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Overview
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is a lyric poem by the English poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe, likely penned in the early 1590s
. Drawing on the tradition of pastoral poetry and its idealization of rural landscapes, Marlowe’s poem features a “passionate shepherd” pleading with his “love” to live with him in the country. Few poems have inspired as many responses from other poets as Marlowe’s has. By 1600, Sir Walter Raleigh had already written a humorous retort, titled “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd.” Similar replies followed in the ensuing centuries by poets as varied as John Donne, William Carlos Williams, and Dorothy Parker.Read a summary & analysis, an analysis of the speaker, and explanations of important quotes from “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”
