quintessentially Chaucerian nature of his tale that
makes the Nun’s Priest capable of bearing such close
comparison to the fi gure of his author.
See also MORALL FABILLIS OF ESOPE THE PHRYGIAN:
“COCK AND THE FOX, THE.”
FURTHER READING
Cooper, Helen. Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury
Tales. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Howard, Donald. The Idea of the Canterbury Tales. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976.
Pearsall, Derek, ed. A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geof-
frey Chaucer. Part II: The Canterbury Tales. Part Nine: The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1983.
Elizabeth Scala and Michelle M. Sauer
“NYMPH’S REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD,
THE” SIR WALTER RALEIGH (1599) This poem is a
response to CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’s “The PASSIONATE
SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE.” Out of the many answers and
imitations Marlowe’s poem provoked, “The Nymph’s
Reply to the Shepherd” is the most celebrated, the two
poems appearing together from their earliest printings.
The full texts of both poems were fi rst published in the
collection England’s Helicon (1599), where “The Nymph’s
Reply” was signed “Ignoto,” or anonymous. Not until
more than half a century later do we fi nd an attribution
to SIR WALTER RALEIGH, in The Compleat Angler by Izaak
Walton (1653). We do not know what evidence Walton
was using, and some scholars see no compelling reason
to assume Raleigh wrote the poem, grouping it instead
with the many lyrics spuriously credited to the famous
courtier during and after his lifetime.
Other readers hear in the nymph’s voice a distinc-
tive blend of feisty wit and dark realism characteristic
of Raleigh’s poetry. This nymph, or maiden, is no easy
mark for the shepherd’s attempts to persuade her to
“live with [him], and be [his] love.” She counters his
pretty promises with clear-eyed reason, exposing their
fragility in a world where time passes and objects, bod-
ies, and feelings decay. The delightful garments and
“beds of Roses” the shepherd offers “Soone breake,
soone wither,” and are “soone forgotten” in such a
world (l. 15). The nymph meticulously takes up and
dismisses each detail of the shepherd’s golden vision,
from the rocks he imagines them relaxing on, which in
her world “grow cold,” to the “Melodious byrds” sing-
ing “Madrigalls,” here replaced by “dombe,” tragic
“Philomell” and other songbirds who “[complaine] of
cares to come” (ll. 7–8). The nymph’s lines track the
shepherd’s every move, wittily echoing the language,
sound effects, and form of Marlowe’s verse.
The poem’s most thorough critic, S. K. Heninger,
notes that until the shepherd’s fi nal lines, he focuses on
sensual pleasures, only belatedly questioning whether
these will “move” the nymph’s “minde.” The nymph, by
contrast, dwells on abstract issues of time, love, and
truth. Where he is literal and concrete, she is fi gurative
and philosophical. In her poem, his homely shepherd
becomes a fi gure for Time, driving “the fl ocks from fi eld
to fold” as the world grows chill (l. 5). Several of her
STANZAs culminate in what sound like moral EPIGRAMs.
Beyond remarking the transience of the shepherd’s
offerings, she declares them “In follie ripe, in reason
rotten” (l. 16). She likewise condemns the shepherd’s
deceptions: “A honny tongue, a hart of gall, / Is fancies
spring, but sorrowes fall” (ll. 11–12). Both judgments
employ the imagery of passing seasons that dominates
the poem. In denouncing the shepherd’s “honny
tongue,” the nymph may also be criticizing poetry
whose fi ctions idealize harsh truths. The “poesies” that
wither with the rest of his fl eeting enticements are both
posies, or fl owers, and poesies, poems.
Critics disagree about the tone of the nymph’s cri-
tique. She appears to end up where she began, describ-
ing the impossible conditions under which she would
succumb to the shepherd’s seductions. If she and the
shepherd and love and the world’s delights were
young, and could stay fresh and vital, then, she con-
cedes, his offerings might move her. Somewhere
between the fi rst stanza and the last, however, her
insistence on “truth” seems to fade. Although the two
stanzas are almost alike, in the last, the line disparag-
ing the truth of the shepherd’s tongue is replaced by
details of the utopia she envisions. Is she parodying the
shepherd’s fantasies, or implicitly granting the worth
of imagination? Perhaps both, at once mocking and
wistful.
Ambivalence toward an imaginary rural ideal often
attends the PASTORAL mode, in which complex philo-
sophical and social questions are explored under the“NYMPH’S REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD, THE” 293