Sir
Philip Sidney
Two
years younger than Spenser, Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586) was a
far more romantic
figure, in life and death. His father Sir Henry Sidney was three
times governor
of Ireland, his father's sister Frances was the wife of the Earl
of Sussex who
was in charge of the royal household. The Sidney family, though,
was only
gentry, not as highly ranked as that of Philip's mother, Mary
Dudley. Her
brother Guilford Dudley had married the unfortunate 9-day queen
Lady Jane Grey.
Their father John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, was executed
at the beginning
of Mary Tudor's reign for having led resistance to her
accession. For the
Dudleys, and for many protestants, this was martyrdom. Philip
Sidney was mainly
honored in his youth because he was the only surviving
descendant of John
Dudley. Sidney's mother's brother Robert Dudley became the earl
of Leicester in
1564, and he was the leader of the more militant protestant
faction in national
politics until his death in 1588.
When
only fifteen, Philip Sidney was engaged to the daughter of Sir
William Cecil,
the most powerful man at court; in the end, Cecil decided that
the Sidneys were
too poor for her. She married the earl of Oxford instead, and
this may help
explain the violent quarrel that arose between him and Philip
Sidney in
1579-80. Three years before he died, Philip Sidney married
Frances Walsingham,
the daughter of the powerful Sir Francis Walsingham who was
allied to Leicester
in promoting the protestant cause. After Sidney's death, his
widow married
Robert Devereux, the earl of Essex whose rebellion in 1601 led
to his execution
for treason.
Sidney's
sister had their mother's name, Mary, and like the mother, she
was an
intelligent and lively person; the Dudley family was educated in
the highest
humanist tradition, the women like the men, so that his sister
was Philip
Sidney's main audience and partner in literary dialogue. In
1577, aged only
fifteen, she married Henry Herbert, the earl of Pembroke, who
was almost 40
years old, and went to live in his fine house at Wilton as Mary
Herbert,
countess of Pembroke. The medieval Sidney family home at
Penshurst and Mary's
new home at Wilton were both to become significant literary
references. Mary
Herbert (1561 - 1621) became a great literary patroness,
encouraging many
younger writers as well as publishing her brother's works and
completing the
English version of the Psalms which he had begun.
Philip
Sidney was educated at Shrewsbury School, then went to Oxford
for some three
years from 1568. In May 1572, he set off for France and was
welcomed at the
French court in Paris. During the summer, all over France,
tensions grew
between the Catholics and Huguenots (protestants), culminating
in the terrible
Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572, when many of
Sidney's
protestant acquaintances were among the thousands murdered.
Sidney probably
took refuge in the English Embassy under the protection of Sir
Francis
Walsingham (his future father-in-law) who was the English
ambassador at that time.
Leaving
Paris for ever, he went to Germany, on to Vienna, down to
Venice, back to
Vienna, and returned to England in June 1575. From these
centres, Sidney made
journeys as far south as Florence, and as far east as Cracow in
Poland; he
returned via Prague, Dresden, Frankfurt and Cologne. During
his journey, he met a number of remarkable protestant humanists
from France,
with whom he maintained relations later and whose courage in the
face of
violent persecution must have impressed him deeply. He probably
also obtained a
copy of Sannazaro's Arcadia while he was in Venice, illustrated
with woodcuts,
and this book seems to have suggested to Spenser the format of
the Shepheardes
Calendar, as well as giving the title and structure of Sidney's
own Arcadia.
One
month after his return, in July 1575, Philip was present when
his uncle
Leicester entertained the Queen at Kenilworth Castle; part of
the shows
presented during those days were scripted by George Gascoigne in
a rather
rustic style. Then he had to wait until 1577 before the Queen
sent him on an
official mission to Europe to visit the new Emperor and offer
condolences on
the death of his father, also to meet Protestant princes to get
information on
the possibility of a league against the Catholic powers in the
south. During
this journey, in Prague, Sidney seems to have met the English
Jesuit priest
Edmund Campion to discuss religious questions. On the way back
to England, he
visited William of Orange, who was the leader of the revolt
against Spain in
the Netherlands. The Protestant leader was very impressed by
Sidney and even
hoped to see him marry his daughter, something that Elizabeth
would never have
allowed. For Sidney, this was one of the happiest times in his
whole life.
