PHILLIP SIDNEY

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SIR PHILLIP SIDNEY

Philip Sidney

Consummate courtier= virtues of a knight lover and scholar

Perfect renaissance man

Poet, soldier, governor, statesman, member of parliament

Started literary criticism - defence of poesy

Avoided commercialism - posthumously published works - wrote for personal cycle

Mankind - water to enemy soldier

WORKS :

LADY OF MAY

pastoral playlet

One act

Allegorical content

woman approaches the queen whilst walking in Wanstead Garden as a supplicant, saying that her daughter - the Lady of May - has two suitors, and that she would like the queen to judge which of the two should win her hand.

2. ASTROPHEL AND STELLA

108 sonnets and 11 songs

Unrequited love

Star and star lover

Penelope Devereaux - Stella

She marries Robert rich

In sonnet sequence Stella falls in love too , contrary to reality

Petrarchan rhyme scheme

Cupid is the hero

The final sonnet brings no resolution

3.ARCADIA / COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S ARCADIA

2 versions - old and new

Modelled on Hellenistic model of Heliodorus

5 books/ acts

Shakespeare borrowed the Gloucester subplot of king Lear from this work

James Shirley , famous dramatist of the Elizabethan times dramatized this

Charles 1 , while mounted on the scaffold to be executed, quoted arcadia

Samuel Richardson's first novel Pamela modelled on this work

4.psalms

Translated and para phrased the psalms