1. Though Marlowe’s words were not published till 1599, after his death, they probably became popular in song form during his lifetime. The poem spawned several others, including Ralegh’s ‘The Nimphs reply to the Sheepheard’ and Donne’s parody ‘The bait’. It first appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, an unauthorized anthology of verse by various authors published by William Jaggard in 1599 and attributed on the title-page to Shakespeare. It was then published in a slightly longer version in England’s Helicon (1600), which we print here. Marlowe quotes the poem in The Jew of Malta, and Sir Hugh Evans sings a garbled version of one verse in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III, sc. i, 17–26 – possibly to the tune (by Corkine himself?) that appears in William Corkine’s Second Booke of Ayres (1612). George Chapman also quotes a variation of the poem in The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1596). Another version, with an extra stanza, appears in the second edition of Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1655).

2. smock worn by a shepherd.