The Arcadia is Sidney’s most ambitious literary work and is often considered his magnum opus, which he began writing as a young man in an initial version in the 1570s, and then later significantly revised in a later version. Scholars today often refer to these two versions as the Old Arcadia and the New Arcadia.
When beginning the first version, Sidney’s comments indicate that his purpose was humble, asserting that he intended only to entertain his sister, Mary Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke. This version is narrated in chronological order, with sets of poems separating the books from each other. It seems likely that Sidney finished this Old Arcadia while staying at Herbert’s estate during a temporary eclipse at court in 1580. In 1588, Fulke Greville appealed to Francis Walsingham to prevent an unauthorised publication of parts of the original. Sidney’s original version was all but forgotten until 1908, when antiquarian Bertram Dobell discovered that a manuscript of the Arcadia he had purchased differed from published editions. Dobell subsequently acquired two other manuscripts of the Old Arcadia: one from the library of the Earl of Ashburnham and one that had belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps. This version of The Arcadia was first published in 1912 in Albert Feuillerat’s edition of Sidney’s collected works.
The Old Arcadia introduces the Duke of Arcadia, Basilius, who journeys to the oracle at Delphos and receives a bleak prediction: his daughters will be stolen by undesirable suitors, he will be cuckolded by his wife and his throne will be usurped by a foreign state. Hoping to prevent this dismal fate, Basilius entrusts the Arcadian government to his loyal subject, Philanax, and retires to a pastoral lodge with his wife, Gynecia, their daughters, Pamela and Philoclea, his boorish servant, Dametas.