Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney was a child of privilege, born to Sir Henry Sidney, Elizabeth I’s governor of Ireland, and Lady Mary Dudley. His godfather was King Philip II of Spain; his uncle Robert Dudley was one of Elizabeth’s closest advisers. Philip was educated to join his family’s tradition of service, first at the Shrewsbury School and then at Oxford. Following a three-year tour of Europe (1572-1575), where he perfected his languages and became familiar with European politics, Sidney returned to Elizabeth’s court and embarked on a career as diplomat and parliamentarian. A man of broad interests, he befriended leading artists and scholars of the day (including poet Edmund Spenser and alchemist John Dee), and was the dedicatee of more than 40 books on subjects as diverse as painting, law, poetry, and botany. Despite his education and social background, Sidney struggled to land a job of any real importance (he was knighted in 1583 only so that he could stand in for a nobleman in an important royal ceremony) and so directed his energies into creative work. He finished the 180,000-word heroic prose romance the Arcadia in 1580, and in 1582 wrote Astrophel and Stella, which is considered the most important English sonnet sequence after Shakespeare’s. Around the same time, he wrote An Apology for Poetry, introducing Continental ideas about literature to England. Later he started but did not finish an expansion of the Arcadia as well as a paraphrase of the Psalms. Sidney was renowned for his gentlemanly manners, and, fitting with his status, none of his works were printed and sold in his lifetime. In 1585, he was appointed joint-administrator of the British ordnance, which oversaw the distribution of arms in the kingdom. In this capacity he volunteered to serve in England’s war with the Spanish in the Netherlands, where, in defense of a supply convoy, he was grazed by an enemy bullet, and died from infection soon after. He is buried in St. Paul’s cathedral in London.