Sir philip sidney, the critical heritage

SIDNEY: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE

Martin Garrett has worked mainly on English Renaissance
literature and theatre; he is the editor of Massinger: the Critical
Heritage (Routledge, 1991). In other areas his publications include
Greece: a Literary Companion (1994), and he is now working on a
literary companion to Italy and a volume of Interviews and
Recollections of the Brownings.


THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES
GENERAL EDITOR: B.C.SOUTHAM, M.A., B.LITT. (OXON.)

Formerly Department of English, Westfield College,
University of London
The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of
criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the
contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student
to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work and
its place within a literary tradition.
The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the
history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little
published documentary material, such as letters and diaries.
Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in

order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the
writer’s death.

For a list of volumes in the series, see the end of the book.


SIDNEY
THE CRITICAL HERITAGE

Edited by
MARTIN GARRETT

London and New York


First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library,
2003.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Compilation, introduction, notes, bibliography and index
© 1996 Martin Garrett
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Sidney: the critical heritage/edited by Martin Garrett.
p.
cm.—(The Critical heritage series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sidney, Philip, Sir, 1554–1586–Criticism and
interpretation.
I. Garrett, Martin. II. Series.
PR2343.P45
1996
821'.3–dc20
95–36355
ISBN 0-203-42077-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-72901-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-08934-4 (Print Edition)


General Editor’s Preface

The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and nearcontemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of
literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of
criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical
attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private
comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon

the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period.
Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer’s historical
situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his
response to these pressures.
The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of
this early criticism. Clearly, for many of the highly productive and
lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, there
exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume
editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant
for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality—
perhaps even registering incompre hension!
For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are

much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes
far beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the inception and
growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear.
In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction,
discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the
author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the critical
tradition. The volumes will make available much material which
would otherwise be difficult to access and it is hoped that the modern
reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of
the ways in which literature has been read and judged.
B.C.S.

v


TO MY PARENTS


CONTENTS

PREFACE
ABBREVIATIONS
NOTE ON THE TEXT
INTRODUCTION

xiv
xvi
xvii
1

1 Edward Waterhouse
Letter to Sir Henry Sidney, 1577
2 Philip Sidney
(a) A Defence of Poetry, 1579–80?
(b) ‘To My Deare Ladie and Sister’, 1580?
3 Gabriel Harvey

(a) MS notes in The Posies of George Gascoigne,
c. 1580
(b) Three Proper and wittie, familiar Letters, 1580
4 Edmund Spenser
Two Other very commendable letters, 1580
5 Thomas Howell
Howell His Devises, for his owne exercise, and his Friends
pleasure, 1581
6 George Puttenham
The Arte of English Poesie, c. 1584
7 William Temple
Analysis of A Defence of Poetry, c. 1584–6

8 Geoffrey Whitney
A Choice of Emblemes, 1586
9 Fulke Greville
Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, 1586
vii

87
87
88
88
89
90

91
92
93
93
94
94
96
96
98
99
102
102

103
104


CONTE NTS

10 Matthew Roydon
‘An Elegie, or friends passion, for his Astrophill’,
c. 1586–9
11 King James VI of Scotland
‘In Philippi Sidnaei interitum…’, Academiae
Cantabrigiensis lachrymae…, 1587

12 George Whetstone
Sir Phillip Sidney, his honorable life, his valiant death, and
true vertues, 1587
13 Angel Day
Upon the Life and Death of the Most Worthy, and Thrise
Renowmed Knight, Sir PHILLIP SIDNEY, 1587
14 Edmund Molyneux
‘Historical Remembrance of the Sidneys…’, 1587
15 Sir John Harington
Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, 1591
16 Thomas Newman
‘To…his very good Freende, Ma. Frauncis Flower’,

