Every Reader's Sidney

This is the twelfth of a series of essays meant to introduce (or re-introduce) non-scholarly readers to the work of important poets. In this series I limit my focus to the discussion of only three or four of each writer’s best-known works while providing a bit of context and biography, eschewing most byways and all footnotes. The general introduction to the series titled “Why Read Poetry?” is also available on this site.



     Sir Philip Sidney would very likely to be surprised if he found from his perch in Elysium that his reputation in the twenty-first century rests securely on his writing. Child of a prominent and powerful family, he became a Member of Parliament at the age of eighteen and later undertook diplomatic missions for Queen Elizabeth, participating in the social, political, and military responsibilities of court life until dying from combat wounds at the age of thirty-one.
     The legends surrounding his demise are significant whether or not they are literally true. Sidney was said before the battle to have voluntarily put off his thigh armor when one of his men lacked such protection and then, dying, he was reported to have refused water, saying that another injured man had greater need.
     His reputation in life was as the perfect courtier – he was said to carry on his person Castiglione’s manual detailing the ideal nobleman’s accomplishments, including not merely the martial arts of horse and sword, but, in addition, expertise in sports, dancing, music, poetry, drawing and witty conversation. The courtier should have mastered all these activities to such an extent that he may display his skills with an air of nonchalance or spezzatura.
     Perhaps in part due to the desire to achieve that studied indifference, Sidney called literature his “unelected vocation” and claimed he had “slipt into the title of a Poet” by some “mischance.” His casual attitude and full-time profession in court did not prevent his popularizing the sonnet sequence in English and writing the most significant theoretical critical essay of his day. His literary eminence should not, however, cause the reader to forget that he wrote because an elegant sensibility, a grand capacity for love, and a cultivated artistic sense were for him among the noblest ornaments of humanity, more exalted but hardly different in kind from expertise in hawking, sports, and dancing .
     Sidney’s sequence Astrophil and Stella, like those of Petrarch before him and a good many since, focuses on love as the most profound human experience. Yet, as in the work of other poets, a self-reflective turn often diverts the topic to poetry itself. The opening poem, indeed, the opening line, sets these themes.


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 flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned 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.”


     Anatomizing love like a Renaissance scientist, he opens by insisting on the poem’s fidelity to his lived experience. His amorous desire motivates his pen with the hope that his beloved will receive his poem with the twofold Horatian response: delight and instruction. We are here in the late crest of courtly love in which romance uplifts both parties spiritually while maintaining a real base in physical attraction. The lover rises toward the ideal skies through the selflessness of love while his suffering, like that of Jesus, is redemptive and may stimulate grace.
     Portraying himself in the position of those male birds who perform the most elaborate courtship rituals, the poet considers how most effectively to use his verbal skills to appeal to the lady. He considers earlier writers for whom “wit” might be an important design element, but concludes that he can make no progress in that path, hot (“sunburned”) as he is and tongue-tied. In a sudden and dramatic trope, he then describes himself as pregnant with poetry, indeed, giving birth. Feeling “spite,” and struggling with his own pen, he concludes that sincerity is his only route. “’Fool,’ said my Muse to me, ‘look in thy heart and write.’”
     An avowedly sincere statement of passionate love, the poem powerfully expresses the energy of eros. However, with the ambiguity of art and of the human psyche, many other readings lurk just behind the first. While the author appears to be helpless and suffering, beseeching the favor of a dominant woman, the Elizabethan world was a patriarchy in spite of the powerful rule of the queen. Like many sixteenth and seventeenth century love poems, the poem could be read as cynical seduction technique or as a ritual enactment of a pose for artistic value alone, unrelated to any actual relationship or emotion.
     Further, the claim of sincerity is such a common and ancient rhetorical figure that its use in a paradoxical way, calls attention to the artificiality, the literariness of the text. The writing of sonnets was a hallmark of the aristocracy and if Sidney was an outstanding exemplar, he was no different in kind from Thomas Wyatt and Sir Walter Raleigh. He could thus be expected to produce just such a poem whether it had any relationship – direct, ironic, or refracted – to his personal life.
     Even the simplest love lyric from Sidney’s pen bears the marks of learned tradition so valued in the poet’s time. His “Ditty,” the very title of which suggests an occasional piece tossed off in a moment of emotion, was cited on Puttenham’s authoritative Art of English Poetry as an example of the rhetorical figure epimone, or the repetitive statement of the same proposition.

