Philip Sidney was born at Penshurst Place, Kent, and he was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. His mother was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and the sister of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. Aged ten, he entered Shrewsbury School, where his classmate was Fulke Greville, who became his lifelong friend and was his early biographer. In February 1568 Sidney began a three-year period of studies at Christ Church, Oxford, and later travelled in Europe, extending his knowledge of Latin, French and Italian. He also gained firsthand knowledge of European politics and became acquainted with many of Europe’s leading statesmen, whilst meeting leading literary figures, appreciating the richness of Italian poetry and its variety of forms.
In 1572 he was elected to Parliament as Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury and in the same year he travelled to France as part of the embassy to negotiate a marriage between Elizabeth I and the Duc D’Alençon, which was one of many secret missions he carried out on behalf of the government. He spent the next several years in mainland Europe, travelling through Germany, Italy, Poland, the Kingdom of Hungary and Austria. On these travels, he met a number of prominent European intellectuals and politicians, and was particularly inspired by the poetry of the Italian Petrarch.
Returning to England in 1575, Sidney met Penelope Devereux, the future Lady Rich. Though much younger than him, she would inspire his famous sonnet sequence of the 1580s, Astrophel and Stella. Her father, Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, is said to have planned to marry his daughter to Sidney, but was prevented due to the poet’s early death. In England, Sidney occupied himself with politics and art. He defended his father’s administration of Ireland in a lengthy document. More seriously, he quarrelled with Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, probably because of Sidney’s opposition to the French marriage, which de Vere championed. In the aftermath of this episode, Sidney challenged de Vere to a duel, which Elizabeth forbade. He then wrote a lengthy letter to the Queen detailing the foolishness of the French marriage. Characteristically, Elizabeth bristled at his presumption and Sidney prudently retired from court.
During this absence from court, Sidney composed his great literary sonnet cycle Astrophel and Stella. The sequence contains 108 sonnets and 11 songs. The name derives from the two Greek words, ‘aster’ (star) and ‘phil’ (lover), and the Latin word ‘stella’ also meaning star. Therefore Astrophil is the star lover, and Stella is his star. Sidney partly utilised the key features of his Italian model Petrarch, including a continual, though obscure narrative, the philosophical trappings of the poet in relation to love and desire and musings on the art of poetic creation. Sidney also adopts the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, though he uses it with irregular freedom at times. Petrarch developed his rhyme scheme in the sonnet by dividing the poem’s 14 lines into two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet. The rhyme scheme for the octave is typically a b b a a b b a. The sestet is more flexible. Petrarch typically used c d e c d e or c d c d c d for the sestet. Some other possibilities for the sestet include c d d c d d, c d d e c e, or c d d c c d.
Many of Sidney’s sonnets were circulated in manuscript form before the first edition was printed by Thomas Newman in 1591, five years after Sidney’s death. This edition included ten of Sidney’s songs, a preface by Thomas Nashe and verses from other poets including Thomas Campion, Samuel Daniel and the Earl of Oxford. The text was allegedly copied down by a man employed by one of Sidney’s associates and so was full of errors and misreadings that eventually led to Sidney’s friends ensuring that the unsold copies were impounded. Newman printed a second version later in the year, and though the text was more accurate it was still flawed. The version of Astrophel and Stella commonly used is found in the folio of the 1598 version of Sidney’s Arcadia. Though still not completely free from error, this was prepared under the supervision of his sister the Countess of Pembroke and is considered the most authoritative text available and is the version appearing in this collection. All known versions of Astrophel and Stella have the poems in the same order, making it almost certain that Sidney determined their sequence in this manner.