Loving in truth…

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe:
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others&#039 leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention&#039s stay;
Invention, Nature&#039s child, fled stepdame Study&#039s blows;
And others&#039 feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
“Fool," said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write."

Life of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
Sir Philip Sidney was born on November 30, 1554, at Penshurst, Kent.
Penshurst Place in Kent, England has been the home of the Sidney
 family since 1552 when King Edward VI granted it to his tutor and
steward Sir William Sidney (1482 – 1554).

He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney, thrice Lord Deputy (governor)
of Ireland, and nephew of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
He was named after his godfather, Philip II of Spain. He entered
Shrewsbury School in 1564, at the age of ten, on the same day as
Fulke Greville, who became his friend and, later, his biographer.
After attending Christ Church, Oxford, (1568-1571) he left without
taking a degree in order to complete his education by travelling the
continent. Among the places he visited were Paris, Frankfurt, Venice,
 and Vienna.

When Sidney returned to England in 1575, he lived the life of a prominent
 courtier. In 1577, he was sent as ambassador to the German Emperor and
 the Prince of Orange. Officially, he had been sent to condole the princes
 on the deaths of their fathers. His real mission was to feel out the
chances for the creation of a Protestant league. Yet, the budding diplomatic
 career was cut short because the Queen found Sidney to be perhaps too
 ardent in his Protestantism, the Queen preferring a more cautious approach.
 Upon his return, Sidney attended the court of Elizabeth I and actively
 encouraged such authors as Edward Dyer, Greville, and most important,
 the young Edmund Spenser, who dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to him.

In 1580, he incurred the queen&#039s displeasure by opposing her projected
marriage to the Duke of Anjou, Roman Catholic heir to the French throne,
 and was dismissed from court for a time. He retired to Wilton, the estate
of his beloved sister Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, and there he
wrote for her entertainment a long pastoral romance in prose called Arcadia.
 At some uncertain date, he composed a major piece of critical prose that
was published after his death under two titles, The Defence of Poesy and An
Apology for Poetry. Sidney&#039s Astrophil and Stella (“Starlover and Star") is
 the first of the great Elizabethan sonnet cycles, which relied heavily on
the conventions established by Petrarch. Sidney&#039s collection has 108 sonnets
 and eleven songs.

IN 1591 a volume of sonnets was issued under the editorship of Thomas Nash,
 containing Sidney&#039s “Astrophel and Stella," twenty-eight sonnets by Samuel
 Daniel, and other poems by “Divers Noblemen and Gentlemen."
The publication was most probably surreptitious: Daniel, who published his
“Sonnets to Delia" in the following year, complained that “a greedy printer
 had published some of his sonnets along with those of Sir Philip Sidney";
and a corrected and authentic edition of Sidney&#039s sonnets was issued before
 the close of 1591.

Yet Sidney was growing restless with lack of appointments. In 1585 he made
a covert attempt to join Drake&#039s expedition to Cadiz. Elizabeth summoned
Sidney to court, and appointed him governor of Flushing in the Netherlands.
In 1586 he took part in a skirmish against the Spanish at Zutphen, and was
wounded of a musket shot that shattered his thigh-bone. Some 22 days later
 Sidney died of the unhealed wound at not yet thirty-two years of age.
His death occasioned much mourning in England as the Queen and her subjects
grieved for the man who had come to exemplify the ideal courtier.
It is said that Londoners, come out to see the funeral progression,
 cried out “Farewell, the worthiest knight that lived." 1

The main attraction of Nash&#039s volume was the “Astrophel and Stella"
series of sonnets; this was the title of the work, the other poems
being merely appended. The editor extolled Sidney with characteristic
 eloquence and extravagance. He apologises for commending a poet
“the least syllable of whose name, sounded in the ears of judgment,
is able to give the meanest line he writes a dowry of immortality."
 He deplores the long absence of England&#039s Sun, and ridicules the gross
fatty flames that have wandered abroad like hobgoblins with a wisp of paper
at their tails in the middest eclipse of his shining perfections.
“Put out your rush candles, you poets and rhymers," he cries;
“and bequeath your crazed quatorzains to the chandlers; for lo!
 here he cometh that hath broken your legs."

Although the date cannot be stated with certainty,
 it is probable that Sir Philip Sidney’s ample collection of sonnets,
which is known by the general title of Astrophel and Stella, was written
between the years 1580 and 1584. Widely circulated in manuscript before and
 after Sidney’s death in 1586, they were not printed till 1591, and then
surreptitiously by an enterprising publisher, who had no authority from
Sidney’s representatives to undertake the task. It was not until 1598
that a fully authorised version came from the press.

Sidney’s sonnets, like those of Petrarch and Ronsard, form a more or
less connected sequence. The poet, under the name of Astrophel, professes
 to narrate the course of his passion for a lady to whom he gives the name
 of Stella. The relations between Astrophel and Stella closely resemble
 those between Petrarch and his poetic mistress Laura, in the first series
of the Italian poet’s sonnets, which were written in the lifetime of Laura.
There is no question that Sidney, like Petrarch, was, to a certain extent,
inspired by an episode in his own career. Stella was Penelope, the wayward
daughter of Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex, and sister of Robert
Devereux, second earl of Essex, queen Elizabeth’s favourite. When she was
about fourteen years old, her father destined her for Sidney’s hand in
marriage; but that project came to nothing. In 1581, when about nineteen,
she married Robert, second lord Rich, and became the mother of a large
family of children. The greater number of Sidney’s sonnets were, doubtless,
 addressed to her after she had become lady Rich. In sonnet XXIV,
Sidney plays upon her husband’s name of Rich in something of the same
artificial way in which Petrarch, in his sonnet V, plays upon the name of
Laura his poetic mistress, who, also, was another’s wife. Sidney himself
married on 20 September, 1583, and lived on the best terms with his wife,
who long survived him. But Sidney’s poetic courtship of lady Rich was
continued till near the end of his days.

