The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

rdf:langString The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

rdf:langString Sir Walter Raleigh

rdf:langString The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

rdf:langString "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" (1600), by Walter Raleigh, is a poem that responds to and parodies the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (1599) by Christopher Marlowe. In her reply to the shepherd's invitation, the nymph presents her rejection of the shepherd's courtship for a life of pastoral idyll. Both poems are written in the style of traditional pastoral poetry and follow the structure of six four-line stanzas employing a rhyme scheme of AABB, with Raleigh's an almost line-for-line refutation of Marlowe's sentiments. In the 1939 film, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, both poems are sung as a duet by Mistress Margaret Radcliffe (Nanette Fabray), singing Marlowe's original words, and Lady Penelope Gray (Olivia de Havilland) taking Raleigh's rebuttal. The performance infuriates Queen Elizabeth (Bette Davis) whose doomed love for Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn), 32 years her junior, is the subject of the story.