This beautiful sonnet is quoted in the Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. sc. 1, and hath been usually ascribed (together with the Reply) to Shakespeare himself by the modern editors of his smaller poems. A copy of this madrigal, containing only four stanzas (the 4th and 6th being wanting), accompanied with the first stanza of the answer, being printed in "The Passionate Pilgrime, and Sonnets to sundry notes of Musicke, by Mr. William Shakespeare, Lond. printed for W. Jaggard, 1599." Thus was this sonnet, &c. published as Shakespeare's in his lifetime.
And yet there is good reason to believe that (not Shakespeare, but) Christopher Marlow wrote the song, and Sir Walter Raleigh the Nymph's Reply: For so we are positively assured by Isaac Walton, a writer of some credit, who has inserted them both in his Compleat Angler,[879] under the character of "that smooth song, which was made by Kit. Marlow, now at least fifty years ago; and ... an Answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.... Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good."—It also passed for Marlow's in the opinion of his contemporaries; for in the old poetical miscellany, intitled England's Helicon, it is printed with the name of Chr. Marlow subjoined to it; and the Reply is subscribed Ignoto, which is known to have been a signature of Sir Walter Raleigh. With the same signature Ignoto, in that collection, is an imitation of Marlow's beginning thus:
"Come live with me, and be my dear,
And we will revel all the year,
In plains and groves, &c."
Upon the whole I am inclined to attribute them to Marlow, and Raleigh; notwithstanding the authority of Shakespeare's Book of Sonnets. For it is well known that as he took no care of his own compositions, so was he utterly regardless what spurious things were fathered upon him. Sir John Oldcastle, The London Prodigal, and The Yorkshire Tragedy, were printed with his name at full length in the title-pages, while he was living, which yet were afterwards rejected by his first editors Heminge and Condell, who were his intimate friends (as he mentions both in his will), and therefore no doubt had good authority for setting them aside.[880]
The following sonnet appears to have been (as it deserved) a great favourite with our earlier poets: for, besides the imitation above-mentioned, another is to be found among Donne's Poems, intitled The Bait, beginning thus:
"Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, &c."
As for Chr. Marlow, who was in high repute for his dramatic writings, he lost his life by a stab received in a brothel, before the year 1593. See A. Wood, i. 138.
[These exquisite poems by Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh at once became popular favourites, and were often reprinted. The earliest appearance of the first was in Marlowe's Jew of Malta. An imperfect copy was printed by W. Jaggard with the Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, and the first stanza of the Reply was then added to it. In the following year both poems were correctly printed in England's Helicon, the first being signed "Chr. Marlow" and the second "Ignoto." When Walton introduced the poems into his Angler he attributed the Reply to Raleigh, and printed an additional stanza to each as follows:—