Works

Astrophil and Stella

This is the name of the series of sonnets that Sidney wrote. This is the first of the great Elizabethan sonnet cycles. Sidney probably wrote these sonnets for Penelope Devereux, a woman he wanted to marry, but could not because his family did not agree. The speaker in the sonnets is Astrophil (Latin: star-lover). He writes to his love named Stella (Latin: star).

Sonnet 71

In this sonnet, Astrophil describes how Stella is both beautiful and virtuous. Stella is a book in the library of Nature. ‘In’ Stella you can read how beauty and virtue can be combined. Although Stella is perfect in theory - she is guided by her reason and not by her feelings - Astrophil doesn’t really want this kind of elevated love. He just wants her to fulfill his desires.

The Defense of Poesy

Probably around 1580 Sidney wrote his very influential essay The Defense of Poesy, also called An Apology for Poetry. This is the first work of literary criticism in English and also one of the main works of literary criticism in the English Renaissance. In this essay, Sidney defends poetry. And by poetry he means all kinds of imaginative (fictional) literature, including prose. Sidney points out that a poet has a very important function in society because the poet can change the world for the better. Sidney refers to the examples of poetry in the classical culture and he also describes the various genres of poetry.

In the following passage Sidney says something about the unity of place. This was one of the three unities of drama that were supposed to be present in a play. For where the Stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it, should be both by Aristotle’s precept, and common reason, but one day; there is both many days and places, inartificially imagined. But if it be so in Gorboduc, how much more in all the rest, where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Affricke of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now you shall have three Ladies walk together flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that, comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave: while in the mean time two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard hart will not receive it for a pitched field.1