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The Great Sonneteer, Sir Philip Sidney
by Anna Shirey
The great sonneteer, Sir Philip Sidney, was the embodiment of all that a gentleman and courtier of Elizabethan England ideally should be. Born November 30, 1554 at Penshurst, Kent to a family of royal connections, Sidney lived a life dedicated to the service of England. His first position was the ceremonial duty of cup bearer to the Queen. Queen Elizabeth I knighted Sidney in 1583. He was then later appointed as governor of Flushing in the Netherlands. Aiding the Dutch against Spain, Sidney was mortally wounded during a raid on the Spanish in 1586.
Sir Philip Sidney wrote for his family and friends. As was common among
gentlemen of his position, he did not seek to have his writing published.
Manuscripts did circulate, however, during his lifetime. Published posthumously, Sidneys literary achievements inspired his contemporaries.
Sidney's innovations in writing changed poetry. Those coming after would strive to meet the standards he set.
Completed by 1580, Sidney's renowned Arcadia was written for his sister,
Countess Mary Herbert. A pastoral poem of love and heroism, Arcadia is widely considered the sixteenth century's greatest literary accomplishment of prose fiction. With it's publication in 1590, it became the model for Sidney's predecessors to emulate in writing pastoral poetry.
During the late 1500's, Puritan intolerance against poets and other writers of fiction was greatly increasing. Sidney's response to the written attacks
against himself and his fellow writers was Defense of Poesie. Considered
Elizabethan literary criticism's finest and most important work, this essay is a brilliant and elegant defense.
 The first great Elizabethan sonnet cycle, Astrophel and Stella, narrates the
progression of the ill fated love between Stella (star) and Astrophel
(star-lover). Though married to Frances Walsingham in 1583, it is commonly acknowledged Sidney's heart always remained with Penelope Devereux. Penelope became Lady Rich upon being married off by her family to the wealthier Lord Rich. The painful struggle and regret felt in Astrophel and Stella is a secret reflection of Sidney's own hopeless love story. Sir Philip Sidney's woefulness in this sonnet cycle is truly his own. Sidney cleverly displays this connection to reality in humor and puns; sonnet # 37 is an excellent example of his word plays using the word "rich". Consisting of one hundred and eight sonnets and eleven songs, Astrophel and Stella kindled sonneteering into its full blaze.
Anna Shirey is the Dusty Shelf publisher.
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