The Passionate Shepard to His Love
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“The Passionate Shepard to His Love”
This “sonnet” by Christopher Marlowe is not actually a sonnet, although at first glance it may appear to be structured as one. Some reasons would be that it is longer than 14 lines, it does not follow the “ababcdcd” rhyme scheme, nor does it end with a rhyming couplet. It does not follow iambic pentameter either, it has its own rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables. The poem uses alliteration as well, for example, “Come live with me and be my love”, or “Then live with me and be my love”. These two lines are also examples of his use of parallel construction, despite the two lines being at the beginning and the end of the poem.
The poem is comprised of several promises made by a Shepherd to his clearly unattainable love. He makes to her two kinds of promises, first, two lovely romantic promises, followed by two material promises (that are still romantic, but have an entirely different sound to them). Judging by the repetition of the line, “Come live with me and be my love” we get the sense that she is far from him in a sense in a sense of class, possibly. By saying that he wishes for her to come to him, he implies that he cannot go to her, maybe because she is already romantically involved with another man.