1591
17 Thomas Nashe
(a) ‘Somewhat to reade for them that list’, 1591
(b) The Unfortunate Traveller, 1594
18 Edmund Spenser
Astrophel, 1591–5
19 Gabriel Harvey
(a) Foure Letters, and Certaine Sonnets, 1592
(b) A New Letter of Notable Contents, 1593
(c) Pierces Supererogation: A New Prayse of the Old Asse, 1593
(d) Notes in Thomas Speght (ed.), The Workes of our
Antient and Lerned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, 1598

20 Hugh Sanford
‘To the Reader’, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 1593
21 Thomas Moffet
Nobilis…,1593–4
22 John King
Lectures Upon Jonas, 1594
23 Henry Olney
‘To the Reader’, An Apologie for Poetrie, 1595
24 Gervase Markham
The English Arcadia, 1597?
viii

105
106
108
109
110
110
111
112
112
113
115
115

118
118
119
119
124
127
128
129
130
131
131
132

133
134
136
136
139
139
139
140
141
141

CONTE NTS

25 Francis Meres
Palladis Tamia, 1598
26 Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
(a) ‘To the thrise sacred QUEENE ELIZABETH’, 1599
(b) ‘To the Angell spirit…’, 1599
27 Ben Jonson
(a) Every Man Out of His Humour, 1599
(b) Epicoene, 1609
(c) Conversations with Drummond, 1619
(d) Timber: or, Discoveries, c. 1623–37

28 John Hoskyns
Directions for Speech and Style, c. 1599–1600
29 Brian Twyne
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 263, c. 1600?
30 William Vaughan
The Golden-Grove, 1600
31 John Florio
Epistle to the Second Book, The Essayes…of Michaell
de Montaigne…, 1603
32 Matthew Gwynne
‘To the Honorably-vertuous Ladie, La: Penelope Riche’,
The Essayes…of Michaell de Montaigne, 1603

33 Dudley Digges
Four Paradoxes, or Politique Discourses, 1604
34 Richard Carew
‘The Excellencie of the English Tongue’, 1605–14
35 Alexander Craig
The Amorose Songes, Sonets and Elegies, 1606
36 John Day
The Ile of Guls, 1606
37 Heroical Epistles
Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet. f. 9, 1607–23?
38 Wiliam Heale
An Apologie for Women, 1609

39 Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke
The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney, c. 1610–12
40 ‘Thus far the worthy Author…’
The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 1613
ix

146
146
147
148
149
152

152
152
153
153
154
154
157
158
166
166
167
168

169
169
170
170
171
171
172
173
174
175
178
179

186
187
188
189
194
194


CONTE NTS

41 Sir William Alexander (Earl of Stirling)
195

(a) ‘A Supplement of the Said Defect’, The Countesse of
Pembrokes Arcadia, 1621 (1616?)
196
(b) Anacrisis: or, A Censure of Some Poets Ancient and
Modern, c. 1634
198
42 Lady Mary Wroth
200
The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, 1621
201
43 Love’s Changelings’ Change
204

British Library, MS Egerton 1994, 1621>
205
44 James Johnstoun
207
‘A Supplement to the third booke of Arcadia’, 1621–5? 208
45 John Donne
211
‘Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney,
and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister’, 1621–31
211
46 Sir Richard Beling
213

A Sixth Booke to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 1624
213
47 ‘Upon Sydneis Arcadia’
217
‘Upon Sydneis Arcadia sent to his m.rs’, c. 1625–50
217
48 Michael Drayton
219
‘To my most dearely-loved friend HENERY REYNOLDS
Esquire, of Poets and Poesie’, 1627
219
49 Francis Quarles

220
Argalus and Parthenia, 1629
221
50 Thomas Powell
224
Tom of All Trades: or, The Plaine Path-way to Preferment, 1631 225
51 Antony Stafford
225
‘To the Noble Reader’, The Guide of Honour, 1634
226
52 Edmund Waller
227

