Shakespeare’s As You Like It vs. The Passionate Shepherd to his Love

Hannah Kloeber
English 060
Essay #2
May 14, 2020
Shakespeare’s As You Like It as compared to the passionate shepherd to his love
Shakespeare’s As You Like It, challenges the conventions placed on romance and the natural environment. After Rosalind was banished from the court she goes into Arden forest. While there she encounters Orlando after disguising herself as a shepherd boy named Ganymede. Orlando is in love with Rosalind and Ganymede convinces Orlando to go act out the trials of a relationship and “woo” her under the guise of curing him of his love for Rosalind, while Ganymede imitates a worse for wear version of Rosalind. The work portrays all the classic elements of the pastoral poetry tradition, romantic and comedic poetry while showing the contrast of the city life, court, and the country life, Arden.pastoral poetry tends to focus on the idealistic aspects of the country life in Arden including romanticizing the life of the shepherd and his wife. This is similar in the case of the shepherds in the Christopher Marlowe’s poem the passionate shepherd to his love. In the passionate shepherd to his love, the shepherd is focused on the idyllic scenarios and the good things in life rather than the hardships and hard work that would be needed to be a shepherd and life a country life. The two works are set in nature, in As You Like It , the characters find refuge and love in the forest away even as there is presence of wild animas and the Shepherd in the poem focuses romantic ideal in the natural setting, in an attempt to woo his beloved.
The two texts link the pastoral world and the outside world in an attempt to explore the relationships in the context of the pastoral world. As You Like It focuses on the more complex relationships among the characters, while the shepherd in the Marlowe poem is more focused on his one love and the things that he can offer her. Both poems show love a theme of nature as a way for love to grow. However, despite the romantic ideals in the poem, the work implies that the men in the poem are impractical and incapable of creating a lasting relationship. In As You Like It, Rosalind while posing as the shepherd boy is testing Orlando to see if he can withstand the challenges of a relationship rather than just the perfect, idyllic, conditions of nature. Rosalind while disguised as Ganymede tells Orlando “If you do love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it out, when your brother marries Aliena, shall you marry her” (Act V: Scene 2). The shepherd in Marlowe’s poem is also primarily focused on the idyllic “ Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove” (line 1-2). Nonetheless, they eventually provide some method of a longer lasting relationship in the poems. In As You Like It, Act 2 Scene 3, Adam states that winter is frosty “Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly: let me go with you” and in Marlowe’s poem the shepherd says “A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair lined slippers for the cold” (line 13-15).
Both of the texts follow the structure and patterns in place for the pastoral genre and the classic conv...