Contrasting As You Like It, The Passionate shepherd to His Love, and The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
The pastoral settings in Shakespeare's As You Like It, "The Passionate shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe, and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh collectively portray contrasting ideas about nature. Marlowe idealizes pastoral life while Raleigh's companion piece shows its negative aspects. As You Like It explores both the positive and negative qualities.
Pastoral settings conventionally carry the connotation of a nurturing and wholesome environment, similar to the philosophical ideas of the superiority of a natural man. In nature, there are different rules from society in which things work together for a common good. In As You Like It, Orlando, thinking that nature is savage, pulls his sword and demands food of the disposed duke. What Orlando finds is that nature is less savage than civilization. Duke Senior, who promises to give Orlando all that he has, describes the splendor and bounty of nature with "tongues in trees" and "books in the running brooks." The court comes to the pasture, seeking food, clothing, and shelter, and finds fulfillment there.
A shepherd, who resembles the chivalric Duke Senior taking care of his flock, protects the animals in his care just as nature provides him with food, clothing, and shelter. A shepherd's wife must support and help take care of the shepherd. Marlowe's passionate shepherd tries to woo his love by promising the best "wool" from "our pretty lambs," beautiful fields in which to reflect, "beds of roses" to sleep on, "A cap of flowers, and a kirtle/ Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle." She will also have "Fair-lined slippers for the col...
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... to the shepherd if she accepted his proposal. Even though Phebe settles for Silvius, when she finds out Ganymede is really a woman, her happiness is only bitter-sweet.
The pastoral scenes in As You Like It and in the companion poems by Marlowe and Raleigh show nature as a refuge with wonderful mysteries, a place of infectious love, and still a cruel, savage place. Nature is all of these things, an amalgam of mixed blessings, which in differing contexts may be both beneficial and deceptively vicious.
Works Cited
Marlowe, Christopher. "The Passionate shepherd to His Love." Various versions have been consulted.
Raleigh, Walter. "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd." Various versions have been consulted.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. New York: Dover Publications. 1998. All quotations are from this text.
In this essay, I will take the position that the philosophical implications of the Song of Solomon is to reveal a pure uncorrupted form of love that is based on the biblical version suggested in Eden which are boundaries of modesty, preparation of a home and a commitment before marriage. The Song of Solomon has been written in a poem form and was said to be a conversation between to lovers, a man and the Shunimite woman, although this most likely true there are still many other elements to pull out of this story besides just a conversation. The way the couple relate each other’s beauty as well as protection and boundaries in the narrative suggest a fuller form of courtship that is not supported by the common sensual standards of today. Not
A reading of As You Like It may lead us to an understanding of the concept of love as embodying different ideas, which might be observed through the characters of the play. These ideas, love's wealth, love's truth, and love's order, are expressed in the characters' perceptions of love and in the way they relate to one another.
The Dramatic and Linguistic Means by which Shakespeare Presents Various Aspects of Love in As You Like It
Scott, Mark W., ed. "As You Like It." Shakespeare Criticism. Vol. V. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Co., 1987.
Schizophrenia is a serious, chronic mental disorder characterized by loss of contact with reality and disturbances of thought, mood, and perception. Schizophrenia is the most common and the most potentially sever and disabling of the psychosis, a term encompassing several severe mental disorders that result in the loss of contact with reality along with major personality derangements. Schizophrenia patients experience delusions, hallucinations and often lose thought process. Schizophrenia affects an estimated one percent of the population in every country of the world. Victims share a range of symptoms that can be devastating to themselves as well as to families and friends. They may have trouble dealing with the most minor everyday stresses and insignificant changes in their surroundings. They may avoid social contact, ignore personal hygiene and behave oddly (Kass, 194). Many people outside the mental health profession believe that schizophrenia refers to a “split personality”. The word “schizophrenia” comes from the Greek schizo, meaning split and phrenia refers to the diaphragm once thought to be the location of a person’s mind and soul. When the word “schizophrenia” was established by European psychiatrists, they meant to describe a shattering, or breakdown, of basic psychological functions. Eugene Bleuler is one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time. He is best known today for his introduction of the term “schizophrenia” to describe the disorder previously known as dementia praecox and for his studies of schizophrenics. The illness can best be described as a collection of particular symptoms that usually fall into four basic categories: formal thought disorder, perception disorder, feeling/emotional disturbance, and behavior disorders (Young, 23). People with schizophrenia describe strange of unrealistic thoughts. Their speech is sometimes hard to follow because of disordered thinking. Phrases seem disconnected, and ideas move from topic to topic with no logical pattern in what is being said. In some cases, individuals with schizophrenia say that they have no idea at all or that their heads seem “empty”. Many schizophrenic patients think they possess extraordinary powers such as x-ray vision or super strength. They may believe that their thoughts are being controlled by others or that everyone knows what they are thinking. These beliefs ar...