In
1577 Gascoigne suddenly died, and in the years that followed
Sidney quite often
composed verses and pageants for his family, as well as for
Leicester, and
began to perform at court tournaments. In November 1577 the
Queen's Accession
Day (the anniversary of her becoming Queen) was celebrated by a
tournament at
which Sidney rode for the first time. He appeared dressed as
Philisides the
shepherd and spoke verses written in a pastoral mode, in praise
of his beloved
Mira and of the Queen. This name is used in some of the poems in
the Arcadia. More
important, when Elizabeth visited Leicester's home in Wanstead,
Essex, in May
1578, she was entertained in the garden by a pastoral play or
masque, The Lady
of May, written by Sidney and acted by boy actors from the
Chapel Royal with
the famous comedian Richard Tarlton. The Queen is asked to judge
between two
suitors who are wooing the pastoral May Queen, the mild shepherd
Espilus and
the violent forester Therion. This play combines comic
horseplay, artistic
song, and pastoral elements in a quite new way; Espilus perhaps
represents
Leicester and his policies at a time when he had many rivals for
the Queen's
ear.
In
1579, Elizabeth seemed to be ready to marry the French dauphin,
the Duke of
Alencon, who came to London himself in the summer to woo her.
The Protestant
faction, led by Leicester and Walsingham, were horrified;
but Elizabeth did
not like criticism. A writer, John Stubbs, and his publisher had
their right
hands cut off for producing a book in which Alencon was
attacked. Sidney also
wrote a letter of protest to the Queen, for which he was not
punished. A little
later, though, he was involved in a public dispute with the earl
of Oxford over
the use of a tennis court. Oxford was a vicious man, as well as
the highest
Earl in England, and Sidney had a fierce temper combined with a
deep sense of
social inferiority. In addition, they were on opposite sides
over the French
marriage. Sidney withdrew from court and went to stay at Wilton
House with his
sister, who was pregnant. During the summer of 1580, and
probably until at
least 1581, Sidney worked on the first version of his Arcadia,
the
"Old" Arcadia, the first pastoral prose romance in English, with
his
sister and her companions as his intended audience.
In
the early 1580s the Queen was under increasing pressure to
help the Protestants
in the Netherlands in their fight against the Spanish, and she
remained
determined to keep England out of such an involvement as much
as possible. In
1585 Sidney was sent to the Low Countries and became governor
of the small town
of Zutphen, a very symbolic role that he soon realized was
meant to remain
symbolic. Perhaps out of a sense of frustration, he took risks
in the very
limited skirmishes with the Spanish that sometimes happened.
One September
morning in 1586, he went out riding without having his legs
properly armed.
Riding through a fog, his people suddenly found themselves
close to a group of
Spanish soldiers. There was some shooting and Sidney received
a bullet in the
thigh.
Sidney's
body was brought back to London and solemnly buried, several
months later, in
St Paul's Cathedral. The memory of Sidney was promoted by the
Protestant party
for their own pan-European cause, and by writers who saw the
value of what he
had done as a writer and patron of letters. His sister did
much to ensure his
future reputation, by her work in publishing accurate editions
of almost all
Sidney's literary writings, continuing and completing his
translation of the
Psalms, and imitating his patronage of poorer writers at a
time when the
literary enterprise was beginning to take on some of its
modern aspects.
The
Old Arcadia
The
plot of the first version of the Arcadia is a fantastic mixture
of pastoral and
moralistic elements; central to it is the question of individual
responsibility
in society. Duke Basileus, with his wife Gynecia and their two
daughters Pamela
and Philoclea flee a threatening oracle and hide in a pastoral
village. Two
cousins, Pyrocles and Musidorus, from another country, are in
Arcadia. Pyrocles
happens to see a portrait of Philoclea and falls in love. He
goes to the
village disguised as a girl, Cleophila. His cousin follows, sees
and falls in
love with Pamela, and enters the village disguised as a
shepherd, Dorus.
