Such his appetite to Learning, that he could never be fed fast enough therewith; and so quick and strong his digestion, that he soon turned it to wholesome nourishment, and thrived healthfully thereon. His homebred abilities travel perfected with forraign accomplishments, and a sweet Nature set a glosse on both. He was so essential to the English Court, that it seemed maimed without his company, being a compleat Master of Matter and Language, as his Arcadia doth evidence.
THOMAS FULLER: The History of the Worthies of England (1662)
Born at Penshurst in Kent, he was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. He left university without a degree, accompanied his uncle the Earl of Leicester from 1572 to 1575 throughout Europe and was made Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles IX in Paris. He became one of the most brilliant members of Elizabeth’s court, represented her on diplomatic missions in Europe and in 1578 wrote a masque, The Lady of May, in her honour. Having quarrelled with the Earl of Oxford, he left the court and stayed with his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, in the country. The anonymous painting of him in the National Portrait Gallery depicts him as an elegant young man with a beautiful face – a misrepresentation, since Sidney was ill with smallpox as a child and was described by Ben Jonson as ‘no pleasant man in countenance, his face being spoiled with pimples & of high blood & long’. Courtier, soldier and scholar, Sidney embodied the Renaissance ideal of a gentleman, who composed both music and songs. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth (his godparents included King Philip II of Spain), he was never short of influential friends. When Spenser wrote his Faerie Queene, he took Sidney as the model for Sir Calidore, the champion of Courtesy; and in Ben Jonson’s The Forrest (see ‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes’) it is the ‘godlike Sidney’ that embodies ‘the virtuous life’. Hakluyt dedicated Voyages to him, Spenser the Shepheardes Calender. He became a Member of Parliament and was knighted in 1582. He had hoped to accompany Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Ralegh to the West Indies in 1585, but was instead sent to the Netherlands. It was there that he died at the age of thirty-two fighting in a religious war that culminated in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. ‘Thy necessity is yet greater than mine,’ he allegedly said, as on the battlefield he gave his water-bottle to another wounded soldier. He was mortally wounded at Zutphen in 1586, died some three weeks later and was buried with great pomp and circumstance in St Paul’s Cathedral.
In the seventeenth century, Sidney’s poems were prized more than those by Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson or Donne: three editions of Spenser’s collected works were published, four of Shakespeare’s and nine of Sidney’s. And in the early years of the seventeenth century his Arcadia was translated into French, German, Dutch and Italian, at a time when no other Elizabethan literature was printed in a European vernacular. Sidney’s influence on the development of the English language was huge. The OED lists more than 2,000 quotes from his works, and attributes to him many first usages, such as ‘bug-bear’, ‘far-fetched’ and ‘miniature’ (for a small picture). He was convinced that English, not Latin, should be the language for important matters of state, and wrote in The Defense of Poesy (1579–80): ‘But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceite of the minde, which is the ende of thought, [English] hath it equally with any other tongue in the world’. Though he became a living legend (he was painted by Veronese and apostrophized by Nashe and Spenser), it was not until after his death that his works were published: Arcadia in 1590 and Astrophil and Stella in 1591.
Astrophil and Stella is a sequence of 108 sonnets and eleven songs, which were written around 1582 and describe the unhappy love of Astrophil (‘Lover of a star’ which also puns on Sidney’s Christian name) for ‘Stella’ (‘star’). A narrative thread weaves its way through the sonnets, charting the development of Astrophil’s courtship – thus providing a structure to the work that is absent in many Renaissance collections of sonnets. It is very probable that Stella refers to Lady Penelope Devereux, the woman that Sidney hoped to wed but who married Lord Rich in 1581 – there is much punning on the word ‘rich’, as in Sonnet 37, which refers to one who ‘Hath no misfortune, but that Rich she is’. Sidney did not allow the sonnets to be printed during his lifetime, though five of them (none of them revealing the identity of Stella) did circulate in manuscript form. In 1583 Sidney married Frances Walsingham, who bore him a daughter, Elizabeth, he was never to see: she was born during the Dutch campaign in which he died.
O you that heare this voice,
O you that see this face,
Say whether of the choice
Deserves the former place:
Feare not to judge this bate2,
For it is void of hate.
This side doth beauty take,
For that doth Musike speake,
Fit oratours3 to make
The strongest judgements weake:
The barre4 to plead their right,
Is only true delight.
Thus doth the voice and face,
These gentle Lawyers wage5,
Like loving brothers’ case
For father’s heritage,
That each, while each contends,
It selfe to other lends.
For beautie beautifies,
With heavenly hew and grace,
The heavenly harmonies;
And in this faultlesse face,
The perfect beauties be
A perfect harmony.
In speeches nobly placed:
Beauty as farre excels,
In action aptly graced:
A friend each party drawes,
To countenance his cause:
Love more affected seemes
To beautie’s lovely light,
And wonder more esteemes
Of Musick’s wondrous might:
But both to both so bent,
As both in both are spent.
Musike doth witnesse call
The eare, his truth to trie:
Beauty brings to the hall,
The judgement of the eye,
Both in their objects such,
As no exceptions6 tutch.
The common sence, which might
Be Arbiter7 of this,
To be forsooth upright,
To both sides partiall is:
He layes on this chiefe praise,
Chiefe praise on that he laies.
The reason, Princesse hy,
Whose throne is in the mind,
Which Musicke can in sky
And hidden beauties find,
Say whether thou wilt crowne,
With limitlesse renowne.
Goe my Flocke, goe get you hence,
Seeke some other place of feeding,
Where you may haue some defence
Fro the stormes in my breast breeding,
And showers from mine eyes proceeding.
Leaue a wretch, in whom all woe
Can abide to keepe no measure,
Merry flocke such one forgoe,
Vnto whom Myrth is displeasure,
Onely rich in measures treasure.
Yet alas before you goe,
Heare your wofull Maisters story,
Which to stones I else would shew,
Sorrow onely then hath glory
When tis excellently sorry.
Stella, fayrest Shepherdesse,
Fayrest but yet cruelst euer.
Stella whom the heau’ns still blesse,
Though against me she perseuer,
Though I blisse inherit neuer.
Stella hath refused mee:
Stella, who more Loue hath proued,
In this Catiffe hart to be,
Then can in good to vs be moued
Towards Lambe-kins best beloued.
Astrophel, that so wel serued,
In this pleasant spring must see
While in pride Flowers be preseru’d
Himselfe onely Winter-starued.
Why alas then doth she sweare
That she loueth mee so deerely,
Seeing me so long to beare
Coales of Loue that burn so cleerely,
And yet leaue me hopelesse merely.
Is that Loue? forsooth I trow
If I saw my good Dogge grieued
And a help for him did know,
My Loue should not be belieued
But hee were by mee relieued.
No, she hates mee (well away)
Fayning Loue, somewhat to please mee,
Knowing, if she should display
All her hate, Death soone would seize me,
And of hideous torments ease me.
Then my flocke now adew,
But alas, if in your straying
Heauenly Stella meet with you,
Tell her in your pittious blaying,
Her poore slaues iust decaying.
My true love hath my hart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other giv’ne.
I holde his deare, and myne he cannot misse2:
There never was a better bargaine driv’ne.
His hart in me, keepes me and him in one,
My hart in him, his thoughtes and senses guides:
He loves my hart, for once it was his owne;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
[His hart his wound3 receaved from my sight4:
My hart was wounded, with his wounded hart,
For as from me, on him his hurt did light,
So still me thought in me his hurt did smart:
Both equall hurt, in this change5 sought our blisse:
My true love hath my hart and I have his.]
(Holst, Hurlstone, Parry, Somervell, Ward)