Speaker
The identity of the speaker is not clear when approached out of context. Within the context of the poem being part of a series of pastoral dialogues known as eclogues, the author makes it clear that the dialogue takes place between a shepherd and shepherdess. The gender differential is less clear, however: while publications such as the Norton Anthology of English Literature describes the poem as being “sung to a shepherdess by a shepherd” other publications indicate just that the situation is exactly the opposite; the speaker is female. Fortunately, for the sake of analysis it does not matter whether the poem is placed in context or taken out of, nor does it matter whether the speaker is male or female because the universality of the speaker’s contemplation of what love “art” transcends not just specificity of character, but gender. The speaker is in a wistful and darkly melancholic mode of contemplation engendered by a romance has recently gone sour.
The Other Person (Shepherdess or Shephard)
Again, out of context, this is just a one character poem. The speaker does not directly address another person as the agency of causation for this melancholic and wistful musing about what love really is. It is only within the poem’s context as being an eclogue appearing at the end of Book I of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania that the speaker has been moved been moved by either one of them or the other or both having “fallen out of love.” Of course, an argument can be made that Love itself is a character, but that is a consideration for another section of analysis.