MY 1 true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for another given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his. 5

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

His heart his wound received from my sight,
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still methought in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true-love hath my heart and I have his.


     The poet keeps circling about his point obsessively, replicating the dizzy motions of a lover’s mind but also dazzling his courtly audience with his ingenuity. The third stanza, emphasizing the “hurt” and “wound” of love, did not appear in the first printing of this song-like work, but was added when the lyric was inserted into Sidney’s highly rhetorical prose romance the Arcadia as though to prove the writer could still turn his figure another few times like a juggler putting another object in the air after it seemed he had reached the maximum possible.
     Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella contains a hundred and eight sonnets, approaching love from a variety of angles, for the most part all familiar from earlier poetry. Since Ovid, sleeplessness had been a conventional characteristic of the lover, and in Sonnet 39 Sidney apostrophizes Sleep, asking for amelioration of his love-longing.


Come Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head;
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.


     He begins by Invoking Sleep with words of general application, tossing off metaphors like a magician producing flowers from the air. Some of these blooms provide the modern reader with the opportunity to observe a few archaic usages. (Perhaps instead of finding such temporary obstacles an annoyance, some can enjoy the glimpses through the centuries they offer.)
     “Knot of peace” works satisfactorily in a rapid read-through but it may puzzle the reader who pauses. The fact is that in Elizabethan times “knot gardens” were fashionable, formal herb garden with walks in geometric forms. Thus Sleep is figured as a pleasant and fragrant retreat where serenity might be available. The landscaping reference reinforces the treatment of love as a adjunct of the courtly life. “Bait” in Sidney’s day referred not to fish food alone but to human snacks, and thus a “baiting place” was a refreshing way-station, a café where the mind may renew itself.
     Following the most common formula for hymns and prayers, after calling the goddess Sleep, Sidney then makes his request. He asks for protection from depression, the “darts” of “Despair” which cruelly parody Cupid’s love arrows. Note his repetition of “shield,” first as noun, then as verb, a move which continues the rhetorical show. This figure was called antanaclasis by scholars, but the cleverness does not depend on the Greek name.
     The image of the poet assailed by missiles thrown by Despair introduces a theme of warfare which is then developed as the poet offers inducements to Sleep for support to end the “civil wars” within himself. The “tribute” with which the poet will repay Sleep for her favor are described in the last six lines. All but the last are the ordinary desiderata for rest: nice bedclothes, silence, darkness, fatigue, and “a rosy garland” (presumably to provide a bit of what today would be called aromatherapy). Confessing that these all belong to Sleep “by right,” he offers what is most precious to him: the image of his beloved which will surely appear in his dreams. Since the lover assumes that anyone would take the joy he does in her appearance, he expects this to be a compelling reward.
     Yet the entire drama is an artifice. His negotiation with Sleep for a sort of treaty occurs entirely in the imagination, providing a pretense that allows him to express the most extravagant compliments while depicting himself as the sensitive and helpless lover. Does Sidney mean what he says? Of course he does, but he means it as poetry. In his influential “Defence of Poetry” he argues that poetry uplifts people, making them more moral. He explicitly felt that the aesthetic cultivation required of the arts was an avenue toward nobility. The fact that he was thought such a paragon indicates both the acceptance of such theories in court and his impressive success in embodying the Elizabethan ideal.
     In a more general sense Sidney was an excellent example of what is meant by the expression “Renaissance man.” Known in his own day for his horsemanship and his participation in tournaments, for his witty conversation and elegant manners as well as for his diplomatic and advisory roles in government, he took an active interest as well in the most exciting advances of his day in science and navigation. Hakluyt dedicated his collection of accounts by English explorers to Sidney – indeed the fact that over forty works were dedicated to him is more a testament to his active interest in a wide variety of fields than to his power at court. He cultivated an acquaintance with the mathematician and astronomer John Dee, the artist Nicholas Hilliard, indeed with all those whom he admired regardless of their field.
     In this version of how a life should best be lived, poetry had a critical role as an index of sensibility. An aficionado of poetry was likely capable of mastering the other arts and being a proper lover, or at least of playing persuasive and moving tunes of love. Such self-cultivation, together with the active physical mastery of sports, horsemanship, the handling of a sword and other skills of war, defines an ideal with much to recommend it. Sidney added a robust intellectual appetite extending in all directions and a body of writing that retains its power centuries and half a world away from the poet’s Renaissance court.