Renaissance

Philip Sidney

1554 – 1586

English poet, courtier, diplomat (1554-1586)

UGC NET importance

About

Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age.

Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Portrait by After Antonis Mor (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons.

1554 – 1586

800 BCToday

Exam weight 5/5 · how often Philip Sidney appears in UGC NET papers

An Apology for Poetry / The Defence of Poesy as the first major work of English literary criticism
Astrophil and Stella as the first substantial English sonnet sequence
The Arcadia: Old vs New versions, pastoral prose romance
Sidney's reply to Stephen Gosson's The School of Abuse
Sidney's classical sources: Aristotle's mimesis, Horace's teach-and-delight
The 'golden world' of poetry vs the 'brazen world' of nature
Sidney's criticism of contemporary English drama and the unities
Stella's identity: Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich
Sidney's death at Zutphen and the ideal-courtier legend
The Sidney circle: Mary Sidney Herbert, Fulke Greville, Spenser and the Areopagus

Identifying the occasion of the Defence: Gosson's School of Abuse dedicated to Sidney
Famous lines from Astrophil and Stella (Sonnet 1 'look in thy heart, and write'; Sonnet 31 'With how sad steps, O Moon')
Sidney's defence of poetry against the charge of lying: 'the poet nothing affirmeth'
Poetry as 'speaking picture' whose end is 'to teach and delight'
Number of sonnets and songs in Astrophil and Stella (108 sonnets, 11 songs)
The dedication of the Arcadia to the Countess of Pembroke
Sidney's objections to tragicomedy: 'mingling kings and clowns'
Chronology of Elizabethan sonnet sequences beginning with Astrophil and Stella (1591)

Astrophil and Stella (108 sonnets + 11 songs) vs Shakespeare's Sonnets (154) vs Spenser's Amoretti (89) — students swap the counts.
The Old Arcadia (complete, five 'books or acts', recovered only in the 20th century) vs the New Arcadia (revised, unfinished, published 1590) vs the 1593 composite text edited by the Countess of Pembroke.
'Leave me, O Love' belongs to Certain Sonnets, not to Astrophil and Stella.
The Defence answers Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse (1579), not Prynne's Histriomastix (1633) or Jeremy Collier's Short View (1698).
Stella = Penelope Devereux (Lady Rich), not Mary Sidney; Spenser's Elizabeth Boyle and Donne's Anne More are separate 'muse' identifications.
Titles: An Apology for Poetry and The Defence of Poesy are the SAME 1595 treatise issued by two different publishers (Olney and Ponsonby); Shelley's A Defence of Poetry (1821) is a different work that consciously echoes Sidney.

ZUTPHEN 1586: 'Sidney's Sun set at Zutphen' — died 1586, aged 32, from a thigh wound; water-bottle legend: 'Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.'

108/11: 'One Star (Stella), 108 sighs and 11 songs' — Astrophil = 'star-lover', Stella = 'star.'

GOLD vs BRASS: Nature = brazen, Poet = golden — remember 'the poet upgrades Nature's brass to gold.'

Posthumous 90-91-95: Arcadia 1590, Astrophil 1591, Apology 1595 — 'A-A-A in 90, 91, 95.'

TEACH + DELIGHT = Sidney's Horatian formula; 'speaking picture' = poetry, per Simonides' idea that painting is mute poetry.

GAS attacked poetry: Gosson's Abuse → Sidney's Apology (G before S alphabetically and chronologically).