What clues in lines 9–12 can help you to understand the meaning of the word myrtle in line 12? Review column 1 of your table. What do all of these pleasures have in common? Review column 2 of your table. What do all of these materials have in common? What time of year do the pleasures the speaker describes occur? What adjectives does Marlowe use to describe these materials? What sort of picture of the countryside is Marlowe painting through the cumulative impact of these descriptions? Reread stanza 4. How do the details in stanza 4 connect to details in stanza 2? What relationship between animals, humans, and nature is the speaker suggesting? Model Pleasures and Materials Tool Name: Sample Student Response Class: Date: Directions: Complete the first column of the tool by identifying and recording the gifts that the speaker promises the listener. Complete the second column of the tool by identifying and recording the material(s) that each of these “delights” is made from. Finally, discuss your observations to the
All of these materials are sourced from nature. Students might make this broad connection by first making more specific connections by grouping materials—many of the materials the speaker describes come from plants (roses, posies, flowers, myrtle, ivy, straw), others come from animals (wool), still others come from the earth (amber and gold) and from the sea (coral). 4. What time of year do the pleasures the speaker describes occur? The pleasures the speaker describes are made of materials that are only accessible in the springtime (“lambs” are born only in spring, and flowers and buds generally bloom in the warmer months). 5. What adjectives does Marlowe use to describe these materials? What sort of picture of the countryside is Marlowe painting through the cumulative impact of these descriptions? Marlowe uses romantic and flowery adjectives to describe the materials, emphasizing how valuable and important the Shepherd’s gifts are, and how beautiful and perfect the countryside is. This series of questions encourages students to begin to establish an understanding of the basic setting that characterizes all pastoral poetry—an eternal spring in idealized and beautiful countryside. Reread stanza 4. How do the details in stanza 4 connect to details in stanza 2? What relationship between animals, humans, and nature is the speaker suggesting? Student responses should make a connection between the flocks tended by the shepherds in stanza 2, and the lambs from which the wool is sourced in stanza 4. Student inferences about the relationship between animals, humans, and nature may vary. Some students might suggest that the speaker understands the purpose of animals and nature as existing to fulfill human needs—in this case, a natural material derived from an animal (wool) is ultimately fashioned into human luxuries (gown and slippers). Others might infer that the speaker is suggesting that the relationship between animals, humans, and nature is a harmonious cycle of protection and mutual care—shepherds watch over flocks of sheep, sheep give birth to lambs, then humans use the wool from the lambs to make clothes and slippers that keep them safe and warm in the winter. This question prompts students to forge connections between the details in stanza 4 and the details in stanza 2 in order to broaden their analysis from Lesson 1 of how Marlowe shapes and refines a central idea of his text.