Comparison of Poems About Love - Paper Example

A poem is a piece of written work that expresses feelings and ideas with intensity by focusing precise attention to diction, rhyme, rhythm and imagery. The Passionate Shepherd to his love by Christopher Marlowe is a pastoral poem written and strictly follows a regular meter; iambic tetrameter. While Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Mind" by William Shakespeare is a poem (sonnet) of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and is written in iambic pentameter. The main difference between a poem and a sonnet is that all sonnets are poems, but not all poems are sonnets.

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The Passionate Shepherd to his love By Christopher Marlowe

The poem references a shepherd lettering to his love with a dreaming of country living with a back to nature sentiment. Despite, contemporary people adoring urban life, some people dream of the nature and serenity of rural life. "The Passionate Shepherd to his love" was composed in Marlowe's young years. This poem establishes emotions in and idyllic setting (Ahammed and Rokeya).

The song is made of pastoral lyrics that idealize the rural life feeling within the context of personal passion. The Shepherd addresses the women he loves. The shepherds pleads with her to come and live with him and he will handle her like queens are and make her a bed of roses. In the first stanza, he speaks of his love and asking her to live with him, Come live with me and be my love. In the subsequent stanzas, the shepherd lists beautiful things, which he does for her if she decides to live with him. He draws on nature imagery in a way that puts emphasizes on her beauty, "A gown made of the finest wool, / which from our pretty Lambs we pull. The speaker closes the first stanza by telling her if his proposal thrills her, then she should move in with him If these delights thy mind may move, then live with me, and be my love.

Sonnet 116, Let Me Not To the Marriage of True Mind" by William Shakespeare

The poem speaks of steadiness of true love; it is permanent and everlasting, and will not transform even when the object of love changes. All Shakespearean sonnets follows the same format of three quatrains, interchanging rhyme scheme trailed by a final rhyming couplet, it written in iambic pentameter. The structured rhythm and form put forward constancy and stability, which imitates the concepts about love.

The sonnet tries to describe the meaning of love by expressing what love is and what it is not. The sonnet is divided into very simple argumentative patterns of a sonnet. In the first quatrain, the speaker reveals that love is unchangeable, the marriage of true minds, is perfect and unchanging; it does not admit impediments, acknowledging that it does not change when the loved one changes. The second quatrain uses a metaphor to show what love is, a star that guides lost ships, wandring barks, that is not vulnerable to storm, That looks on tempests and is never shaken. The third quatrain describes what love is not, Love's not Time's fool that changes with passing times, like beauty does, instead, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. The couplet attests Shakespeares confidence to what he says love actually is, If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved of course Shakespeare knew that he had written poems that were loved before.

Literary and Historical Context

William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were both playwrights of the Elizabethan stage; they lived in London, at similar times and wrote plays while working with same people. Their work was very similar which revolved around love, tragedies, comedies, drama and poetry, and had similarities in style known as blank verse. Before Marlowe, blank verse was not part of dramas, but he modified them to a more acceptable form. However, besides the so obvious similarities, there was some difference in their tragedies. Shakespeare was very fond of using supernatural elements in his plays, while Marlowe's plays were more straightforward. Marlowe's plays also did not contain the genuine comic apparent in Shakespeare.

However, some controversies exist between these two dramatists; some scholars argue that Marlowe was Shakespeares co-writer. Others claim that Marlowe was Shakespeare himself and that he faked his death when he was facing charges of blasphemous and damnable opinions. If charged he would have faced imminent death. Thus he went to exile and started writing incognito under a hidden personality in, William Shakespeare, who had no prior history of poetry.

In Elizabethan periods, poetry was a very vital part of the Elizabethan lifestyle. Plays and poetry were greatly valued therefore, in a writers and playwrights were sponsored by the queen, To give them a motivation to perform and write. The pastoral from that Marlowe used is a genre that first emerged in the 15th and 16th century, these poems always illustrates on the vivid different between the urban and the rural. The serenity, innocence and beauty of rural life in comparison with the artificial urban life. The pastoral tradition is categorized by a state of satisfaction and innocent and romantic love (Kolkovich). On the other hand, the Shakespearean sonnet was known by his name not because he invented them but because he was exquisite at them and popularized them and it also refers to a particular poetic form. Sonnets are usually about love, in his lifetime Shakespeare scripted 154 sonnets.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love normally known with its first line "Come live with me and be my love" written by an English poet Christopher Marlowe published in 1599, though he had died six years before it was published. He was a well-known poet; this poem viewed as the earliest examples of the pastoral style of British poetry. These kind of pastoral poems were very popular among poets mostly seventeen years prior. The Greek poet Theocritus, in the third century was the pioneer of the pastoral poetry and therefore he influence all other poetry that are written with thhe same format.