(a) ‘At Pens-hurst’, c. 1634–9
227
(b) ‘On My Lady Dorothy Sidneys Picture’, c. 1634–9
227
53 Henry Glapthorne
228
Argalus and Parthenia, c. 1637–9
229
54 Richard Lovelace
232
‘To the Ladies’, The Loves of Clitophon and Leucippe, 1638 232
55 Anne Bradstreet

232
‘An Elegie upon that Honourable and Renowned
Knight, Sir Philip Sidney…’, 1638
233
56 James Shirley
237
A Pastorall Called the Arcadia, <1639
238

x

CONTE NTS

57 A Draught of Sir Phillip Sidneys Arcadia
A Draught of Sir Phillip Sidney’s Arcadia, 1644?
58 John Milton
Eikonoklastes, 1649
59 Thomas Moore
The Arcadian Lovers: or, Metamorphoses of Princes,
c. 1650–60?
60 Anne Weamys
A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, 1651
61 ‘Philophilippos’

‘The Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney’, 1655
62 Charles Cotton
‘The Surprize’, c. 1655–60
63 John Aubrey
(a) The Natural History of Wiltshire, c. 1670–85
(b) Brief Lives, c. 1680
64 John Dryden
(a) Defence of the Epilogue: or, An Essay on the Dramatique
Poetry of the Last Age, 1672
(b) ‘The Authors Apology for Heroique Poetry and
Poetique Licence’, 1677
(c) A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of

Satire, 1693
65 Edward Phillips
Theatrum Poetarum: or, A Compleat Collection of Poets, 1675
66 Life of Spenser
‘A Summary of the Life of Mr. Edmond Spenser’, 1679
67 D.Tyndale
‘Key of Pembroke’s Arcadia’, 1687
68 Sir William Temple
‘Essay IV. Of Poetry’, 1690
69 Anthony Wood
Athenae Oxonienses, 1691
70 ‘J.N.’

The Famous History of Heroick Acts: or, The Honour of
Chivalry. Being an Abstract of Pembroke’s Arcadia, 1701
71 D.Stanley
Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, Moderniz’d by Mrs. Stanley, 1725
72 Elizabeth Montagu
Letter to Mary Pendarves, 1742
xi

241
241
247
248

250
251
253
255
256
257
259
260
260
260
260
262

263
263
263
264
264
265
265
266
266
267
267
268

268
270
270
272
273
275
275


CONTE NTS

73 John Upton

Critical Observations on Shakespeare, 1746
74 McNamara Morgan
Philoclea: A Tragedy, 1754
75 Samuel Johnson
(a) Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
(b) Mr. Johnson’s Preface to his Edition of Shakespear’s Plays,
1765
(c) Letter to Hester Thrale, 1770
76 ‘Philisides’
The Shepherd’s Calender…The Subjects partly taken
from the select Pastorals of Spencer, and Sir Philip Sidney,
1758

77 Horace Walpole
‘Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke’, 1758
78 The History of Argalus and Parthenia
The History of Argalus and Parthenia…, c. 1760–85?
79 The Gentleman’s Magazine
The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1767
80 Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Letter to Thomas Grenville, 1772
81 Clara Reeve
The Progress of Romance…, 1785
82 William Cowper
The Task, 1785

83 Charles Lamb
Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 1808
84 Thomas Zouch
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Sir Philip Sidney, 1808
85 The Annual Review and History of Literature for 1808
The Annual Review and History of Literature for 1808, 1809
86 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(a) The Friend, 1809
(b) Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, 1811
(c) The Statesman’s Manual, 1816
(d) Table Talk, 1833.
87 Sir Egerton Brydges

‘Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney’, 1810
88 James Crossley
‘The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia…’, 1820
xii

