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24-480: Sir Philip Sidney 's Defence of Poesie describes Roman beliefs about poetry and recounts a famous Sors Vergiliana by Decimus Clodius Albinus , a Roman who ruled Britain and laid claim to the Roman Empire, but was defeated in battle by Septimius Severus : Other recorded Roman instances of the practice are by In the medieval era Vergil was often thought to have magic powers or a gift of prophecy (e.g. in

48-420: A pastoral romance , The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia . Born at Penshurst Place , Kent , of an aristocratic family, he was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford . He was 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 sister, Mary ,

72-756: A language delicately archaic. In form Sidney usually adopts the Petrarchan octave (ABBAABBA), with variations in the sestet that include the English final couplet. His artistic contacts were more peaceful and significant for his lasting fame. During his absence from court, he wrote Astrophel and Stella (1591) and the first draft of The Arcadia and The Defence of Poesy . Somewhat earlier, he had met Edmund Spenser , who dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to him. Other literary contacts included membership, along with his friends and fellow poets Fulke Greville , Edward Dyer , Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey , of

96-551: A marginal figure in the politics of his time, he was memorialised as the flower of English manhood in Edmund Spenser 's Astrophel , one of the greatest English Renaissance elegies. An early biography of Sidney was written by his devoted friend and schoolfellow, Fulke Greville . While Sidney was traditionally depicted as a staunch and unwavering Protestant , recent biographers such as Katherine Duncan-Jones have suggested that his religious loyalties were more ambiguous. He

120-647: A united Protestant effort against the Catholic Church and Spain. In the winter of 1575-76 he fought in Ireland while his father was Lord Deputy there. In the early 1580s, he argued fruitlessly for an assault on Spain itself. Promoted General of Horse in 1583, his enthusiasm for the Protestant struggle was given free rein when he was appointed governor of Flushing in the Netherlands in 1585. Whilst in

144-764: The Monty Python's Flying Circus sketches "Tudor Jobs Agency", "Pornographic Bookshop" and "Elizabethan Pornography Smugglers" (Season 3, episode 10), Superintendent Gaskell, a vice squad policeman, is transported back to the Elizabethan age and assumes Sir Philip Sidney's identity. An epitaph of Sir Philip Sidney: "England has his body, for she it fed; Netherlands his blood, in her defence shed; The Heavens have his soul, The Arts have his fame, The soldier his grief, The world his good name." Works Books Articles Other Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick Too Many Requests If you report this error to

168-614: The First Battle of Newbury in 1643 (with Charles's passage predicting his beheading in 1649). Philip Sidney Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586) was an English poet, courtier , scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age . His works include a sonnet sequence , Astrophel and Stella , a treatise , The Defence of Poesy (also known as The Defence of Poesie or An Apology for Poetrie ) and

192-640: The (possibly fictitious) " Areopagus ", a humanist endeavour to classicise English verse. Sidney played a brilliant part in the military/literary/courtly life common to the young nobles of the time. Both his family heritage and his personal experience (he was in Walsingham's house in Paris during the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre ), confirmed him as a keenly militant Protestant. In the 1570s, he persuaded John Casimir to consider proposals for

216-444: The 1580s, Astrophel and Stella . Her father, Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex , was said to have planned to marry his daughter to Sidney, but Walter died in 1576 and this did not occur. In England, Sidney occupied himself with politics and art. He defended his father's administration of Ireland in a lengthy document. More seriously, he quarrelled with Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford , probably because of Sidney's opposition to

240-455: The 16-year-old daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham . In the same year, he made a visit to Oxford University with Giordano Bruno , the polymath known for his cosmological theories, who subsequently dedicated two books to Sidney. In 1585 the couple had one daughter, Elizabeth, who later married Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland , in March 1599 and died without issue in 1612. Like the best of

264-557: The Elizabethans, Sidney was successful in more than one branch of literature, but none of his work was published during his lifetime. However, it circulated in manuscript. His finest achievement was a sequence of 108 love sonnets. These owe much to Petrarch and Pierre de Ronsard in tone and style, and place Sidney as the greatest Elizabethan sonneteer after Shakespeare . Written to his mistress, Lady Penelope Rich, though dedicated to his wife, they reveal true lyric emotion couched in

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288-552: The French marriage of Elizabeth to the much younger Alençon, which de Vere championed. In the aftermath of this episode, Sidney challenged de Vere to a duel, which Elizabeth forbade. He then wrote a lengthy letter to the Queen detailing the foolishness of the French marriage. Characteristically, Elizabeth bristled at his presumption, and Sidney prudently retired from court. During a 1577 diplomatic visit to Prague , Sidney secretly visited

