Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was an influential English poet, courtier, and soldier during the Elizabethan era. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Oxford and traveled extensively through Europe as a young man. Some of his most notable works include the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poetry, and the unfinished romance The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Sidney served as a soldier and governor in the Netherlands, where he was fatally wounded in battle in 1586. Though he died young, Sidney became renowned for his chivalric ideals and was memorialized by other Elizabethan writers like Spenser for embodying the ideals of an English
2. Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney
(November 30, 1554 –
October 17, 1586) became
one of the Elizabethan Age's
most prominent figures.
Famous in his day in
England as a poet, courtier
and soldier, he remains
known as the author of
Astrophel and Stella (1581,
pub. 1591), The Defence of
Poetry (or An Apology for
Poetry, 1581, pub. 1595),
and The Countess of
Pembroke's Arcadia (1580,
pub. 1590).
3. Born at Penshurst, Kent, he was
the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney
and Lady Mary Dudley. Philip
was educated at Shrewsbury
School and Christ Church,
Oxford. He was much travelled
and highly learned. In 1572, he
travelled to France He spent the
next several years in mainland
Europe, moving through
Germany, Italy, Poland, and
Austria. On these travels, he met a
number of prominent European
intellectuals and politicians.
4. Returning to England in
1575, Sidney met Penelope
Devereaux, the future
Penelope Blount; though
much younger, she would
inspire his famous sonnet
sequence of the 1580s,
Astrophel and Stella. Her
father, the Earl of Essex, is
said to have planned to
marry his daughter to
Sidney, but he died in 1576.
In England, Sidney
occupied himself with
politics and art. He
defended his father's
administration of Ireland in
a lengthy document. Sidney
was knighted in 1583.
5. In 1583, he married Frances,
teenage daughter of Sir Francis
Walsingham. The next year, he
met Giordano Bruno Sidney was a
keenly militant Protestant. He had
persuaded John Casimir to
consider proposals for a united
Protestant effort against the
Roman Catholic Church and
Spain. In 1585, his enthusiasm for
the Protestant struggle was given
a free rein when he was appointed
governor of Flushing in the
Netherlands. Later that year, he
joined Sir John Norris in the
Battle of Zutphen. During the
siege, he was shot in the thigh and
died twenty-six days later.
Sidney's body was returned to
London and interred in St. Paul's
Cathedral on 16 February 1587.
6. Already during his own
lifetime, but even more after
his death, he had become for
many English people the
very epitome of a courtier:
learned and politic, but at
the same time generous,
brave, and impulsive. Never
more than a marginal figure
in the politics of his time, he
was memorialized as the
flower of English manhood
in Edmund Spenser's
Astrophel, one of the
greatest English
Renaissance elegies. In
Zutphen, the Netherlands a
street has been named after
Sir Philip.
7. Legacy
An early biography of Sidney was written
by his friend and schoolfellow, Fulke
Greville.
The Rye House conspirator, Algernon
Sidney, was Sir Philip's great-nephew.
In Zutphen, the Netherlands, a street has
been named after Sir Philip. A statue for
him can be found in the park at the
Coehoornsingel, where in the harsh winter
of 1795 English and Hanoverian soldiers
were buried who had died while on retreat
from advancing French troops. A
memorial at the location where he was
mortally wounded by the Spanish can be
found at the entrance of a footpath at the
Warnsveldseweg, southeast of the Catholic
cemetery.
The funeral of Sir Philip Sidney, 1586
8.
Sir Philip Sidney, heroic
Old Salopian. When
mortally wounded he
refused a sip of water,
insisting that it should
be given instead to one
of his injured troops.
9. Works
Astrophel and Stella — The first of the
famous English sonnet sequences,
Astrophil and Stella was probably
composed in the early 1580s. The sonnets
were well-circulated in manuscript before
the first (apparently pirated) edition was
printed in 1591; only in 1598 did an
authorised edition reach the press. The
sequence was a watershed in English
Renaissance poetry. In it, Sidney partially
nativised the key features of his Italian
model, Petrarch: variation of emotion from
poem to poem, with the attendant sense of
an ongoing, but partly obscure, narrative;
the philosophical trappings; the musings on
the act of poetic creation itself. His
experiments with rhyme scheme were no
less notable; they served to free the English
sonnet from the strict rhyming
requirements of the Italian form
10. •
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
— The Arcadia, by far Sidney's most
ambitious work, was as significant in
its own way as his sonnets. This book
is delicated to Mary Sidney, his sister.
