful example of pastoral love poetry; that is, it depicts love in a rural, countryside setting. The entire poem is an...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What is the mood of the poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe?
  Despite the apparent simplicity of Marlowe's famous poem, its tone is multi-faceted. Above all the expression is a worshipful one, of both the speaker's love and of nature. It is also hypnotic in...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  In "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," what does the shepherd ask of his beloved in the first stanza? What does he tell her they will do if she agrees to his request?
  In the first stanza, the shepherd asks his beloved to come and live with him. If she does, he promises to make living with him worthwhile. He tells her that they will sit on rocks to watch...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What is the tone of "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love?"
  I would say that the main tone of this poem is ironic or exaggerated. I believe that it is meant to be something of a spoof of traditional romantic poetry -- especially of pastoral poetry....

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What is it that makes "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe an example of pastoral literature?
  A major theme of pastoral literature is that true happiness can be found in rural areas. The city is a bad place, but the country is pure and good. I think you can see this (at least the part...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What specific gifts does the speaker promise to give to his beloved? Do you think that these promises are realistic? Explain your reasoning.  
  The speaker promises his beloved lots of pleasure, especially pleasure that has to do with being out in nature. He will show her all these beautiful, pastoral sights and sounds. Moreover, the...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What song is related to "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe?
  "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe is an example of a common type of pastoral Renaissance love poem in which a male speaker tries to seduce a young woman by describing the...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What metaphors are used in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe?
  Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is full of figurative language, especially the metaphor. In contrast to a simile, which uses "like" or "as" to compare two different...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What is the literal meaning of the 7th stanza of the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love?"
  There are only 6 stanzas in "The Passionate Shepher to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe. If you mean the 6th stanza, Marlowe presents an idealized pastoral world full of romance without...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What does "a belt of straw and ivy buds, with coral clasps and amber studs" mean in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"?  
  This poem is the romantic wooing of a passionate shepherd in his efforts to convince a young woman to come join him. This line of the poem is the shepherd's description of the kinds of clothes the...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What are 3 literary devices used in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe?  How do they enhance the poem?
  Literary devices are used by poets to make their meaning clearer in poems in only a few words. There are many types of literary devices used in poems. Three in this pastoral poem are heroic...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  In "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love", what allusions help to enrich the poem's meaning?
  The meaning of the poem is the idealization of nature and sexuality. Mostly, Marlowe uses natural imagery to underscore his meaning. He mentions shallow rivers, melodious birds, beds of roses,...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Compare "To His Coy Mistress" and "The Passionate Shepard to His Love." Does Marvell's poem make more explicit something that Marlowe expresses, or do the two poems differ too much?
  Marlowe's poem is an idealized version of domesticity. He is using the beauty of nature to encourage a young woman to live with him and to be his lover. By using nature, Marlowe is asserting that...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  I'm having a hard time with metaphors and similes in Marvell's poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." Any suggestions?
  In Andrew Marvell's poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," I find metphors, not similes. (Similes compare dissimilar things using "like" or "as.") The metaphor compares dissimilar things that...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  How is the romantic escape motif in "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" used in todays media?
  The escape motif present in this poem is definitely captured in many media forms today. You need to remember that this poem is a pastoral poem. Pastoral poems are always set in an idealised...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Why did Marlow use alliteration in in the second stanza of "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"?  
  There we will sit upon the rocksAnd see the shepherds feed their flocks,By shallow rivers, to whose fallsMelodious birds sing madrigals There is mild alliteration in this stanza, but it is a...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" What does the Shepherd offer to his love?   In examining the author’s use of words, how would they be described,-harsh or soft? Give examples ***specific answers please***
  This poem fits into a group of poems classed as "carpe diem" poems - where the audience of the poem is urged to "seize the day" and make a decision to commit to a relationship now before time and...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Compare the structure of "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and "Nymph's Reply"?
  The passonate shepherd presents the ideal of Romantic love. The images are soft and mostly from nature (myrtle, flowers, roses, poises etc). The Nymph's reply presents a more real side of love....

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  How persuasive are the Shepherd and the Nymph as they make their cases? "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
  The speaker of "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is a humble shepherd who makes a grand offer out of what he has. What he offers her is a kind of peaceful, rustic, simple life. Their time...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  In "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," what are the points of debate? I am contrasting/comparing Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd" to Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply."
  Since Sir Walter's Raliegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" is written as the woman's response to Marlowe's invitational lyric, it becomes apparent to the reader of these two poems that...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  How was the writer of "The Passionate Shepherd to his love" influenced by the period in which he wrote?
  Actually, the writer of this poem was a male - Christopher Marlowe, so I have edited your question accordingly. In discussing the influence of the period in which Marlowe wrote, it is important to...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Compare the personas of the two poems: "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Marlowe and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh.
  The persona of the passionate shepherd is a dreamer and idealist who is trying to persuade his beloved to run off with him to live in nature. He sees only the bright side of living in the natural...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Who is the speaker of the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"?
  The speaker in this poem is an unnamed shepherd who promises to do all kinds of improbable things if only the object of his affections will accept his entreaties. The poem is passionate, but does...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  How do the enticements in the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" fit into the pastoral convention?
  Well, to understand this poem necessarily inolves some understanding of the word pastoral and how this impacted litreature. The word pastoral comes from the Latin word for shepherd. Pastoral poems...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  In the two poems, "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" by Christopher Marlowe and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh, who makes the best case?
  I'm afraid who makes the "best" or better case between "Shepherd" and "Nymph" is mostly a matter of opinion, and one's opinion is mostly dependent on the attitude one brings to the question....

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Can someone paraphrase "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"? As in what does it literally mean/say?
  Of course, the overall idea here is that the shepherd is trying to get the woman to love him. Here's a brief paraphrase: Come be my love and we'll have all the pleasure that is possible out here...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  Explain the poem "The Passionate Sheperd to his Love" by Christopher Marlowe. If you can provide the literary terms that are in this poem,too, it will be great.
  Christopher Marlowe’s poem, “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” is a poem written in the pastoral genre, a type of poem deriving from the works of Greek poet Theocritus, and typically set in an...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  What references to youth and spring can be find in "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love"? What are some elements of nature in the poem that indicate its pastoral setting?
  The very first line of the poem "Come live with me and be my Love," (line 1) implies the youth of both parties. Since neither of them currently has a spouse (and are thus free to marry each other)...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
   Are the symbols in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" the gifts that are promised, or is it all about the love/lust?
  Having read Marvell's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," (and "To His Coy Mistress"), and reviewing the eNotes summary for the poem, it seems, indeed, that this is a poem not so much about...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
  In which stanza does the speaker make offers to his beloved that it will be unlikely he could provide in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love?" 
  The entire poem is hyperbolic. It is an exaggerated description of a place that is probably too good to be true. So, in that general respect, every stanza offers promises that would be difficult...

  1 Educator Answer