Carpe Diem: Wooing Lovers During The Renaissance (a Close Reading of Poetry)

Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” offer powerful examples of sensual, carpe diem Renaissance poetry. In both poems, the poet-speakers attempt to spur their beloveds into action through various compliments and rhythmic patterns that create a hurried tone. However, the speakers’ tactics diverge at this point. Marlowe’s poet-speaker focuses on an abstract pastoralist hypothetical peppered with innuendo in an attempt to gain his love’s affections. In contrast, Marvell’s speaker takes a much more explicit and logical approach as he bemoans the consequences of their delayed union and urges his lover to waste no time in consummating their relationship. Ultimately, both poet-speakers focus on carpe diem as a tool to persuade their prospective lovers.

Carpe Diem: Wooing Lovers During The Renaissance

Marlowe’s Pastoral Pleas

Marlowe’s poet-speaker, the shepherd, sets the poem’s sensuous and rushed tone in the first two lines, saying, “Come live with me and be my love / and we will all the pleasures prove” (1-2). Within these lines, the shepherd uses the imperative tense to show the direness of his affections as well as vague innuendo in the word “pleasures” to create an element of sensuality. Likewise, by speaking in iambic tetrameter, the lines flow into a fast-paced rhyme, creating a tension in the poem, as if time is of the essence. This technique helps cement the presence of carpe diem within the poem. The poet-speaker finishes this quatrain by describing the physical setting, speaking in pastoral terms as he introduces the “valleys, groves, hills, and fields” (3). As pastoral settings, in the Romantic tradition, are often meant to evoke the sublime, the poet-speaker uses the physical features of the landscape here to create a scene of peaceful serenity in which his love might be won over.

In conjunction with the rhythmic elements of the poem, Marlowe’s poet-speaker emphasizes the joy of living in the moment. In contrast to the first quatrain, the shepherd steps back in the second by speaking about simple pleasures. Promising his love that they “will sit upon the rocks, / Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, / By shallow rivers to whose falls / Melodious birds sing madrigals,” the poet-speaker paints an idyllic picture for his mistress (5-8). This tactic also ties the mistress to the serene landscape that has already been described. The poet-speaker’s slow speaking pattern, emphasized in the enjambment of lines 7 and 8, elongates the phrases of this section and hides the iambic tetrameter’s underlying tension.

As the poem progresses, the poet-speaker's hypotheticals become hyperbolic. The shepherd tells his mistress that “I will make thee beds of roses / And a thousand fragrant posies, / A cap of flowers, and a kirtle / Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle” (9-12). As the poet-speaker’s gifts become more outlandish, his speaking becomes markedly faster. The comma in line 11 quickens the poem’s pace, creating the appearance that the shepherd is quickly reciting a list of various gifts. Moreover, feminine rhyme marks the quatrain, creating a lullaby effect for the reader.

Marvell’s Urgent Appeal

In stark contrast, Marvell’s poet-speaker steps away from Marlowe’s future hypotheticals and hyperbole to take a stricter carpe diem approach. Instead of offering his love multitudes of gifts in the future, the speaker gives context to the present situation, saying, “Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime” (1-2). Spoken in iambic tetrameter, the poet-speaker gets to the heart of the carpe diem mentality by bemoaning that, while he would love to give his mistress time to consider his advances, inevitable death is fast approaching.

Marvell’s speaker talks of how they “would sit down, and think which way / to walk” (3-4), using this conditional phrase as a metaphor for his love deciding if she should reciprocate his feelings. This word choice shows a consolidation on the part of the speaker, giving an impression of hurry. He continues by saying he would wait “till the conversion of the Jews,” (10) a reference to the apocalypse, for her to decide, and allow his “vegetable love” (11) to grow stronger. However, his hyperbole shows that this is impossible, as time is quickly running out.

Marvell’s poet-speaker then makes a stark pivot to the harsh realities of mortality. He states that “Thy beauty shall no more be found, / Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound / My echoing song; then worms shall try / That long preserved virginity, / And your quaint honor turn to dust” (25-29). This grim imagery serves as a warning, emphasizing the urgency of their union before time and death claim their due.

Contrasting Tactics and Common Themes

While Marlowe’s shepherd lobbies his love with allusions to future rewards, Marvell’s poet-speaker speaks to her physicality in a much more erotic and immediate manner. Stepping away from any romantic appeal, Marvell's speaker insists, “Let us roll all our strength and all / our sweetness up into one ball, / and tear our pleasures with rough strife” (41-44). In contrast to the subjective concepts of "time" and "romance," the poet-speaker tries to coax his mistress into physical action. Though both Marlowe and Marvell’s poet-speakers make grand speeches to coax their respective lovers into action, they take different approaches to the notion of carpe diem.

Conclusion

Both Marlowe and Marvell achieve formal and thematic tension through hyperbole and the structures of iambic tetrameter. However, Marlowe’s speaker attempts to woo his lover with fantasies and gifts, while Marvell’s focuses on the immediately physical and erotic. This comparison facilitates a debate between two separate claims on the nature of love, exploring whether it is most passionate when envisioned as a serene union in the future or when realized in the physical present.

References

• Marlowe, C. (1599). The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.
• Marvell, A. (1681). To His Coy Mistress.