Sir Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney 1554-86, English author and courtier. He was one of the leading members of Queen Elizabeth's court and a model of Renaissance chivalry. He served in several diplomatic missions on the Continent and in 1586 was fatally wounded at the battle of Zutphen. Sidney exerted a strong influence on English poetry as patron, critic, and example. His literary efforts circulated only in manuscript during his lifetime. Arcadia (1590), a series of verse idyls connected by prose narrative, was written for his sister Mary, countess of Pembroke. It is the earliest renowned pastoral in English literature. Sidney's prose criticism of the nature of poetry, written as a rebuttal to Stephen Gosson's The School of Abuse, appeared in two slightly different versions— The Defense of Poesie and An Apology for Poetry (both 1595). Astrophel and Stella (1591) is one of the great sonnet sequences in English and was inspired by his love for Penelope Devereux, later Lady Rich. Sidney, however, married Frances Walsingham in 1583.

Bibliography: See his works ed. by A. Feuillerat (1962); The Psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke (ed. by J. C. A. Rathmell, 1963); biographies by M. W. Wallace (1915, repr. 1967); R. Howell (1968), J. M. Osborn (1972), and A. Stewart (2001); studies by S. M. Cooper (1968), D. Connell (1977), and D. Kay, ed. (1988).

Sidney, Sir Philip (1554–86). Soldier and poet. Educated at Shrewsbury and at Christ Church, Oxford, he was devoted to study. In 1583 he married the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, served in Parliament, and continued to win golden opinions. But in 1585 when Leicester, his uncle, was given command of the forces against Spain in the Low Countries, Sidney was made governor of Flushing. He volunteered to join Leicester in the attack upon Zutphen, was wounded in the thigh, and died of gangrene nearly a month later. The story that he gave his own bottle of water on the battlefield to a dying soldier was first reported by his friend Fulke Greville many years later, and is suspiciously like a story of Alexander the Great. Sidney left much unpublished work, but his posthumous reputation depended as much upon character and courage as on his poetry.