The original, and the replies, for context.
Christopher Marlowe
Fuck this, let’s just go live in the woods.
I don’t need anything, and you don’t need anything
Either, just each other and some trees. Right?
We’ll make, like, a Cave House, and watch
shepherds take care of their sheep, like chumps.
Babe, it’ll be so awesome, I promise.
We’ll sleep on flowers, and also wear them
You can bring your slippers if you get cold.
I just love you and also being outside.
Sir Walter Raleigh
WOW, YOU DUMB SHEPHERD. Uh, idiot much?
Ever heard of a little thing called WINTER?
Also, you would probably both drown, so.
You can’t even WEAR flowers for clothes.
THEY WILT, MARLOWE. Everyone knows that.
Christopher Marlowe
No, I know, it’s just like, you know, poetic license?
Like, it would be great if you didn’t have to work
and could just live outside with a babe?
Sir Walter Raleigh
BUT HOW WOULD YOU KEEP WARM
Christopher Marlowe
We could wear, like…a sheep hat.
That’s not the point. Also, it’s May.
It’s more like, wouldn’t it be great if –
Sir Walter Raleigh
Well, sorry to break it to you, but people DIE.
You can’t just live in a sex field with nymphs.
We live in a society of RULES, and also DYING.
John Donne
YEAH, YOU DUMB IDIOT. WHAT ABOUT THE FISH.
Sir Walter Raleigh
what
Christopher Marlowe
yeah what
John Donne
I thought this poem was about fishing.
Is it not about fishing?
Sir Walter Raleigh
No –
Christopher Marlowe
I mean, maybe a LITTLE –
John Donne
Well, maybe if you made it about fishing, she’d have sex with you.
Tags: christopher marlowe, nymphs and shepherds, ownage, poetry
…It’s nice to imagine, though, and even Raleigh’s reply says the shepherdess would indeed like to live in a sex field with nymphs, given eternal youth and also summer.
I’d still prefer the beach. Too many ticks in sex fields.
Plus, mosquitoes. And caterpillars. And also rain, and rocks are kind of scratchy, and when slash how are you going to cook? Also, I don’t know about you guys, but there’s a limit to the amount of sex I can have per day, and sheep aren’t that interesting, so…I’m going to need cable, is what I’m saying.
Actually, “fuck camping” is what I’m saying, and I cannot say it enough.
I am a big fan of both camping and sex, but watching millipedes swarming all around me makes me not want to take my clothes off, even in a very nicely secluded spot. I can’t just bed down in the leaves, is what I’m saying. I need a tent between me and the crawly things.
But ghost crabs at the beach. Pinch.
And assuming that shepherds didn’t lie, but we all know that they totally lie.
This made me guffaw loudly. I, for one, would like to see more from Raleigh on The Toast. Please and thank you.
OMG, THESE poems!!!!
Did anyone else notice that William Shakespeare’s was like… exactly the same.
Shakespeare just added a verse where the girl goes, “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be nice, if you weren’t such a lying fuckboy.” Willy Shakes liked to keep things brief when he was owning on someone else’s poem.
Wait but wasn’t the extra verse just copped from Raleigh’s?
I am confused.
Oh, you’re totally right–that’s what I get for skimming. Okay, this says that the first stanza was originally published on its own anonymously and was popularly attributed to Shakespeare, and then after the six-stanza version was published it came out that it was Raleigh.
Which is not nearly as entertaining as the idea that Shakespeare hated Marlowe so much that he decided to plagiarize Walter Raleigh’s sick Marlowe burns, but what can you do.
I just assumed you were making a sick burn about Shakespeare plagiarizing Marlowe and then throwing in bitter better lyric commentary.
Dude was overworked.
I thought it was a joke on “who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays, poems, and grocery lists.”
I’d also like to direct everyone to Mary Wortley Montagu’s “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem Called ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room'”, which is the sickest burn in poetry history and is absolutely hilarious
OH MY GOD HOW IS THAT EVEN REAL
Also please to read “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” which is pretty famous because Swift’s narrator is SUPER DISMAYED to learn that his beloved is a HUMAN PERSON who has BODILY FUNCTIONS (at one point he wails, “Celia, Celia, Celia shits!”). How dare she! So yeah. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s response is amazing and wonderful and everyone should read it.
I always talk about that poem to people as the one where the narrator is horrified when his belief that GIRLS DON’T POOP is disproven. That myth is old.
DH Lawrence made fun of him about that too. It’s such a hilarious thing to complain about. I wonder how many other writers did? Now I have to go Google it, I won’t be able to sleep until I know.
HOW have I never seen this reply before!?
Speechless. I have not the words to adequately thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Amazing. I want to picture her responding to him directly à la rap battle or slam poetry and the entire audience going “OOOOOOOOHHH” when she’s done.
Perhaps you have no better luck in
The knack of rhyming than of——.
OMG
BUT ALSO THE FINAL COUPLET
I know I couldn’t decide what was better!
I think the deliberately salacious omission of swears got me, though.
These poems give me life. They really do. MOAR!!
Am I the only one who thinks of “Only Lovers Left Alive” and sheds a tear every time Marlowe is mentioned now?
More Donne please. All the Donne. Always.
YEAH WHAT ABOUT THE FLEAS.
*swoons*
I’ve never felt such a deep kinship with Raleigh before. I, too, have little time for romantic flights of fancy that don’t into account that I like to wash and sleep and not freeze/starve to death.
Not two days ago, my husband was telling me about these poems (in response to me explaining the premise of TLC’s “No Scrubs” to him), summarized similarly.
If it weren’t for the fact that Mr. Ksek very much did not get the Straight White Guy Book List, I’d swear I was secretly married to Mallory.
How do I love thee?
Let me count the curds and wheys.
Violets are read.
Eek, a spider.
Damn tuffets…
I feel like I may have posted this before, which is why The Toast is the best, because where else would “The Passionate Shepherd”/”The Nymph’s Reply” come up, let alone more than once? I assign these poems every year to my high school freshmen and they are always so taken with the idea that Raleigh wrote a snarky response to Marlowe, and that he chose to do so in poetic form. I teach at an all-girls’ school and I am very proud of my budding misandrists, who are usually annoyed by the shepherd and empathetic to the nymph.
They would love this (alas, I’d probably get fired if I shared it).
Fond memories of a student of mine, years ago, who wrote a paper about those three poems. He would have loved this piece. As did I. Especially:
Sir Walter Raleigh
BUT HOW WOULD YOU KEEP WARM
Christopher Marlowe
We could wear, like…a sheep hat.
I feel like sheep hats should have been a thing in pre-Revolutionary France, when ladies put entire model ships on their heads and pretending to be a shepherdess was a pastime for the aristocracy. But alas, Google image search turned up nothing to confirm my hypothesis.
Amazing. I want to picture her responding to him directly à la rap battle or slam poetry and the entire audience going "OOOOOOOOHHH" when she's done.
Holy actual shit, no pun intended. The Toast should hire her. You know, across the boundaries of time and space and everything.
Perhaps you have no better luck in
The knack of rhyming than of——.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I thought it was a joke on "who really wrote Shakespeare's plays, poems, and grocery lists."
I once wrote a poem in reply to it too! But I’m not famous or anything.
So I’m reading Robert Herrick’s version, and he totally invents Nutella, and I’m thinking, he might be our winner.
The paste of filberts for thy bread,