“Song” by Mary Wroth

In the time of the English Renaissance, women did not have a voice. They were allowed to speak, but their opinions either fit perfectly in line with those of men or they were labeled an outspoken “shrew.” However, the Renaissance was not only a period of skepticism and doubt caused by many scientific discoveries, it was also the period in which the printing press was invented. Women’s writings could now be spread widely, though they were still expected to keep a low profile. Mary Wroth wrote “Song” as one of the ending poems of the first book of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania and she was criticized by many courtiers in her time for her “roman a clef” which featured thinly veiled “fictional” characters based on real life people.

The typical “carpe diem” poems of this time, like those of John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and Robert Herrick, express the urge to satisfy love needs immediately because life is short and man’s time on earth is limited. Wroth takes the opposite stance and says that love is “childish, vain” (16) because of its fleeting and temporary nature. The speaker of “Song” is a shepherdess singing the poem to a shepherd, which brings to mind a carpe diem poem of the time, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe, in which an infatuated shepherd begs his love to move to the countryside and live with him. Both poems bring forth pastoral imagery and the idea of love, but one is negative and one is positive. Why?

Wroth’s view of marriage would have been much different from that of Marlowe’s simple because Wroth was a woman living in the Renaissance and Marlowe was a man. Men were allowed to love freely and have their own opinions whereas women were considered property once they were married. In Marlowe’s poem, he describes how him and his love will sit by the riverside and he will “make thee beds of Roses /And a thousand fragrant posies” (9 - 10)and he ends the poem by saying:

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May-morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love (21 - 24).

The ending line says come live with me and be my love, not lets live together, I’ll be your love. This possessiveness of the speaker reinforces  the concept of men being the “owners” of their wives once they enter into a marriage. Wroth’s poem seems to be a rebuttal to Marlowe’s poem. She says that yes, love is wonderful and does exist, but only for a short time towards the beginnings of a relationships and then dies like “a sweet flower / Once full blown, dead in an hour” (11 - 12). The juxtaposition of these two poems shows how some men view marriage versus how some women might. Mary Wroth seems to be warning those women who fall for the flattering poetry of men who put them on a pedestal only to find that love disappears not soon after.