276
276
277
278
281
281
282

282
283

283
285
286
287
287
288
288
290
290

291
291
293
293
294
294
296
296
299
299
300
301

302
302
303
304
304
307
308


CONTE NTS

89 William Hazlitt

Lectures Chiefly on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of
Elizabeth, 1820
90 Charles Lamb
‘Defence of the Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney’, 1823
91 Peter George Patmore?
‘Penshurst Castle, and Sir Philip Sydney,’ 1823
92 Nathan Drake
Mornings in Spring; or, Retrospectives, Biographical, Critical,
and Historical, 1828
93 William Gray
‘The Life of Sir Philip Sidney’, 1829
94 Henry Hallam

Introduction to the Literature of Europe, during the Fifteenth,
Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, 1839
95 Isaac D’Israeli
Amenities of Literature, Consisting of Sketches and Characters
of English Literature, 1841
96 William Stigant
1858
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Index

xiii

317
317
324
324
328
328
331
332
333
334
335
335

337
337
342
342
350
355


PREFACE
Will you have all in all for Prose and verse? take the miracle of our
age Sir Philip Sidney.
(Richard Carew, No. 34 below)

I do almost think the Tyburn Chronicle a more interesting book
than Sydney’s Arcadia.
(Hannah More, September 1788, in William Roberts, Memoirs of…
Mrs Hannah More, 1834, vol. 3, p. 131)
the silver speech
Of Sidney’s self, the starry paladin.
(Robert Browning, Sordello, 1840, 1. 68–9)
Sidney’s reputation grew with remarkable rapidity after his death
and the publication of most of his work in the 1590s. Few authors,
not even Shakespeare (himself much influenced by Sidney’s
writings), have been exalted further. And, as has not been generally
the case with Shakespeare or other contemporaries, Sidney’s life—or

heroic constructions of it—continued to affect assessments of the
work even after it had ceased to be generally read in the eighteenth
century.
The story of Sidney’s reception for much of the seventeenth
century will already be broadly familiar to most readers. (They will
also, however, encounter fresh material here, including the first
printing of some manuscript material, most importantly of the bulk
of Brian Twyne’s notes of c. 1599–1600.) I have included extracts
from continuations and dramatizations of Arcadia, in addition to
more direct comment.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century responses are, with a few
exceptions (Walpole and Hazlitt, for example) less generally known.

In view of this—and helped by the relative dearth of responses—I
have attempted to cover the eighteenth century in almost as much
detail as the earlier periods; space does not permit a very full
selection from Victorian writing on Sidney, but entries by Hallam
xiv


PRE FACE

(1839), D’Israeli (1841), and William Stigant (1858) have been
included as representative. It seemed appropriate to end with
Stigant, because he combines traditional and newer approaches to

Sidney: he regards the life of the hero as more important than his
literary productions, and has certain traditional reservations about
Arcadia, yet is largely enthusiastic about the works and willing to
discuss them in some detail. Part 3 of the Introduction seeks to give
a more general impression of tendencies in Sidney criticism up to
about 1900.
The work of three Sidney scholars in particular has made editing
Sidney: the Critical Heritage an easier task: Katherine Duncan-Jones,
Dennis Kay and Victor Skretkowicz.
I should like to express my thanks to Jennifer Fellows and Brian
Southam for their work on the text, and to Mrs Christine Butler
and Dr Hubert Stadler for their help with Brian Twyne’s notes on

Sidney in Corpus Christi College MS 263, fols 114–20 (no. 29),
which are printed here with the permission of the President and
Scholars of Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford.
Extracts from MS. Eng. poet. f. 9, pp. 224–36 (No. 37) and MS.
Rawl. poet. 3, fols 9–10 (No. 59) are included by permission of the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, and those from MS Add. 10309, fols
86v– 87v (No. 47), Harleian MS 4604, fols 22v–23, 24v–25 (No.
28), and MS Egerton 1994 (No. 43) by permission of the British
Library. William Temple’s Analysis of A Defence of Poetry, fols 11–12,
is printed by kind permission of Lord De L’Isle.
Special thanks are due to my wife and children for their help and
encouragement, and to my parents, to whom this volume is

dedicated.

