Complete Works of Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney, (born November 30, 1554, Penshurst, Kent, England—died October 17, 1586, Arnhem, Netherlands), Elizabethan courtier, statesman, soldier, poet, and patron of scholars and poets, considered the ideal gentleman of his day. After Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella is considered the finest Elizabethan sonnet cycle. His The Defence of Poesie introduced the critical ideas of Renaissance theorists to England.

With the work of Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, Tottel’s contributors suddenly began to look old-fashioned. Sidney epitomized the new Renaissance “universal man”: a courtier, diplomat, soldier, and poet whose Defence of Poesie includes the first considered account of the state…

Philip Sidney was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and his wife, Lady Mary Dudley, daughter of the duke of Northumberland, and godson of King Philip II of Spain. After Elizabeth I succeeded to the throne, his father was appointed lord president of Wales (and later served three times as lord deputy of Ireland), while his uncle, Robert Dudley, was created earl of Leicester and became the queen’s most trusted adviser. In keeping with his family background, the young Sidney was intended for a career as a statesman and soldier. At age 10 he entered Shrewsbury School, where his classmate was Fulke Greville (later a court official under Elizabeth), who became his lifelong friend and was his early biographer. In February 1568 he began a three-year period of studies at Christ Church, Oxford, afterward traveling in Europe between May 1572 and June 1575, perfecting his knowledge of Latin, French, and Italian. He also gained firsthand knowledge of European politics and became acquainted with many of Europe’s leading statesmen.

His first court appointment came in the spring of 1576, when he succeeded his father as cupbearer to the queen, a ceremonial position. Then in February 1577, when he was only 22, he was sent as ambassador to the German emperor Rudolf II and the elector palatine Louis VI, carrying Queen Elizabeth’s condolences on the deaths of their fathers. But along with this formal task, he also had secret instructions to sound out the German princes on their attitude toward the formation of a Protestant league—the chief political aim being to protect England by associating it with other Protestant states in Europe that would counterbalance the threatening power of Roman Catholic Spain. Sidney apparently brought back enthusiastic reports on the possibilities of forming such a league, but the cautious queen sent other emissaries to check on his reports, and they returned with less-optimistic accounts of the German princes’ reliability as allies. He did not receive another major official appointment until eight years later.