Sonnets were first introduced to British poets by Sir Thomas Wyatt when he began translating Italian sonnets into English. Sonnet 116, alongside Sonnet 18 and 130, is one of the most famous poems in the whole series of Shakespearean sonnets; it was first published in 1609. The sonnets were written in an exciting period in Europe that experienced political, social and cultural changes. The identity of Shakespeare sonnets have been a mystery; he is either speaking his soul or taking another persona. Some scholars argue that apart from his first sixteen sonnets urging his friend to marry, the rest reveals his thoughts and feelings.

Poets during Elizabethan age used poets as a tactic to show wit and talent. Hence Marlowes poem might have circulated among people mostly his friend before it was really published. Few poets used to publish their work. Thus, the poem was well known before the actual release; most scholars argue that he wrote the poem in 1588, the poem has since inspired other poets or publications such as the Nymph reply, he also stirred other works that were comparable in tone and content, (i.e. John Donne's "The Bait" (1633).

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," reveals an example of courtship that doesnt have much consideration into reality, like many poetical works it speaks on some of the issues of the era in which it was created. Young women in that time of Elizabethan England were raised to give respect to parents without hesitations and questions when married they were to replicate the same to their husbands. Young women were required to be pure before marriage.

In comparison, Shakespeare has written his entire collection of sonnets to a young man and a mistress, thus creating a form of a love triangle among the three of them (the young man, mistress, and the poet). In this sonnet, the fact that Shakespeare speaks about love and marriage at the same time is interesting since one does not necessitate the other (Khosla). In his era life expectancy forty years, most people did not make it this far. Shakespeare's son died at a young age often; the third quatrain has recurring incidents of death, he perhaps reflects that period.

Marlowe was and is best known for his writing he did for the stage, among Elizabethan playwrights, he appeared as next to Shakespeare, which is quite an honor considering that none of the dramatists in history exceeded Shakespeare. Today Marlowe gets constant reviews, while Shakespeare is the most quoted person, second to the Bible; he is credited to have developed several English words used today. In real life, there is no documentation showing that the two poets were friends or otherwise met, regardless of them being in the same field and writing for the same people, although there are speculations that they did. These poems are about love in general sense, but more precise Marlowes Shepherd poem is about the idealism that either causes or caused by love, while Shakespeare addresses the eternity of love and a fairy tale of what love is and is not.

Over the years, the pastoral convention has often risen in challenging environments searching for the quiet tranquility of rolling fields, calm sheep, and truthful shepherds who were as adjacent to nature as people can get. The Elizabethans always adored this form of hopefulness; the romantics made it their lives; the moderns were misty as if they had just missed it. Currently, farmers relish fanciful relations with soil, sunshine, and seeds, whereas popular culture inclines to bury the cold truth of their lives comprising of machinery, chemicals, and contracts.

Poetic Device and Full Formal Analysis

Marlowes poems reflect an iambic tetrameter form. Most commonly used in English-language poetry. A regular line has roughly ten syllables, of stresses and unstressed syllables. An iamb is a metrical unit made of one unstressed and one stressed syllable. Four beats are placed together in a line of poetry, hence called tetrameter, when iamb combines with tetrameter, it becomes a line with four beats of one unstressed syllable, thus iambic tetrameter. It is a natural rhythm that is easy to read aloud, after each eight-syllable line the reader tends to pause

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Reflects a very regular iambic tetrameter. Each line is composed of precisely four substantial stresses; the metrical feet are mostly iambic. In the same way, A large percentage of the lines reflects eight syllables, and the few that do not form a distinct poetic effect (i.e. lines 3 and 4), or have easily omitted syllables which may be read as eight. The regular meter, persistent through the twenty-four lines,most tetrameter has some form of a sing-song fill, but the poet has structured this in such a way that it eliminates the feel, but the way Marlowe decorates his lines with different devices that complement the meter without showing or revealing its rigid form.

The entire poem is composed of six four-line stanzas or quatrains. Each quatrain has two rhythmic couplets, most of which are relied upon in a perfect iambic tetrameter they rhyme perfectly. In this couplet from the third stanza:

And I will make thee beds of roses,

And a thousand fragrant posies (9-10)

A perfect iambic tetrameter should end in a stressed syllable, but in line 9 Marlowe forces an additional unstressed syllable onto the close of the line (the -set of "Roses"), which eliminates the sing-song effect in the tetrameter.

The style is argumentative, this is the poet's principle idea, the shepherd outlines his arguments why the woman should become his mistress designed to convince him, and although the main argument is that, they will both enjoy the pleasure. Marlowe uses imagery a lot in this poem; he creates a mental picture in the mi...