The story of the romantic passion between Sidney and Penelope Devereux,
Astrophel and Stella, is well known to readers of literary history.
 Lady Penelope, sister of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, was some nine years
younger than her distinguished lover. Her father had formed a high opinion
 of Sir Philip&#039s promise, an
d on his deathbed expressed a wish for their
 union: but her guardians were in favour of a wealthier match, and two or
three years after the old Earl&#039s death, she was married at the age of
seventeen, much against her own wishes, to an unattractive young nobleman,
 Lord Rich. This event may have been hastened by Sidney&#039s attitude before
 the marriage. If his self-reproaches in the sonnets were well founded,
 he would seem to have been undecided and vacillating in his addresses,
 his natural impulses being obstructed by a pedantic fancy that love was
 unworthy of a great thinker like himself–perhaps a temporary result of
 his correspondence with Languet: but when the lady was married out of
 his reach, his love became most ardent, and he courted her favours in a
long series of passionate sonnets.

 Seeing that he very soon after married another lady–a daughter of Sir Francis
 Walsingham–it might with some
 reason be inferred that there was in Sidney&#039s as in other sonnets not a
little make-believe passion, and that his delight as an ambitious young poet
 at finding such an amount of literary capital was quite as strong as the
 pain of the disappointment. Certainly, however, Lady Rich, whose rare
charms of beauty and wit were the theme of many celebrated Elizabethan pens,
 was likely enough to be the object of a genuine passion. As the wife of a
 man whom she disliked and kept in thorough fear and subjection, and as the
sister of an ambitious nobleman nearly related to the throne, she led as she
 advanced in years a brilliant and a troubled life, and was in the Court of
 England the most conspicuous and fascinating woman of her generation.
When Sidney wrote his sonnets she was in the prime of her beauty, and he may
 well have been sincere in deploring the loss of such a prize, and praying
 in wailful sonnets that he might continue to have a place in her affections.

Astrophel’s sonneteering worship of Stella enjoyed a popularity only second
 to that of Petrarch’s poetic worship of Laura. It is the main theme of the
collection of elegies which was written immediately after the tragically
premature close of Sidney’s life. The elegiac volume bore the title
Astrophel; it was dedicated to Sidney’s widow; his sister,
the countess of Pembroke, wrote a poem for it; Spenser was the chief
 contributor. Throughout the work, Sidney’s lover-like celebration of
Stella is accounted his most glorious achievement in life or literature.

In the choice of ideas for his sonnets Sidney prided himself on being
original.This was a natural reaction from the long line of imitators
between Surrey and himself. In Watson&#039s “Hecatompathia, or Passionate
 Century of Love," published in 1582, about the time when Sidney was
composing his sonnets, the imitative and artificial character of the
fashionable English love-poetry was specially illustrated by the candid
acknowledgments of the accompanying notes. The poet makes no pretence to
spontaneous effusion. Prefixed to the many ingenious praises of his lady&#039s
beauty, and allegations of her cruelty, and his own varied professions of
unalterable love and consuming pangs of despair, are full references to
the literary sources of his inspiration. Before depicting the pangs of
Cupid&#039s deadly dart and praying for its withdrawal, the commentary informs
 us that “the author hath wrought this passion out of Stephanus Forcatulus."
 Before a dire lament that Neptune&#039s waves might be renewed from the poet&#039s
 weeping eyes, Vulcan&#039s forge from the flames within his breast, and the
windbags of AEolus from his sobbing sighs, we are candidly informed that
 “the invention of this Passion is borrowed for the most part from Seraphine,
 Son. 125." A praise of his lady is imitated from Petrarch: a sweet fancy
 about the capture of Love by the Muses, from Ronsard: a vision of his lady
 in sleep from Hercules Strozza. Another commendation of the most rare
 excellencies of his mistress is imitated from a famous sonnet by
Fiorenzuola the Florentine, which was imitated also by Surrey and by two
other writers in Tottel&#039s Miscellany. So with the majority of Watson&#039s
“passions," as he called his poems; very few of them professed to be wholly
 original, and the adaptation was generally very slight. Now Sidney revolted
 from this habit of adopting the praises, vows, and “deploring dumps"
 of other amorous singers. He swore “by blackest brook of hell," that he
 was “no pick-purse of another&#039s wit." His eloquence came from a different
source: “his lips were sweet, inspired with Stella&#039s kiss." He had tried the
 old plan–

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;
Oft turning others&#039 leaves to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.

But Invention, the child of Nature, fled from the blows of Study.
He sat biting his pen, and beating himself for spite, till at last–

Fool! said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write.

 Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,

Inventio, consulting lists of acceptable figures of speech, as recommended
by classical rhetoric manuals as an alternative for creating something new.

And others&#039 feet still seem&#039d but strangers in my way.