By way of comparison, we will also look at some Elizabethan narrative poetry on the theme of love, including two relatively short works, by Shakespeare and his scandalous contemporary Christopher Marlowe, considering how they differ from lyric both in form and in their approach to their subject matter. We will also explore together one book of the period’s greatest (and longest) narrative poem, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, in which the love quest of a female knight frames a complex and profound rumination on the nature and consequences of love.