Imagery
- Food and drink: sweet cider (from leather bottles), butter and honey, milk
- Plants: juniper; (the good, vast) oak; flowers, grass, "leaves of Mirtle" (Christopher Marlowe); "a thousand fragrant posies" (Christopher Marlowe), the doleful cypress (Richard Barnfield)
- Animals: (the sweet) nightingale (sings), Philomele (heavenly throat), "night-musicke of the spring" (Michael Drayton) ; lark; (the ravenous) wolf; dog; sheep; (the lusty) lamb, (the mighty) ram; bullock; blackbird; thrush, "Melodious byrds sing Madrigalls" (Christopher Marlowe)
- Places: groves; woods; dales; pastures; Arcady; (the grassy banks of) Haemony; "shallow rivers" (Christopher Marlowe)
- Culture: shepherds (Daphnis, Thyrsis, Tityrus), their typical dress and their tools (crooked staff): sheephook, shearing feasts, hunting and fishing (John Donne. The Baite), garlands; "gown made of the finest wool" (Christopher Marlowe); "A belt of straw, and Ivie buds" (Christopher Marlowe); dance pound the maypole, accompanied by a horn-pipe (Richard Barnfield)
- Shepherdess: "a faire damzell, which did weare a crowne / Of sundry flowres with silken ribbands tyde, / Yclad in home-made greene that her owne hands had dyde. ["¦] And smoothly sure she was full fayre of face, / And perfectly well shapt in every lim, Which she did more augment with modest grace / And comely carriage of her count`nance trim, ["¦] " (Spenser: The Faerie Queene, VI, IX: Pastorella)
- Shepherd: shepherds are opposed to merchants (fears piracy), princes (fear rebellions), scholars (fears oblivion), and soldiers (fears "fresh alarmes"); "He is a Courtier, for he courts his Love: / He is a Scholler, for he sings sweet Ditties: / He is a Souldier, for he wounds doth prove; / He is the fame of Townes, the shame of Citties; / He scorns false Fortune, but true Vertue pitties." (Richard Barnfield)
- Deities and myth: Semi-gods like Orpheus, nymphs (names), half-humans like fauns, satyrs; lower deities like wind-gods (Aeolus), mountain-gods (Tmolos), rivergods; higher deities (Apollo, Pan, Dionysos, Diana): "Pan, thou shepheards god" (Drayton): Flora, (the blustring) Boreas, (bright) Phoebus (omniscient by making his way across the sky); (fair as) Venus; Homer`s Iliad: Paris and the golden apple
- Christian iconography: Christ the lamb, Isaac and the ram, Christ as the good shepherd (clergy as his representatives)
- Shepherds` names: Dorus, Tityrus, Menalcas, Coridon, Astrophil, Calidore, Damon, Dametas, Doron, Ergastus, Sylvius, Mirtillus, Alexis, Daphnis, Thenot, Cuddie
- Shepherdesses` names: Stella, Pastorell, Meliboe, Phillida, Carmela, Cloris, Delia, Sylvia