Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

1. Eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney (Lord Deputy of Ireland), nephew of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. 1568-71: Enters Christ Church, Oxford, but does not get a degree. 1575: Back to England after travelling in Europe. Learnt Latin, French and Italian Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

2. Penshurst, Kent

3. Sidney, Diplomacy, Protestantism • Acquainted with many leading European statesmen. With Sir Francis Walsingham he witnessed the St. Bartholomew's day massacre in Paris on 24th August 1572 when thousands of protestants died. • 1577: First diplomatic mission in the continent. Contact with the German Emperor, Rudolf II and Louis VI, Prince of Orange, to sound out their attitude to the formation of a Protestant alliance against Philip II's Catholic Spain. Not quite a success.

4. Sidney and the New World • Took an interest in the newly discovered Americas and knew many of those involved with the exploration of the new world - Martin Frobisher, Walter Raleigh and Richard Hakluyt. Almost succeeded on accompanying Sir Francis Drake on his circumnavigation of the world in 1577. Hakluyt's first book, Divers voyages, touching the discovery of America was dedicated to Philip - as were nearly 40 other works of the time.

5. Vicissitudes of court life • 1579: Opposed Queen Elizabeth’s intended marriage to the Catholic Henry, Duke of Anjou (Henry III of France). Retired from court for a while to stay with his sister, Lady Mary Sidney, wife of the 2nd Earl of Pembroke at her home at Wilton. During this time he wrote his first major work Arcadia for her amusement. The full title was The countess of Pembroke's Arcadia and was later known as the Old Arcadia when it was revised.

6. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) • 1583: Knighted . Marries Francis Walsingham’s daughter (secretary of State). Saves him from his debts. • 1585: Governor of Flushing in the Netherlands. • 1586: Wounded of a musket shot (skirmish against the Spaniards) and dies after 22 days.

7. Sidney’s Works • None published during his lifetime. • 1580: completed The Old Arcadia and started working on its revision to be called The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia or The New Arcadia (1590). Unfinished project (prose and verse, five-act structure, pastoral, shipwreck and mistaken identities typical of Alexandrian romances (eg. Eliodorus). • 1582: Completed Astrophil and Stella (pub. 1591) • 1582: Defence of Poesie (pub. 1595)

8. I (see Camerlingo, p. 97-8) Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe ;Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flowSome fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned [brain.But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay ;Invention, nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write.

9. LXXI (NO) • Who will in fairest book of Nature knowHow virtue may best lodged in Beauty be,Let him but learn of Love to read in thee,Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.There shall he find all vices’ overthrow,Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereigntyOf reason, from whose light those night-birds fly,That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so.And, not content to be Perfection’s heirThyself, dost strive all minds that way to move,Who mark in thee what is in thee most faire:So while thy beauty draws the heart to love,As fast thy virtue bends that love to good:But, ah, Desire still cries, ‘Give me some food’.

10. The Courtier (S. Lett., pp. 88-90) • 1561: Thomas Hoby’s translation of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (pub. 1528) as The Book of the Courtier. • Structure: 4 successive evenings in Urbino: a) birth and education of the perfect courtier; b) behaviour and accomplishments c) the noblewoman d) the nature of love. • (cfr. Hamlet in Ophelia’s words: the “glass of fashion”)

11. Transforming the mediaeval chivalric ideal • "Above all things it importeth a courtier to be graceful and lovely in countenance and behaviour; fine and discreet in discourse and entertainment; skilful and expert in letters and arms; active and gallant in every courtly exercise; nimble and speedy of body and mind; resolute, industrious and valorous in action; as profound and invincible in action as is possible; and withal ever generously bold, wittily pleasant, and full of life in his sayings and doings." (Harvey’s note to his copy of Hoby’s translation).

12. See Camerlingo • Cultural, social, political transformation: from sword to word (p. 88) • The court and proper behaviour, decorum.

13. The Nature of Love: Sensual Love • The cause therefore of this wretchedness [afflictions, torments of unsatisfied lover] in men’s minds is principally sense, which in youthful age beareth most sway, because the lustiness of the flesh and of the blood in that season addeth unto him even so much force as it withdraweth from reason. Therefore doth it easily train the soul to follow appetite or longing, for when she seeth herself drowned in the earthly prison, because she is set in the office to govern the body, she cannot of herself understand plainly at the first the truth of spiritual beholding.

14. The Beautiful= the good • Whereupon doth very seldom an ill soul dwell in a beautiful body. And therefore is the outward beauty a true sign of the inward goodness, and in bodies this comeliness is imprinted, more and less, as it were, for a mark of the soul, whereby she is outwardly known; as in trees, in which the beauty of the buds giveth a testimony of the goodness of the fruit. And the very same happeneth in bodies … And, which is more, in beasts also a man may discern by the face the quality of the courage, which in the body declareth itself as much as it can. judge you how plainly in the face of a lion, a horse, and an eagle, a man shall discern anger, fierceness, and stoutness.

15. The body • The aristocratic body

16. Defense strategies • Therefore when an amiable countenance of a beautiful woman cometh in his sight, that is accompanied with noble conditions and honest behaviours, so that, as one practised in love, he wotteth [ie. knows] well that his hue hath an agreement with hers, as soon as he is aware that his eyes snatch that image and carry it to the heart, and that the soul beginneth to behold it with pleasure, and feeleth within herself the influence that stirreth her and by little and little setteth her in heat, and that those lively spirits that twinkle out through the eyes put continually fresh nourishment to the fire, he ought in this beginning to seek a speedy remedy and to raise up reason, and with her to fence the fortress of his heart, and to shut in such wise the passages against sense and appetites that they may enter neither with force nor subtle practice.

17. Perfect encounter • Let him lay aside, therefore, the blind judgment of the sense, and enjoy with his eyes the brightness, the comeliness, the loving sparkles, laughters, gestures, and all the other pleasant furnitures of beauty, especially with hearing the sweetness of her voice, the tunableness of her words, the melody of her singing and playing on instruments (in case the woman beloved be a musician), and so shall he with most dainty food feed the soul through the means of these two senses which have little bodily substance in them (i.e. sight and hearing) and be the ministers of reason, without entering farther toward the body with coveting unto any longing otherwise than honest.

18. Fashioning / being fashioned by / a woman Afterward let him obey, please, and honour with all reverence his woman, and reckon her more dear to him than his own life, and prefer all her commodities and pleasures before his own, and love noless in her the beauty of the mind than of the body. Therefore let him have a care not to suffer her to run into any error, but with lessons and good exhortations seek always to frame her to modesty, to temperance, to true honesty, and so to work that there may never take place in her other than pure thoughts and far wide from all filthiness of vices. And thus in sowing of virtue in the garden of that mind, he shall also gather the fruits of most beautiful conditions, and savour them with a marvellous good relish. And this shall be the right engendering and imprinting of beauty inbeauty, the which some hold opinion to be the end of love.

19. Fashioning / being fashioned by / a (gentle)woman In this manner shall our Courtier be most acceptable to his lady, and she will always show herself toward him tractable, lowly and sweet in language, and as willing to please him as to be beloved of him; and the wills of them both shall be most honest and agreeable, and they consequently shall be most happy.

20. George Puttenham • The Art of English Poesie (1586) • 3 books • 2 books dedicated to rhetorical figures (anglicised) • Notion of decorum (writing, speech and behaviour • Dissimulation, allegory or dark conceit (to relate to life at court)