Argument

The argument in any work of literature is the author's principle idea. The shepherd's argument in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" reveals the efforts of the shepherd to convince the unseen woman that she should become his mistress. The shepherd submits a number of arguments designed to be convincing, but the central argument is that all pleasure will be theirs for the taking.

Couplets and Rhyme

Couplets are two consecutive lines of poetry with the same end-rhyme. Traditionally, the couplet was a two-line stanza expressing a self-contained thought, but the form has evolved. It is no longer strictly defined as iambic pentameter, as it once was, and the lines need not be identical in stressed and unstressed syllables. Many of the individual lines in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" are eight syllables, but several others are not, and so Marlowe is moving away from traditional poetic...