Theme 5: Creative works of Christophe Marlowe Plan

Carpe Diem Poetry

Among the new types of literature imported into England during the Renaissance was carpe diem poetry. Carpe diem is Latin for “seize (take advantage of) the day” and this poetry dealt with the swift passage of time and transiency of youth. Usually the speaker of such a poem was a young man, and usually he was urging a young woman to take advantage of life and love while she was still young and attractive.
The carpe diem theme, which goes back to Horace and other Roman poets who wrote verses in Latin, achieved great popularity in Renaissance England. The reasons of it are explained by the fact that life spans were really shorter at that time. Illness, accident, war, and the executioner’s axe killed men and women in their prime. The biographers of the English authors illustrate it by the point that Bacon was 65 when he died of bronchitis; Marlowe was 29 when he was killed; Spenser died at 47; Sidney died because of a battle wound at 32; Shakespeare lived only 52 years. Their average age at death was 45.
Obviously, it was necessary to “seize the day” at an early age, for life was indeed short. The most famous carpe diem poem is Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. Below some stanzas from this poem are given:

1. 
   The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
   

Come live with me and be my love’
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By Shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand flagrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs -
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

Here the Shepherd tempts his love with exaggerated and high-flown pictures of the joys of pastoral life. This poem has generated many responses, and many parodies. The best and the most famous of them was “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”. (In Greek and Roman mythology, a nymph was one of the lesser goddesses of nature, who lived in seas, rivers, fountains, springs, hills, woods, or trees. The word came to be applied to any beautiful or graceful young woman. )