312-661: The King that he use the Sortes Virgilanae to tell his future. The King opened the book but happened on Dido 's prayer against Aeneas in Book 4.615, at which he was troubled. Nevertheless, Falkland took his own lots, hoping to pick a passage that did not relate to him and thus stop the King from worrying about his own. However, he picked the expressions of Evander upon the untimely death of his son Pallas in Book 11, which contemporaries later took to presage Falkland's death at

336-644: The Netherlands, he consistently urged boldness on his superior, his uncle the Earl of Leicester . He carried out a successful raid on Spanish forces near Axel in July 1586. Later that year, he joined Sir John Norris in the Battle of Zutphen , fighting for the Protestant cause against the Spanish. During the battle, he was shot in the thigh and died of gangrene 26 days later, at the age of 31. One account says this death

360-642: The age of 18, he travelled to France as part of the embassy to negotiate a marriage between Elizabeth I and the Duc D'Alençon . He spent the next several years in mainland Europe, moving through Germany, Italy, Poland , the Kingdom of Hungary and Austria . On these travels, he met a number of prominent European intellectuals and politicians. Returning to England in 1575, Sidney met Penelope Devereux (who would later marry Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick ). Although much younger, she inspired his famous sonnet sequence of

384-734: The centrepiece of the Old Salopians Memorial at Shrewsbury School to alumni who died serving in World War I (unveiled 1924). Philip Sidney appears as a young man in Elizabeth Goudge's third novel, Towers in the Mist (Duckworth, 1937), visiting Oxford around the time Queen Elizabeth also visited Oxford. (Goudge admitted to slightly advancing the time of Sidney's arrival in Oxford, for the sake of her larger story.) In

408-628: The exiled Jesuit priest Edmund Campion . Sidney had returned to court by the middle of 1581. In the latter year he was elected to fill vacant seats in the Parliament of England for both Ludlow and Shrewsbury , choosing to sit for the latter, and in 1584 was MP for Kent . That same year Penelope Devereux was married, apparently against her will, to Lord Rich. Sidney was knighted in 1583. An early arrangement to marry Anne Cecil , daughter of Sir William Cecil and eventual wife of de Vere, had fallen through in 1571. In 1583, he married Frances ,

432-570: The most famous story about Sir Philip, intended to illustrate his noble and gallant character. Sidney's body was returned to London and interred in Old St Paul's Cathedral on 16 February 1587. The grave and monument were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. A modern monument in the crypt lists his among the important graves lost. Already during his own lifetime, but even more after his death, he had become for many English people

456-469: The very epitome of a Castiglione courtier: learned and politic, but at the same time generous, brave, and impulsive. The funeral procession was one of the most elaborate ever staged, so much so that his father-in-law, Francis Walsingham , almost went bankrupt. As Sidney was a brother of the Worshipful Company of Grocers , the procession included 120 of his company brethren. Never more than

480-524: The works of Dante , where he is the author's guide in the underworld). Clyde Pharr, in the introduction to his edition of the Aeneid , notes that Rabelais also relates that he drew the more optimistic Aeneid 6, 857, which he took to mean himself. Viscount Falkland once went to a public library in Oxford with King Charles I and, being shown a finely printed and bound copy of the Aeneid , suggested to

504-507: Was a writer, translator and literary patron, and married Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke . 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 . His brother, Robert Sidney was a statesman and patron of the arts, and was created Earl of Leicester in 1618. In 1572, at

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528-418: Was avoidable and heroic. Sidney noticed that one of his men was not fully armoured. He took off his thigh armour on the grounds that it would be wrong to be better armored than his men. As he lay dying, Sidney composed a song to be sung by his deathbed. According to the story, while lying wounded he gave his water to another wounded soldier, saying, "Thy necessity is yet greater than mine". This became possibly

552-777: Was known to be friendly and sympathetic towards individual Catholics. A memorial, erected in 1986 at the location in Zutphen where he was mortally wounded by the Spanish, can be found at the entrance of a footpath (" 't Gallee") located in front of the petrol station at the Warnsveldseweg 170. In Arnhem , in front of the house in the Bakkerstraat 68, an inscription on the ground reads: "IN THIS HOUSE DIED ON THE 17 OCTOBER 1586 * SIR PHILIP SIDNEY * ENGLISH POET, DIPLOMAT AND SOLDIER, FROM HIS WOUNDS SUFFERED AT THE BATTLE OF ZUTPHEN. HE GAVE HIS LIFE FOR OUR FREEDOM". The inscription

576-744: Was unveiled on 17 October 2011, exactly 425 years after his death, in the presence of Philip Sidney, 2nd Viscount De L'Isle , a descendant of the brother of Philip Sidney. The city of Sidney, Ohio , in the United States and a street in Zutphen , Netherlands, have been named after Sir Philip. A statue of him can be found in the park at the Coehoornsingel where, in the harsh winter of 1795, English and Hanoverian soldiers were buried who had died while retreating from advancing French troops. Another statue of Sidney, by Arthur George Walker , forms

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