xv


ABBREVIATIONS
Sidney’s works:
AS
CS
MP

Astrophil and Stella

Certain Sonnets
Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine
Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten, Oxford, 1973
NA
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia), ed.
Victor Skretkowicz, Oxford, 1987
OA
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The Old Arcadia), ed.
Jean Robertson, Oxford, 1973
OP
Other Poems
Ringler

The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. William A.Ringler Jr,
Oxford, 1962
Feuillerat The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat,
4 vols, Cambridge, 1962

Other works:
Beal

Index of English Literary Manuscripts, ed. Peter Beal, 2
vols, London, 1980–93. Beal’s classification of his
Sidney entries (vol. 1, pp. 465–88)—SiP and number—
is followed.

Van Dorsten, Baker-Smith, and Kinney Sir Philip Sidney: 1586
and the Creation of a Legend, ed. Jan van Dorsten,
Dominic Baker-Smith, and Arthur F.Kinney, Leiden,
1986
Kay
Sir Philip Sidney: An Anthology of Modern Criticism, ed.
Dennis Kay, Oxford, 1987. Kay without further title
refers to Kay’s own contribution to this volume,
‘Introduction: Sidney—a Critical Heritage’ (pp. 3–41).
Rota
Felicina Rota, L’Arcadia di Sidney e il teatro, Bari, 1966
xvi

Note on the text
Entries reproduce original texts unless otherwise stated, except that
i/j and u/v have been regularized and contractions mostly expanded.
References to Sidney’s works are to the Oxford editions listed
above. This means that where the authors of entries are in fact
quoting from or alluding to the 1593 composite Arcadia, I have
supplied references to the equivalent passages in the Oxford editions
of The Old Arcadia and The New Arcadia. Most readers will find any
resulting inconvenience outweighed by the advantages of being
directed to the most reliable and usefully annotated modern texts.

References to the works and to Beal are given where possible in
parentheses in the body of the text.

xvii



Introduction

PART 1 1577–1650
Early reputation
Sidney drew little public attention to his literary endeavours.

Whether his few known remarks on his ‘toyful book’ or ‘idle work’
Arcadia and his enrolment among the poetic ‘paper blurrers’ (No. 2)
are examples more of sprezzatura or of religious scruple, in his
lifetime only ‘some few of his frends’1 read these comments and the
manuscript works in question. With the possible exception of the
two sonnets that may well be Sidney’s which appeared in Henry
Goldwell’s account of The Four Foster Children of Desire in 1581
(Ringler, pp. 345–6, 518–19), he avoided the perceived ‘stigma of
print’.2 The Defence of the Earl of Leicester, with its challenge to the
author of Leicester’s Commonwealth, must have been intended for
wider circulation. (Print would have seemed particularly
inappropriate as a vehicle for the views of a proud ‘Dudley in blood’

(MP, p. 134).) So too, its wide late sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury dissemination may suggest, was A Letter to Queen Elizabeth
Touching her Marriage with Monsieur (Beal, SiP 181–215). It is these
works, rather than poetry and romance, that Sidney’s less intimate
circle are most likely to have known if they were aware of any of his
writings; he was early renowned, the commendation of Edward
Waterhouse (No. 1) suggests, for the readiness of his pen in
practical affairs like the defence of his father’s fiscal policies in
Ireland. He was also known to his father’s secretary, Edmund
Molyneux, for letters including ‘a large epistle to Bellerius a learned
divine in verie pure and eloquent Latine’.
Sidney’s poetry, if it is mentioned at all during his lifetime, tends
to figure as simply one aspect of the larger construct ‘Sidney’,

potential Protestant leader, source of patronage, soldier or military
expert. The German scholar Melissus (Paul Schede), hailing
‘Sydnee Musarum inclite cultibus’ in 1577, 3 is as likely to be
referring to Sidney’s patronage as to his poetry. Giordano Bruno
1


