Christopher Marlowe (26 February 1564 - 30 May 1593 / Canterbury, England)

Love by reason can't hold a candle to love by heart.

This poem exposes individual limitation in falling in love. There is a force beyond ordinary sight that makes people to fall in love. Very wonderful poem, like it

when was this originally published?

Do we have a tendency to range far afield? It seems to me a long journey from Marlowe's ten lines to marriage customs in the countries on the Asian rim, but that's just me, I guess. Was Elizabethan England a patriarchal society? How does one define a society of individual subjects of Elizabeth I 'in service to their social allegiances'? Is Horatio commenting on marriage customs in the quote cited by our redoubtable scholar? Or what else could he be referring to? Arranged marriages and contractual unions one and the same for all practical purposes? I'm bedazzled and bewildered by all the scholarly hocus-pocus disseminated by the most astute Shakespearean scholars among us!

The first two lines are particularly fitting, in an age of arranged marriages for position, power or family and parental decree, which Christopher Marlowe is referencing here. This was an age of individuals in service to their social allegiances, individual free will was not often an important part of a patriarchal society. Although clearly many have loved but not at first sight. However as Shakespeare aptly reminds us in Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
In Indonesia and throughout Asia arranged marriages and contract marriages are still common. For example contract marriages are arranged here for a day, a few days, a week or two, even occasionally a month and then the couple divorce at the prearranged time, and perhaps a little research regarding especially the number of Arab men coming here and participating in these contract marriages would astound you.
These are religious not state marriages in Indonesia, a siri marriage in Islam, and the debate regarding if it is a form of prostitution is interesting. The dowry of a siri marriage in jewelry and money can be viewed as wealth for a poor kampung family. However any children of these contract marriage have no right to the father’s name, property, inheritance rights or even a birth certificate. Should the government here create a law to protect these women and children who are abandoned? Sadly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights lacks teeth in areas and countries of poverty. Indonesia is not however a poor country, it is a complex and intriguing archipelago of cultural diversity, with about 17000 islands spanning over 5000 km.

Love that is the result of deliberations is not so hot as falling in love. Yet in Marlowe's time and till recently marriage was often the result of deliberations. Now no one will get married (if they do) until they are in love. Yet being in love is not necessarily a good basis for marriage, especially when the going gets tough. Love and marriage are not always like a horse and carriage.

Both love and hate are decreed by fate for all and love starts at first sight itself by fate indeed!

It is like going through life
with eyes wide open
keeping them pried shut..
for me..iip..it is nice talking
with you..Thanks.

If you like his poem, try the novel 'Loving Frank' by Nancy Horan- a very powerful, moving, and tragic tale of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick.

What an absolutely superb observation in verse