The
cross-dressing leads to immense complications, since Gynecia
senses that
Cleophila must be a man and falls in love with him, while her
husband does not
have her insight and also falls in love with "her". Finally,
Musidorus elopes with Pamela. He is about to be overcome with
passion and rape
her in her sleep when a band of ruffians captures them.
Cleophila meanwhile has
arranged for the Duke and his wife to come to a dark cave, each
expecting to
find "her" there alone. By clever arranging, they make love to
each
other, the Duke convinced that his partner is the young woman he
desires, but
Gynecia has recognized his voice.
In the
morning she reveals the truth to him; he drinks a "love potion"
she
had brought and drops dead. She surrenders to the regent, who
happens to
arrive.
Meanwhile,
Cleophila has become Pyrocles again and is quite shamelessly
making love with
the amorous Philoclea. They are detected and captured. Pamela
and Musidorus are
brought back as prisoners. The king of Macedonia arrives and the
entire case is
entrusted to him. He sentences Gynecia and the two young men to
death. It is
suddenly discovered that one of them is his son. He disowns him
and insists on
the law. Suddenly Basileus wakes up, he was not dead, and there
is a happy
ending with the marriage of the lovers.
The
Defence of Poesy
His
Defence of Poesy
(printed in 1595
with the title An
Apology for Poetry)
was written rapidly, probably in 1582. It may partly have been
designed to
support the growing idea that he should marry Frances
Walsingham, whose father
would be impressed by such a serious piece of writing. In
addition, Sidney
still had no position in court, no title, but was known to be
a poet; he
therefore sets out to affirm the high value of this activity,
and the nobility
of the title of poet that Gosson and others had attacked in
the name of
Christianity. He therefore starts by referring to the ancient
roles of the
poet:
Among the Romans a poet was called
vates, which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or prophet.
. . so heavenly a
title did that excellent people bestow upon this
heart-ravishing knowledge.
One
of Sidney's main ideas is that the lives created (or
re-created) by the
literary author make such a deep impression on the readers
that they find
themselves impelled to try to live like the characters they
read about. This
teaching is done by example, not by precept, and here Sidney
is confronted with
a problem. How is it that people can create imaginary
characters far more
virtuous than the ordinary run of mortals in real life? He has
to suggest that
the poet is inspired from above.
Poesy therefore is an art of
imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word
mimesis--that is to say, a
representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth--to speak
metaphorically, a
speaking picture--with this end, to teach and delight.
Sidney
goes on to propose various categories of poet, the religious
first, with
David's Psalms as the highest example; then philosophical and
historical poems
where the subject-matter is not in itself poetical although
the prosody is
verse. The third group covers those whom he terms "right
poets":
. . . they which most properly do
imitate to teach and delight, and to imitate borrow nothing
of what is, hath
been, or shall be; but range, only reined with learned
discretion, into the
divine consideration of what may be and should be.
The
other very significant section of the Defence comes when
Sidney later turns to
the poor state of poetry in England. He offers an interesting
evaluation,
focussing on Chaucer, Surrey, and Wyatt as notable poets in
English. He
concludes by demanding a new standard of truth in the love
lyric:
...many of such writings as come under
the banner of unresistible love, if I were a mistress, would
never persuade me
they were in love: so coldly they apply fiery speeches, as
men that had rather
read lovers' writings (...) than that in truth they feel
those passions, which
easily (as I think) may be bewrayed by that same
forcibleness or energia (as
the Greeks call it) of the writer.