S I DN EY

(while exempting Englishwomen, conceivably in deference to
Astrophil and Stella) finds it appropriate to attack Petrarchan devotion
to women in dedicating De gli eroici furori (1585) to Sidney the public

figure.4 Scipio Gentili calls him ‘that outstanding poet’ in 1579 but
provides no details.5
Such references did, however, contribute to interest in Sidney’s
literary activities. To be an early reader of the works, even to
know their names or to allude with at least apparent knowingness
to Sidney as ‘Astrophel’ or ‘Philisides’, was to obtain or to appear
to obtain privileged access to the great man. (According to
Edmund Molyneux (No. 14) ‘a speciall deere freend he should be
that could have a sight, but much more deere that could once
obteine a copie’ of Arcadia.) Perhaps Thomas Howell (No. 5)
simply would, as he claims, like the Old Arcadia to be published so
that it can reach a wider readership, but since only his own poem

responding to Sidney’s romance is printed, the sense of tantalizing,
exclusive knowledge is maintained. Gabriel Harvey and Edmund
Spenser (Nos 3 and 4) use references to Sidney as writer and
theorist of quantitative verse in their published ‘letters’ of 1580 in
much the same way. And readers must have been similarly
intrigued by the quotations from The Old Arcadia printed in
Abraham Fraunce’s The Arcadian Rhetorike in 1588, George
Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie in 1589 (No. 6), and, after
the appearance of the 1590 Arcadia, Sir John Harington’s preface
to Orlando Furioso in 1591 (No. 15).
The process of familiarization with the idea of Sidney as author
was continued by brief allusions in the mourning volumes produced

by the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Leiden in 1586–7.
There are some specific allusions in the Cambridge Lachrymae and
the Oxford Exequiae: William Temple knows A Defence of Poetry (see
No. 7), the fact that Arcadia was revised, and perhaps—Sidney is
‘patriae stella…tuae’—Astrophil and Stella; Matthew Gwynne refers to
Sidney as a poet, author of Arcadia, and master of ‘Suada’ (possibly
an allusion to A Defence); Richard Latewar mourns him as
Philisides, Edward Saunders and Charles Sonibank refer briefly to
Arcadia, and George Carleton indicates that it was written at Wilton
(‘Pembrochia…in aula’).6 Again, the writings are subordinate to a
larger aim, as ‘part of a wider political campaign to exploit Sidney’s
death in favour of an interventionist policy in the Netherlands’.7

Even Carleton’s mention of Wilton—strongly associated with the
2


TH E CRITICAL H E RITAG E

Leicester/ Pembroke political grouping—has its place in this
undertaking. But it is also in the interests of the campaign to
demonstrate however possible Sidney’s greatness, whence the
importance of what he stood for and can still be used to promote.
Perhaps as significant as the actual references to Arcadia and A
Defence in Lachrymae and Exequiae is the insistence in all four of the

university volumes on Sidney’s status as follower equally of Mars
and of the Muses (see James VI, No. 11).8 Sidney is a figure notable
in every field, a Protestant achiever some of whose achievements
occurred in verse.
Since Sidney is dead, his achievements can now best be
preserved either by continued adherence to his political and familial
heirs, or in his poems and prose. Even before publication, his work
emerges as crucial to both literature and national identity. Because,
however, most of the elegies are in Latin and several are in Greek or
Hebrew, the work (known, besides, to only a few) retains to an
extent the same remoteness as in the references of Melissus or
Gentili: Arcadia is as much a password as the name of a book

readers may wish to read. Poems which celebrated Sidney and his
work in English—briefly those of 1586–7 by Geoffrey Whitney,
George Whetstone, and Angel Day (Nos 8, 12, 13), and more
extensively the poems gathered in The Phoenix Nest (1593) and
Astrophel (1595)—suggest a greater degree of accessibility. This is
enhanced, by the time the Astrophel collection appears, by the
publication of Arcadia and Astrophil and Stella. Whatever the
intention at the time of the individual poems’ original composition,
the pastoral frame and the use of the names ‘Astrophel’ and ‘Stella’
could be interpreted as commentaries on, or developments from,
Sidney’s use of pastoral and his sonnet sequence. The oblique or
transposed references to the works—the ‘laves of love’ of Astrophel

