The main reason why I think that the shepherd's Love can be a boy is that it would give the poem a stronger likeness to the rest of Marlowe's work, so much of which seems meant to shock, or to outrage, or (like Hero and Leander) to run rings around the bewildered reader. Here it's a poem that looks as if it's written to a lady who can easily be read as a lad-the game is related to the androgynous treatment given Leander.  The very fact that "kirtle" may be an old-fashioned word for a male garment might appeal to Marlowe-it conceals and reveals.

Beyond that, I think that the poem is also extraordinarily sophisticated in playing with its tradition.  Anne's point about the "unreality" of the whole thing is very important.  I can't think--can anybody?--of any pastoral invitation in which the shepherd offers such high-class treats.  Normally the shepherd--Like Corydon, or Ovid's (or Theocritus') Cyclops, or even poor old Hobbinol--is a bit of a clod, and offers a series of inadequate country treats--apples, tame birds, etc.  This one offers coral and gold and the finest wool.  The passionate shepherd offers an imaginary pastoral world in which one can sit around and be a spectator while the shepherds perform their dances.  The point is that the speaker is letting us know that he's not a shepherd in anything but metaphor.  He's a poet playing shepherd, inviting us into an idealized countryside that is advertised as a fantasy, the kind of thing that poets make up.  What he's offering are the riches-or maybe the seductions--of the imagination.  

If that's true Ralegh may have got it wrong in more than the emphasis on the nymph.  The nymph says that the country isn't really like that because eventually time brings about age and winter and the clothes wear out.  But I doubt that the passionate shepherd is ever saying that the actual world is like that-just the world of fantasy.      Bill Oram



>>> [log in to unmask] 10/25/00 05:25PM >>>
Thanks, John, for the recollection of Milton. I had thought about Marlowe,
although I'm not sure of the species, let alone the gender, of the
shepherd's beloved. I too was very skeptical at first about the ambiguous
gender of the person addressed in that poem, but I no longer quite
scoff. See Gred Bredbeck's book. But it was Patrick Cheney who shook my
disbelief (at least part way) by reminding me that Marlowe's poem alludes
one way or another to Virgil's second eclogue--the one that E.K. says
Imerito is imitating and that Barnfield also follows. And that eclogue is
certainly homoerotic, albeit I assume in a more Roman than early modern
English way. Virgil, after all, didn't feel the need to deny what he was
doing. If Marlowe's beloved is female and a *real* nymph she not only
sports a cap but a lot of very strange clothing as well. An interesting
question is why Ralegh (if it was Ralegh, and I can't remember if this is
one of the poems that Michael Ruddik has taken from the canon) calls her a
nymph. A nice way of saying "girl"? Rescuing the poem from its homoerotic
associations with the Virgil? To indicate, ironically, the unreality of
the poem's implied world? In any case, that whole group of poems,
including Spenser's "Januarie," says something interesting about how the
classics could be used as cover. What has been puzzling me, though, is
that if "paederastice" love is better than "gynastice" (or however it's
spelled), then Hobbinol's passion (although--Heaven forfend! Just us
Virgilians her!--not actually filthy lust) is nobler than and preferable
to Colin's love for Rosalind. A very odd performance. Anne Prescott.

On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, j.k. leonard wrote:

> 
> 
> Marlowe's passionate shepherd promises to give his nymph (assuming that
> she is one) a "cap of flowers."  Ralegh's reply also mentions "Thy cap."  
> Bill's joke about taking one's hat off reminds me of the garland that
> naked Adam weaves for naked Eve in *Paradise Lost* just before his fall.  
> I have always thought that garland very erotic in the way it supplements
> and maybe even compromises Eve's nakedness.
> 
> Someone (I think it was on a Barnfield website) has suggested that
> the addressee of Marlowe's passionate shepherd is really a boy (since
> Marlowe liked boys, and kirtles could be worn by males).  I don't think 
> i believe this, but it is an interesting argument.  
> 
> 
> John Leonard
> 
> 



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