Astrophel
and Stella
The
sequence contains 108 sonnets and 11 songs and has a clear
underlying narrative
structure, unlike any other English cycle. The male speaker,
who never names
himself, offers an analysis of his very one-sided passion for
Stella in a
step-by-step series of poems that culminate in the Second Song
placed after
sonnet 72. Stella is for a long time unaware of his feelings,
and once she
knows she is cautious in her responses since she is already
married. Finally
she seems to have accepted her admirer's devotion, but only on
condition that
his love remain platonic and virtuous. In the Second Song,
however, he finds
her asleep in a chair and kisses her without permission. This
makes him very
happy, and Stella very angry. The rest of the sequence shows
how their
relationship breaks down into hostile indifference on Stella's
part, and
despair for the unreasoning male lover.
The
New Arcadia
In
1582, Sidney married Walsingham's daughter Frances for reasons
that almost
certainly had little to do with passionate desire. The Sidney
family was almost
completely ruined by the expenses incurred by Sir Philip's
father in the
Queen's service in Ireland. During the years before his
marriage, Sidney began
to rewrite the Arcadia. The fundamental plot remains, but it
is now given a new
beginning and related in a much more serious, almost tragic,
tone. The two
young princes arrive near Arcadia after nearly dying in a
shipwreck. The
shepherds Klaius and Strephon guide Musidorus to the home of
Kalandar, a wise
and good man, who tells him of the retreat of Basileus to the
rural hideout
with his much younger wife Gynecia and their two lovely
daughters, showing him
their portraits with the result found in the earlier version.
The
first Arcadia had many comic and ironic features; these are
almost entirely
absent from the revised version. By contrast, Sidney
introduces far more
military conflict, and stresses the dangers of martial heroism
by bringing into
the story so much armed conflict that it seems impossible for
the original
ending to be kept. Just how Sidney planned to complete the
work is unknown, for
in the middle of the third Book it breaks off in mid-sentence.
Life took over
from literature for Sidney.
The
style is if anything more mannered than before, as can be seen
from this
description of Arcadia:
There
were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately
trees; humble
valleys whose base estate seemed comforted with refreshing of
silver rivers;
meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers;
thickets, which,
being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to by
the cheerful
deposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with
sheep feeding
with sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating
oratory craved the
dams' comfort; here a shepherd's boy piping as though he
should never be old;
there a young shepherdess knitting and withal singing, and it
seemed that her voice
comforted her hands to work and her hands kept time to her
voice's music.
More
characteristic of the tone and material of the new Arcadia,
though, is the
episode from the tenth chapter of the Second Book, the story
of the
Paphlagonian king, which gave Shakespeare much of the material
for his revision
of the story of King Lear:
".
. . I was carried by a bastard son of mine (if at least I be
bound to believe
the words of that base woman my concubine, his mother) first
to mislike, then
to hate, lastly to destroy, this son undeserving destruction."
(.
. .)
".
. . drunk in my affection to that unlawful and unnatural son
of mine I suffered
myself so to be governed by him that all favours and
punishments passed by him,
all offices, and places of importance, distributed to his
favourites; so that
ere I was aware, I had left myself nothing but the name of a
King: which he
shortly weary of too, with many indignities threw me out of my
seat, and put
out my eyes; and then (proud in his tyranny) let me go,
neither imprisoning nor
killing me, but rather delighting to make me feel my misery."
The
main interest of this episode is certainly the way it seems to
have impressed
Shakespeare, providing much of the horror at human cruelty
that marks King Lear
(not only the Gloucester plot, but also the fundamental theme
of the unnatural
treatment of fathers by their children and the experience of
misery) and even
something of the way Prospero was treated by his brother
Antonio before the
start of The Tempest.
Sidney's
revision of Arcadia remained unfinished and was published as a
fragment in
1590. His sister seems, though, to have felt that this was not
satisfactory.
She took the final parts of the earlier version, had a writer
compose a linking
passage, and in 1593 published a "complete" Arcadia that
remained
very popular until the 18th century. The near-rape of Pamela
has been removed,
Pyrocles and Philoclea do not have sexual relations before
marriage. The
heroine of the first recognized modern novel, Richardson's
Pamela (1740), may
perhaps have received her name from Sidney's work.