POETS Day! Sir Philip Sidney Didn’t Get the Girl
The entirety—the pairing, the arrangement, the dysentery—was beyond his control. Had he been immediately smitten, things would have ended the same way.
Welcome once again to POETS Day, where we usher in Henry Ford’s greatest creation – the weekend – a few hours ahead of schedule by embracing the ethos of the day: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.
Life’s too short for work, and nobody’s gonna notice if you hoof it mid-afternoon.
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In a 1579 letter from Edmund Spenser to Gabriel Harvey, Spenser brings up an organization he’d been invited to join by “Master Sidney and Master Dyer.” The Masters were Sir Philip Sidney and Edward Dyer, a pair of Elizabethan courtiers who acted as agents and soldiers abroad for Her Majesty. Sidney, at least, would be shocked that he’s remembered as a poet rather than envoy or governor. The organization was called The Areopagus, and it’s fairer to call it the proposed organization as it’s not known whether it ever made it past planning. No meetings are recorded.
Sydney may have been inspired in conceiving his literary club by the Wilton Circle, a literary circle of which Spenser is confirmed to have been a member, founded and led by Philip’s sister Mary Sydney and run by Sir Walter Ralegh’s half brother (possibly Humphrey Gilbert, though I haven’t found a site willing to lift whomever out of Ralegh’s shadow with more than “half-brother.”) The Wilton Circle is described by the Shakespearean Authorship Trust as “the most important and influential literary circle in English history.” The Authorship Trust’s mission, depending on your disposition, is “just asking questions” regarding the authorship of plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, or a they’re bunch of conspiracy nuts on a snipe hunt. It’s also possible that Mary’s Wilton Circle postdated Sydney’s idea for the Areopagus. I can’t find minutes.
In either cases, poet’s circles abounded in the minds of Sidneys. Philip’s goal was to advance quantitative verse in English poetry. Thomas Campion (1567-1620) was playing around with the same thing at the time so he wasn’t a lone voice in the woods. It’s an awkward ask of our stress filled language, but the quantitative poets wanted poetic feet measured in syllable length reliant on long and short vowel sounds. Admiration for classical poetry in Latin and Greek fueled their attempts.
I like to think there was an Areopagus with an assembly but the focus is on Sydney and Spenser at the table. In my head there’s impassioned debate with leather bound books laid open, quills and ink pots set at each place like dinnerware, anachronistic scrolls for some reason, and everyone’s wearing heavy clothes and drinks red wine from metal cups. Late into the night and early into the morning they press this form and that until they in the end ashamed and humbled, yell “To hell with it!”, throw away the quantitative verse scheme and get on as we know they did: Spenser amazes with decidedly non-quantitative iambic pentameter in The Faerie Queene and his Spenserean stanza, and Sydney develops the English sonnet, taking from Petrarch and the Italians. Chaucer set the iambic course, Marlowe, Shakespeare (“Not so fast!” say the Authorship Trust), and Milton cemented iambic pentameter in the English tradition. Spenser and Sidney were its midwives at a time when direction was uncertain. No matter what their quantitative sympathies, both men did the honorable thing in the end. Pace Campion: Thank you, gentlemen.
Sydney’s poetry was passed around for friendly or courtly enjoyment. He never published in his lifetime. His sister, Mary of the verifiable circle, gathered and edited his poetry after his death. His great work is a series of one hundred and eight sonnets called Astrophil and Stella (sometimes spelled Astrophel and Stella) written to Lady Warwick, Penelope Rich, nee Devereux. A marriage was planned between twelve-year-old Penelope and twenty-year-old Philip. There was a lot of planning and hopes as both families saw benefits from the union but before nuptials were performed Sidney’s prospective father-in-law Walter Devereux died of dysentery. The arrangement fell to the side. By reports, Philip didn’t mind. He understood the dynastic nature of the pairing and she was just a kid he had nothing in common with. He married Frances Walsingham, Countess of Clanricarde (who would marry a Devereux after Sydney died.) Penelope married Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick. Over the years and subsequent meetings, he fell in love with her. She wasn’t a kid anymore.
Philip was a celebrated courtier and history tells he took to heart all the virtues extolled by such. There’s a mention in the series of a stolen kiss, but that may be wish casting. He stayed true to his wife and she to her husband, though it’s said she was miserable. The sonnets are a great pining; one of poetry’s celebrated could have beens.
I
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, 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’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn’d brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention’s stay;
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows;
And others’ feet still seem’d 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.”
The second sonnet is the saddest to me. In explaining, he rebukes himself. The entirety—the pairing, the arrangement, the dysentery—was beyond his control. Had he been immediately smitten, things would have ended the same way. He didn’t see her as he should have. She was revealed gradually.
II
Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot,
Love gave the wound which while I breathe will bleed:
But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got.
