“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is set in an idyllic landscape that references a longstanding Classical pastoral tradition. Starting in Greek and Roman antiquity, poets have conjured idealized country landscapes where shepherds tranquilly mind their flocks and pursue amorous encounters, usually with beautiful nymphs. Such idyllic pastoral landscapes offer imaginative spaces of respite for frustrated city dwellers. Indeed, pastoral poetry helped invent the fantasy of the countryside as an erotically charged place of perpetual spring, where the pleasures of “the simple life” reign supreme. 

The speaker of Marlowe’s poem relies heavily on this well-established fantasy in his attempt to convince his ambiguously gendered love interest to stay in the country. He begins by offering a general description of the pastoral landscape, in all its charming variety: “Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, / Woods, [and] steepy mountain” (lines 3–4). He then provides a long list of the material goods he’ll give his beloved if they choose to stay, such as fresh flowers, fine lambswool, and products from the sea like coral. Although aimed at enticing them with beautiful objects, the speaker’s list of luxury objects also showcases the sexually charged fruitfulness of his pastoral landscape.