The English poet, courtier, diplomat, and soldier Sir Philip Sidney realized more dramatically than any other figure of the English Renaissance the ideal of the perfect courtier and the universal gentleman.
Background
Sidney was born on November 30, 1554 in Penshurst, Kent, the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. His mother was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and the sister of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. His younger brother, Robert Sidney was a statesman and patron of the arts, and was created Earl of Leicester in 1618. His younger sister, Mary, married Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and was a writer, translator and literary patron. Sidney dedicated his longest work, the Arcadia, to her. After her brother's death, Mary reworked the Arcadia, which became known as The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.
Education
Sidney's formal education began with his entrance into the Shrewsbury School in 1564. He entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1568 and left it without a degree, as was not uncommon for noblemen. Sidney completed his education with a 3-year tour of the Continent (1572-1575), visiting France, Germany, Austria, Poland, and Italy.
Career
On his return to England, Sidney entered quickly into the life of the aristocracy, dividing his time between the London house of his uncle, the powerful Earl of Leicester, and the country home of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. He enjoyed frequent contacts with a variety of literary men, notably Thomas Drant, Fulke Greville, Edward Dyer, and Edmund Spenser. In his attempt to share in their efforts to create a new English poetry, Sidney wrote a number of experimental poems in nonrhyming quantitative meters. Other works probably written during this period include his Lady of May, an elaborate entertainment performed in honor of Queen Elizabeth I (1578), a large part of his sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, and the first draft of his prose romance, the Arcadia.
Meanwhile, Sidney's situation at court was not entirely satisfactory. He had for some years been regarded as a young man of promise and importance; but he was still without any steady and remunerative position. At the battle of Zutphen on Sept. 22, 1586, he was fatally wounded.
During his lifetime Sidney's works circulated only in manuscript. His Arcadia was the first to be printed, in 1590. Combining elements drawn from the pastoral tradition, the heroic epic, and the romances of chivalry, this long mixture of prose and verse summed up the heroic ideals that inspired Sidney's life. The published version of 1590 was a revision, much amplified and elaborated by comparison with the first draft.
In Astrophel and Stella, first printed in 1591, Sidney expressed varying moods and intensities of passionate love, in imitation of Italian and French sonneteers of the Petrarchan tradition. Sidney's simple yet delicate verse is markedly superior to that of his contemporaries.
Membership
Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury