Christopher Marlowe's Poems Lesson Plan

What is the idea of unrequited love? Define this concept and apply it to one or both of Marlowe's poems.

Unrequited love is the situation where a person's affections are not returned by the object of their affection. In other words, "he's just not that in to you." This romantic concept gains popularity in Elizabethan England, basing the plots of some of Shakespeare's most famous comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and tragedies (Romeo and Juliet). In the translations from Ovid, the poet longs for his mistress and woes her to no avail throughout the epic. Hero and Leander both suffered from unrequited love in the lesson's assignment in that they fell in love but did...