Sir Philip Sydney

(1554-1586)
The Sonnet after Wyatt and Surrey
• During the age of Elizabeth I Sir Philip
Sidney, Edmund Spenser and William
Shakespeare improve the English sonnet.
• They create cycles or sonnet sequences:
a topic or motif is developed in various
sonnets. Each sonnet offers a variation of
the previous one: Sidney’s Astrophel and
Stella, Spencer’s Amorreti and
Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
 Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
• Sir Philip Sidney was the son of a
highborn family. He was a courtier, soldier,
scholar,poet, friend and patron. These
were all characteristics which the
Elizabethans admired.
• He died in the Low Countries at the age of
32 and he was widely mourned and
elegized.
 Main works
• He wrote the masque The Lady of May, which
was performed before Queen Elizabeth I.
• Arcadia, a pastoral romance.The most original
work of English prose fiction before the 18th
century.
• He created the first of the great Elizabethan
sonnet cycles, Astrophel and Stella.
• He wrote The Defence of Poesie (written
approx.1580-81). It was first published (1595)
with this title and with the title An Apologie for
Poetrie.The most important work of literary
criticism of the age.
Astrophel and Stella (108 sonnets)
• “ASTRO” = STAR
• “PHEL” = LOVER or “PHIL”as in “PHILIP”?
• “STELLA” = STAR
• In the Petrarchan fashion, the cycle tried
to display all the contrary feelings of a
lover- hope and despair, tenderness and
bitterness, exultation and modesty – by
using conceits or clever comparisons.
 Stella

• Also in Petrarchan fashion, Sidney celebrates

his beloved under the name of Stella. Petrarch,
in his sonnets used the name of “Laura”.
• The “Stella” in this largely autobiographical
poetic narrative was Penelope Devereux, the
daughter of the earl of Essex, who had intended
her to marry Sidney.
• In 1581 she married Lord Rich instead. Some of
the sonnets contain puns on the name “Rich”,
which is why Penelope Devereux is thought to
be the original of Stella.
 Stella (cont.)
• However, in the sonnets, Stella is virtuous,
and refuses to let Astrophel have anything
apart from a kiss.
• The historical Penelope Devereux, Lady
Rich, was apparently a different kind of
woman.
 Subject of the sonnet
• It describes the psychology of the lover as he
contemplates his beautiful Stella, who marries
another man and gives little encouragement to
Astrophil because of her need to guard her
reputation.
• The sonnet sequence does not have a plot. It
represents a series of emotional crisis, internal
and external conflicts, and solitary thoughts on
the course of a love affair that is destined to
remain unconsummated.