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Assonance & Consonance

The speaker entices his beloved with richly textured language. He achieves this in large part through his refined use of assonance and consonance. Assonance and consonance both refer to the repetition of certain sounds in adjacent or nearby words. Assonance specifically refers to the repetition of vowel sounds, whereas consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Let’s start by considering Marlowe’s use of assonance in the opening quatrain (lines 1–4):

     Come live with me and be my love,
     And we will all the pleasures prove,
     That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
     Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

This stanza is arguably built around two main vowel sounds: O/U sounds and EE sounds. Each of these vowel sounds appears in every one of the stanza’s four lines, which creates an underlying sense of cohesion. In particular, notice how the EE sounds sonically unify the words “me,” “be,” and “we,” which nicely underscores the speaker’s attempt to seduce his beloved into union. Now let’s consider the consonance at play in this same stanza:

     Come live with me and be my love,
     And we will all the pleasures prove,
     That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
     Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

Although other consonant sounds repeat in this stanza, consider just the L sounds, which are especially plentiful. Crucially, the two key words of the first line—live and love—both begin with L. The L sounds that proliferate throughout the rest of the stanza subtly amplify the power of these words.

Enumeration

Enumeration—which is sometimes referred to by its Latin name, enumeratio—is a rhetorical technique that involves the listing of details. This technique creates an amplifying effect that expands and enriches whatever issue or matter is under discussion. The speaker of Marlowe’s poem employs enumeration to great effect in the middle three stanzas, where he lists the various material goods he can provide his beloved should they remain with him. He begins his list in lines 9–12:

     And I will make thee beds of Roses
     And a thousand fragrant posies,
     A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
     Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle.

The subsequent lines continue with promises of a lambswool gown, gold-buckled slippers, and an ivy-decked belt made of straw, complete with coral and amber. On the surface, the speaker’s strategy of enumeration aims to entice the beloved by appealing to their desire for luxurious goods. Yet the shepherd’s promise of material wealth implies something more important about the sheer fruitfulness of the countryside. Indeed, the pastoral landscape is vibrant and fertile. In this way, the speaker arguably wants to emphasize the erotic nature of the countryside’s abundance. He does this by enumerating, in detail, the many sumptuous fruits of the land.

Refrain

“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is structured in part using a device known as a refrain. In poetry, the term refrain refers to any word, phrase, line, or group of lines that gets repeated over the course of a poem. One refrain in this poem occurs in the final line of the fifth stanza, which repeats verbatim the poem’s opening line: “Come live with me and be my love” (lines 1 and 20). What’s significant about this line is that it explains, in a nutshell, everything the speaker wants from his beloved. It’s perhaps unsurprising that the speaker would repeat this line at the beginning and near the ending, since the repetition helps drive his main point home. But the speaker takes this basic refrain strategy even further in the poem’s sixth and final stanza, the concluding couplet from which repeats, in slightly altered form, the fifth stanza’s concluding couplet. Compare the two couplets (in lines 19–20 and 23–24, respectively):

     And if these pleasures may thee move,
     Come live with me, and be my love.

     If these delights thy mind may move,
     Then live with me, and be my love.

Though not repeated verbatim, the clear echo of sentiment offers a secondary refrain that further underscores the speaker’s main point.

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