Comparing The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. and the stark contrast of the treatment of an identical theme, that of love within the framework of pastoral life. I intend to look at each poem separately to give my interpretation of the poet's intentions and then discuss their techniques and how the chosen techniques affect the portal of an identical theme. The poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love appears to be about the Elizabethan courtly ideal of living with the barest necessities, like.
Love is the central theme in the play ‘As You Like It’ by William Shakespeare, the author expressed many types of love in the play. Some of them are, brotherly love, lust for love, loyal, friendship love, unrequited love, but of course, romantic love is the focus of this play.
Nature is often a focal point for many author’s works, whether it is expressed through lyrics, short stories, or poetry. Authors are given a cornucopia of pictures and descriptions of nature’s splendor that they can reproduce through words. It is because of this that more often than not a reader is faced with multiple approaches and descriptions to the way nature is portrayed. Some authors tend to look at nature from a deeper and personal observation as in William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, while other authors tend to focus on a more religious beauty within nature as show in Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”, suggesting to the reader that while to each their own there is always a beauty to be found in nature and nature’s beauty can be uplifting for the human spirit both on a visual and spiritual level.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night Or, What You Will. New York, New York: New American Library, 1998. Print.
Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night revolves around a love triangle that continually makes twists and turns like a rollercoaster, throwing emotions here and there. The characters love each another, but the common love is absent throughout the play. Then, another character enters the scene and not only confuses everyone, bringing with him chaos that presents many different themes throughout the play. Along, with the emotional turmoil, each character has their own issues and difficulties that they must take care of, but that also affect other characters at same time. Richard Henze refers to the play as a “vindication of romance, a depreciation of romance…a ‘subtle portrayal of the psychology of love,’ a play about ‘unrequital in love’…a moral comedy about the surfeiting of the appetite…” (Henze 4) On the other hand, L. G. Salingar questions all of the remarks about Twelfth Night, asking if the remarks about the play are actually true. Shakespeare touches on the theme of love, but emphases the pain and suffering it causes a person, showing a dark and dismal side to a usually happy thought.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Comp. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.
As You Like It, by William Shakespeare, is a radiant blend of fantasy, romance, wit and humor. In this delightful romp, Rosalind stands out as the most robust, multidimensional and lovable character, so much so that she tends to overshadow the other characters in an audience's memory, making them seem, by comparison, just "stock dramatic types". Yet, As You Like It is not a stock romance that just happens to have Shakespeare's greatest female role. The other members of the cast provide a well-balanced supporting role, and are not just stereotypes. Characters whom Shakespeare uses to illustrate his main theme of the variations of love are all more than one-use cardboards, as they must be fully drawn to relate to life. Those characters most easily accused of having a stock one-dimensionality are those inessential to the theme but important to the plot and useful as convenient foils, such as Duke Frederick and Oliver de Boys. The assertion of the question deserves this quote: "You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge."
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. The Norton Shakespeare: Essential Plays. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: W.W Norton, 2009. Print.
Many characters undergo a change in William Shakespeare’s play, “As You Like It”. Duke Senior goes from being a member of a court to being a member of a forest and Orlando changes from a bitter, younger brother, to a love-struck young man. The most obvious transformation undergone, is undoubtedly that of Rosalind. Her change from a woman to a man, not only alters her mood, candor, and gender, but also allows her to be the master of ceremonies.
Through the poems of Blake and Wordsworth, the meaning of nature expands far beyond the earlier century's definition of nature. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." The passion and imagination portrayal manifest this period unquestionably, as the Romantic Era. Nature is a place of solace where the imagination is free to roam. Wordsworth contrasts the material world to the innocent beauty of nature that is easily forgotten, or overlooked due to our insensitivities by our complete devotion to the trivial world. “But yet I know, where’er I go, that there hath passed away a glory from the earth.