itself (No. 18) and of ‘The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda’,9 the ‘woods of
Arcadie’ in Matthew Roydon’s elegy (No. 10), Lodowick Bryskett’s
Philisides who is also Astrophil, carving ‘the name of Stella, in
yonder bay tree’ and leaving behind a flock which echoes that of
song ix in Astrophil and Stella10—invite readers both to think of the
romance and the sonnet sequence and to experience ‘Astrophel’/
Sidney as an independent literary creation. Spenser’s Astrophel
flower is at once Astrophil and Stella and Astrophel; ‘verses are not
vain’ since they have preserved Sidney’s memory and, in so doing,
created Spenser’s poem.
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Publication and criticism of the works, the response of the
Astrophel authors, and Sidney’s still burgeoning reputation as hero
and perfect courtier, combined to broaden Sidney’s literary fame.
Where Puttenham (No. 6, c. 1584) numbers Sidney as a poet who
specializes in ‘Eglogue and pastorall Poesie’, Francis Meres (No. 25,
1598) describes him as a love-poet, a writer of pastoral, and one
who wrote his ‘immortall Poem’ Arcadia ‘in Prose, and yet our rarest
Poet’, and Richard Carew (No. 34, c. 1605–14) hails him as ‘all in
all for Prose and verse’. In some ways, however, detailed responses

become more common. The writings themselves, much quoted and
extracted, became as indispensable to the authority of the receiving
work as references simply to Sidney’s name had been in the 1580s.
For example, Francis Davison launches A Poetical Rapsody (1602)
with a sequence of poems by or connected with Sidney which he
claims, disingenuously, has been inserted by the printer in order to
‘grace the forefront with Sir Ph. Sidneys, and others names, or to
make the booke grow to a competent volume’.11 For at least fifty
years after Davison, Sidney’s ‘toys’ continued to bestow such
‘competence’.

The Lady of May

Placed at the end of the 1598 folio, and inevitably separated from
its original performative, immediate context, the printed version of
Sidney’s Wanstead entertainment generated little known response.
Most of what there is is concerned with Rombus, who seems to
have shared some of the popularity of Dametas in the reception of
Arcadia (see below, p. 18): Brian Twyne (No. 29, c. 1600) is struck
by ‘Howe the schoole master Rhombus urged Vergill false’ and
‘What Rhombus saide of the syllogisms the sheparde made’; Henry
Peacham gives the fact that ‘Sir Phillip Sydney made good sport with
Rhombus his Countrey Schoole-master’ as an example of those
‘passages of inoffensive Mirth’—like his own Coach and Sedan—with
which the wise and learned have ‘ever season’d, and sweetened

their profoundest Studies, and greatest employments;’12 Thomas
Bradford, in a commendatory verse to Robert Baron’s
E POTO?AIGN ION. Or the Cyprian Academy (‘an amateur
pastoral romance in prose and verse after the fashion of Sidney’s
Arcadia’) of 1647 finds Baron superior to Spenser and Jonson and
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TH E CRITICAL H E RITAG E

contrasts his pure style with that of Rombus, whose ‘language is
pedantick’.13 (Rombus had earlier—Shakespeare must presumably

have seen a manuscript—served as the main inspiration for
Holofernes in Love’s Labours Lost). Only Rombus seems to have
excited interest outside his original context; the main exception to
this, the rival song of Espilus and Therion included in Englands
Helicon (1600), was felt, unusually, to require the explanation that
‘This song was sung before the Queenes most excellent Majestie, in
Wansted Garden: as a contention betweene a Forrester and a
Sheepheard for the May-ladie.’14
These responses to the script of the entertainment are of a
different order from those to the event itself in 1578.15 The reactions
of those present were affected by the costumes, the singing, the
shepherds’ recorders and the foresters’ cornets, the kneeling of the

