XII. The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.................................................................
This beautiful sonnet is quoted inThe Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. sc. i.
and hath been usually ascribed (together withthe Reply) to Shakspeare himself by the
modern editors of his smaller poems. A copy of this madrigal, containing only four
stanzas (the 4th and 6th being wanting), accompanied with the first stanza of the
answer, being printed inThe Passionate Pilgrime, and Sonnets to sundry Notes of
Musicke, by Mr. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. Lond. printed for W. Jaggard, 1599.
Thus was this sonnet, &c. published as Shakspeare's in his life-time.
And yet there is good reason to believe that (not Shakspeare, but) Christopher
Marlow wrote the song, and Sir Walter Raleigh theNymph's Reply. For so we are
positively assured by Isaac Walton, a writer of some credit, who has inserted them
both in hisCompleat Angler,[1] under the character of "that smooth song, which was
made by Kit. Marlow, now at least fifty years ago; and... an answer to it, which was
made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days... old-fashioned poetry, but
choicely good." It also passed for Marlow's in the opinion of his contemporaries; for
in the old Poetical Miscellany, intitledEngland's Helicon, it is printed with the name
of Chr. Marlow subjoined to it; and the Reply is signedIgnoto, which is known to
have been a signature of Sir Walter Raleigh. With the same signature Ignoto, in that
collection, is an imitation of Marlow's beginning thus:
"Come live with me, and be my dear,
And we will revel all the year,
In plains and groves, &c."
Upon the whole I am inclined to attribute them to Marlow, and Raleigh;
notwithstanding the authority of Shakspeare's Book of Sonnets. For it is well known
that as he took no care of his own compositions, so was he utterly regardless what
spurious things were fathered upon him.Sir John Oldcastle, The London Prodigal,
andThe Yorkshire Tragedy, were printed with his name at full length in the title-
pages, while he was living, which yet were afterwards rejected by his first editors
Heminge and Condell, who were his intimate friends (as he mentions both in his will),
and therefore no doubt had good authority for setting them aside.[2]
The following sonnet appears to have been (as it deserved) a great favourite
with our earlier poets: for, besides the imitation above mentioned, another is to be
found among Donne's Poems, intitledThe Bait, beginning thus:
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, &c.
As for Chr. Marlow, who was in high repute for his dramatic writings, he lost
his life by a stab received in a brothel, before the year 1593.-- See A. Wood, i. 138.
COME live with me, and be my love,
And we wil all the pleasures prove
That hils and vallies, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.