The work is a romance that combines
pastoral elements with a mood derived
from the Hellenistic model of
Heliodorus. In the work, that is, a
highly idealized version of the
shepherd's life adjoins (not always
naturally) with stories of jousts,
political treachery, kidnappings, battles,
and rapes. As published in the sixteenth
century, the narrative follows the Greek
model: stories are nested within each
other, and different story-lines are
intertwined.
11. •
The work enjoyed great popularity for
more than a century after its publication.
William Shakespeare borrowed from it for
the Gloucester subplot of King Lear; parts
of it were also dramatized by John Day
and James Shirley. According to a widelytold story, King Charles I quoted lines
from the book as he mounted the scaffold
to be executed; Samuel Richardson named
the heroine of his first novel after Sidney's
Pamela. Arcadia exists in two significantly
different versions. Sidney wrote an early
version during a stay at Mary Herbert's
house; this version is narrated in a
straightforward, sequential manner. Later,
Sidney began to revise the work on a more
ambitious plan. He completed most of the
first three books, but the project was
unfinished at the time of his death. After a
publication of the first three books (1590)
sparked interest, the extant version was
fleshed out with material from the first
version (1593).
12. •
'Defense of Poetry" (also known
as A Defence of Poesie) — Sidney
wrote the Defence before 1583. It
is generally believed that he was
at least partly motivated by
Stephen Gosson, a former
playwright who dedicated his
attack on the English stage, The
School of Abuse, to Sidney in
1579, but Sidney primarily
addresses more general objections
to poetry, such as those of Plato.
In his essay, Sidney integrates a
number of classical and Italian
precepts on fiction. The essence
of his defense is that poetry, by
combining the liveliness of
history with the ethical focus of
philosophy, is more effective than
either history or philosophy in
rousing its readers to virtue. The
work also offers important
comments on Edmund Spenser
and the Elizabethan stage.
13. Role in society
Sidney attended the court of
Queen Elizabeth
Was considered «the flower of
chivalry»
He had a strong influence on
Edmund Spencer, who dedicated
the Shepherds Calendar to
Sidney)
1580 – Queen Elizabeth 1
dismissed Sidney from her court
because he opposed her projectile
marriage to the Duke of Anjou
Sidney married Francis
Waslingham in 1583
14. The influence
Sidney, following Aristotle, writes that
human action is tantamount to human
knowledge. Sidney’s program of literary
reform concerns the connection between
art and virtue.
One of the themes of the Apology is the
insufficiency of simply presenting virtue
as an idea; the poet is needed so that men
will be moved to virtuous action. From
Sidney, this view can be connected with
future literary figures, particularly Percy
Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
and William Wordsworth.
The influence of Sidney's Apology also
relates to the question of the poet's place in
society. Sidney describes poetry as
creating a separate reality, removed from
the world of everyday nuisances.
15. Quotes and Quotations
They are never alone that are accompanied with
noble thoughts.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1.
There is no man suddenly either excellently
good or extremely evil.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1.
I am no herald to inquire of men's pedigrees;
it sufficeth me if I know their virtues.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1.
I seek no better warrant than my own
conscience.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1.
It is a great happiness to be praised of them that
are most praiseworthy.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1.
Liking is not always the child of beauty,
for whatsoever one liketh is beautiful.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1.
Whether your time call you to live or die,
do both like a prince.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1
Beauty, which can give an edge to the bluntest
sword.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1.
Shallow brooks murmur most, deep silent slide
away.
—Arcadia, Bk. 1..
A dull head thinks of no better way to show
himself wise
than by suspecting everything in his way.
—Arcadia, Bk. 2.
That only disadvantage of honest hearts,
credulity.
—Arcadia, Bk. 2.
As well the soldier dieth which standeth still,
as he that gives the bravest onset.
—Arcadia, Bk. 2.