Lady and the suitor, the ‘confused noise’ in the woods and the
unspecified ‘many special graces’ which accompany Rombus’ learned
oration (MP, pp. 21–5). They were also affected, to an extent to
which audiences of a play are usually not, by factors about which
we have no information: the skill of the performers, their timing,
the weather, the mood of the Queen, how well she could see and be
seen, hear and be heard, the manner and costumes of her host,
Leicester, and the other courtiers present, no doubt watching each
other and the Queen as much as the May Lady. Rombus could have
been incommoded by any of these factors as much as by the Lady’s
dismissal of him as a ‘tedious fool’ (MP, p. 24). The conventions of
progress entertainments meant that he ran little risk of being

mocked out of countenance with his progeny Holofernes, but his
last speech, preserved only in the Helmingham Hall manuscript,
illustrates the extent to which reactions to the piece are likely to
have concerned its occasional function as much as any ‘literary’
qualities: it seems likely that, as Katherine Duncan-Jones suggests
on the basis of the ‘unusually chaotic and obscure’ nature of the
speech, that ‘it was decided only at the last moment to present the
Queen with an agate necklace, and the final speech was rapidly
devised as a vehicle for this’ (MP, p. 18).
The only part of the entertainment which we know Leicester to
have pondered after the event is this last speech. When the Queen
visited Wanstead later in 1578 in his absence, he wrote to Sir

Christopher Hatton expressing concern at her possible disfavour
(he was about secretly to marry Lettice Knollys) and hoping ‘I may
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hear that her Majesty doth both well rest, and find all things else
there to her good contentment; and that the goodman Robert, she
last heard of there, were found at his beads, with all his aves, in his
solitary walk’.16 What Leicester remembered about Rombus was
not, or not just, his malapropisms and proud loquacity—Peacham’s

‘passages of inoffensive mirth’—but his role as agate-giver and
means of directing attention, through humour, to Leicester’s own
presence and alignments.
The Queen’s reactions have excited the most interest from
modern commentators. Her responses were, indeed, an integral part
of the event at Wanstead, most obviously in the form of her famous
choice of Espilus over Therion. Among the many and various
explanations for her decision are that she chose Espilus as a snub to
Sidney’s own Therion-like ambition and unpredictability, or to
Leicester’s, or to their desire for intervention in the Netherlands; or
that, in David Kalstone’s words, ‘Sidney’s unorthodox treatment of
the pastoral convention went unnoticed, and the queen chose the

shepherd as the usual representative of the contemplative life’, or
that Espilus was in fact the intended choice, product of a new liking
for the contemplative life on Sidney’s part and a desire to elicit ‘a
preference for her old favourite and his nephew, against other, more
threatening advisers or even consorts’.17
Perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence that, as Louis
Adrian Montrose, Edward Berry and others feel, Therion was the
intended choice is the way the script describes the Queen’s verdict:
‘it pleased her Majesty to judge that Espilus did the better deserve
her; but what words, what reasons she used for it, this paper, which
carrieth so base names, is not worthy to contain’ (MP, p. 30). This
may be what Berry and Robert Stillman see as a ‘sly revenge’, a coy

refusal to include the royal reasons.18 Certainly it seems to be the
earliest example of Sidney contributing to his own critical heritage
in attempting to direct readers’ responses towards the Queen’s
choice. (This may have been more immediately apparent to those
among whom the manuscript initially circulated than to buyers of
the folio twenty years later). Montrose suggests that The Four Foster
Children of Desire (1581) enacts another of Sidney’s own responses to
the earlier event: ‘the outcome of the later contest is made to reflect
the queen’s choice in the earlier dispute. Wild foresters have
become the attackers of the Lady; docile shepherds have become
her defenders.’ In the challenge and submission of the Foster
6