I saw, and liked; I liked, but lovèd not;
I loved, but straight did not what love decreed:
At length to love’s decrees I, forced, agreed,
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone, and now like slave-born Muscovite
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;
And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make myself believe that all is well,
While with a feeling skill I paint my hell.
Was there ever a good time to be from Moscow? Was there a Golden Age?
Queen Elizabeth appointed Sidney Governor of Flushing, a harbor town in Zeeland, where he was to support Dutch Protestants against the Spanish. He was shot during a cavalry charge in the Battle of Zutphen. I can’t tell if he ordered the charge or not. He held the rank General of the Horse, which sounds lofty and in charge, but there may have been loftier personages present. The shot itself wasn’t deadly; he took a ball to the leg. Twenty-six days later, he succumbed to gangrene and died at the age of thirty-one.
His funeral procession through London was “the most elaborate ever staged,” according to Wikipedia. Over one hundred and twenty members of the Worshipful Company of Grocers were in attendance. Reading that sent me down a rabbit-hole, but I’ve emerged knowing the importance of royally-chartered livery companies and that a courtier such as Sidney was greatly honored to have been in membership.
After “the most elaborate ever staged,” Wikipedia mentions that the funeral almost bankrupted his father-in-law. That doesn’t sound like a sudden outpouring of emotion by the populace. There are also stories about his death that strike a skeptic: His leg was unarmored where he was shot because he spotted a soldier under him without that specific piece of armor and gave his so his inferior was better protected. What bad luck? Another hagiographic stretch has a dying Philip refusing water because another wounded man needs it more. Because that was it. The one canteen in camp.
They built him up a little.
XLVII
What, have I thus betrayed my liberty?
Can those black beams such burning marks engrave
In my free side? or am I born a slave,
Whose neck becomes such yoke of tyranny?
Or want I sense to feel my misery?
Or sprite, disdain of such disdain to have?
Who for long faith, though daily help I crave,
May get no alms but scorn of beggary.
Virtue, awake! Beauty but beauty is;
I may, I must, I can, I will, I do
Leave following that which it is gain to miss.
Let her go. Soft, but here she comes. Go to,
Unkind, I love you not! O me, that eye
Doth make my heart give to my tongue the lie!
“Soft, but here she comes,” predates Shakespeare’s (“Ahem!” – TSAT) Romeo and Juliet’s “But soft, What light by yonder window breaks?” Astrophil was probably written in the early 1580s, and obviously before 1586 (unless there’s a Sidney’s Authorship Trust out there that would like to chime in.) No matter, Mary published her brother’s work in 1591. Romeo and Juliet was probably written between 1591 and 1595. “Soft” may have been a common “hush.” Still, we know Shakespeare read Sidney. Maybe he inspired one of the most famous lines in drama.
Back to building up Sidney: He didn’t need building up. From age eighteen he was an agent and advisor to the Queen. He fell in and out of favor, but that was the case with everyone Elizabeth noticed. One story in particular demonstrates his nobility.
William I of Orange met with Sidney to discuss the possibility of a Protestant League. Sidney more than impressed the Prince. William offered his daughter’s hand. Holland and Zeeland were the offered dowry. He wouldn’t be monarchy, but the courtier would have his own court, if minor league. He felt the move would be an affront to Elizabeth. I’m sure justified fear of the Queen’s wrath played a part in his decision to refuse, but offered a kingdom, he deferred to his oath. He was an impressive guy.
Next is the last poem of the series.
CVIII
When sorrow (using mine own fire’s might)
Melts down his lead into my boiling breast;
Through that dark furnace to my heart oppressed
There shines a joy from thee, my only light;
But soon as thought of thee breeds my delight,
And my young soul flutters to thee his nest,
Most rude despair, my daily unbidden guest,
Clips straight my wings, straight wraps me in his night,
And makes me then bow down my head and say,
“Ah, what doth Phoebus’ gold that wretch avail
Whom iron doors do keep from use of day?”
So strangely (alas) thy works in me prevail,
That in my woes for thee thou art my joy,
And in my joys for thee my only annoy.
Mary reportedly exercised a light hand editing and it’s assumed that the sequence is in an order determined by Philip. CVIII has the feel of a poem written to be the finale. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a fine poem. I feel like he mustered emotion; it weighed on him how to end just so. I like CVI. I wish he’d ended there, winding down.
CVI
O absent presence, Stella is not here;
False flattering hope, that with so fair a face
Bare me in hand, that in this orphan place
Stella, I say my Stella, should appear.
What say’st thou now? Where is that dainty cheer
Thou told’st mine eyes should help their famished case?
But thou art gone, now that self-felt disgrace
Doth make me most to wish thy comfort near.
But here I do store of fair ladies meet,
Who may with charm of conversation sweet
Make in my heavy mould new thoughts to grow:
Sure they prevail as much with me, as he
That bade his friend, but then new maimed, to be
Merry with him, and not think of his woe.
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]