Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
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And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls,
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
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And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered with leaves of myrtle.
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A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
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A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
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The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
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“The Passionate Shepherd To His Love” was so famous in the author’s day that it inspired well-known take-offs by both Sir Walter Raleigh and John Donne.
As the only lyric poem by Christopher Marlowe surviving, its light-heartedness stands profoundly at odds with the poet’s life and other writings.
Marlowe -- at the time London’s leading playwright -- died by violence on the evening of May 30, 1593.
After a private dinner with three associates in an upstairs room of a lodging house, a fight broke out. Marlowe got a dagger through the right eye, piercing the brain.
He was not yet 30.
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Born in the same year as Shakespeare, Marlowe -- son of a Canterbury shoemaker -- gained his classical education all the way through the M.A. degree by a series of (in effect) merit scholarships.
Besides the “Passionate Shepherd” -- the very lightest and brightest of his known surviving works -- there are seven plays: histories, melodrama and romantic tragedy.
The plays all reflect the theme of personal betrayal, most of them with characters showing deep-dyed cynicism, cruelty and — as often in the period -- steeped in gore.
For various reasons, of Marlowe’s dramas only “Doctor Faustus” is considered at all playable down to our day. Existing texts are variously abridged, confused and probably altered over time. Yet they contain much that is classic.
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Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips suck forth my soul -- see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again….
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In addition Oxford University Press decided last year to credit Marlowe with co-authorship of all three of Shakespeare’s “Henry VI” plays, based on linguistic analysis by computer.
Contemporaries recognized Marlowe for establishing blank verse in iambic pentameter as the new standard in English drama (“Marlowe’s mighty line”). Earlier English plays often ran in rhyming couplets.
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Unfinished at Marlowe’s death was a light epic poem, “Hero and Leander.” His English translation of Ovid’s erotic “elegies” was burned in the street on orders from the Church. A (politically risky) translation of Lucan made it into print some years after his death.
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Records of his personal life are sketchier than with Shakespeare.
He apparently had a daring, ambitious, restless, free-thinking, practical-joking, sometimes fiery temperament. Today (I suspect) he might have been labeled ADHD. Yet one fellow poet wrote him down as “kind Kit Marlowe.”
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”His life he contemned [despised] in comparison of liberty of speech,” wrote another friend and sometime collaborator, Thomas Nashe.
At the time of Marlowe’s death, England was in one of its dreadful spasms of politico-religious paranoia. Queen Elizabeth’s government feared sedition by both Catholics and Puritans. Among others, Marlowe found himself under suspicion of heresy.
In quest of evidence against Marlowe, the authorities imprisoned and tortured a fellow playwright, Thomas Kyd.
The dossier that the government compiled -- together with fulminations by theater-loathing Puritans, who cast his death as divine retribution -- ended up largely forming Marlowe’s image down to our day.
Worth noting: Marlowe might have been the first “out” gay poet in the English language, if the dossier is correct on that point. Critics have cited support for this possibility from within his writings.
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Some enthusiasts would like to think that Marlowe’s murder was a sham and that he survived in secret to “write Shakespeare.” IMO, apart from documentary evidence, this can be ruled out by comparison of the writings -- no computer analysis needed.
“The Passionate Shepherd,” is typical of how the classically-trained Marlowe used nature as decorative and emblematic set-dressing, similar to the fashion in other arts of the day.
By contrast Shakespeare’s plants, animals, landscapes, weather and rustic people live and breathe naturalistically.
Without question, however, Marlowe was an inspirer of Shakespeare as well as many others. Through that route and in his own right, his work has left an enduring impress.
As for “The Passionate Shepherd” -- charming as the poem is, its apparently outsize popularity at the time may appear something of a puzzle today. A couple of stray thoughts about that: perhaps it was also set to a tune, now lost to us? And/or perhaps “live with me” was a rather daring proposition in its Elizabethan context? For comparison, does anyone else remember the public hand-wringing over "Let's Spend the Night Together" way back in 1967? Just a speculation.
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Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Requiescas In Pace
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These fragments I have shored against my ruins. -- T.S. Eliot