Professor Jonathan Smith has a blog where he analyses each of the 108 sonnets in Sidney’s collection of poems and in his introduction he compares them to Shakespeare’s sonnets.

“I like to say that a great sonnet is a small piece of art of great value, but available to anyone to own. Shakespeare might have more of his sonnets hanging in the Louvre or the Hermitage, but any collector would be proud to have a Sidney in her own collection.”

Sir Philip Sidney died at the age of 32 after wounds received in a skirmish at Zutphen (on the continent) in 1586. He had written his sonnet and song collection probably between 1581- 84 but they were not published during his lifetime, however they would have been read by a select group of admirers in manuscript form. Sidney was a courtier to queen Elizabeth I, member of Parliament, scholar, soldier and related to the Earl of Leicester who was a leading member of the protestant group at Court. All of his literary works were published after his death and it is these that have carried his fame through to current times as he had a fairly chequered career at Court, because Elizabeth kept the young man at arms length, perhaps suspicious of his connections in Europe.

A sonnet derived from an Italian word meaning little poem is recognised as having fourteen lines that follow a strict rhyming scheme and a specific structure. In Elizabethan times sonnets were typically poems of love based on the Italian writer Petrarchs (14th century) collection of songs and sonnets dedicated to his would be lover Laura. The English sonnet had been developed a couple of centuries later by Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey and in Sidney’s day were featured in collections by George Gascoigne and Thomas Watson, they became known as the poems of unrequited love. Sidney is now recognised among the great triumvirate of Elizabethan sonneteers, the others being Spenser and Shakespeare.

The object of Sidney’s passion is Stella and Astrophil is her star-lover. Sidney’s poems of unrequited love are based to some extent on personal experience. Stella has been identified as Penelope Devereux who Sidney first met in 1575 when she was fourteen years old. Sidney’s family had drawn up a contract of marriage for Sidney and Penelope, but unfortunately Penelope’s father died before the contract was signed and Penelope was contracted against her will to Lord Rich. There is little if anything specific in the poems (apart from some word play on Lord Rich’s name) to link them to Sidney’s love affair with Penelope, however knowing the history provides the reader with an interest in deciding how much of this comes straight from the heart of the poet. This is always tricky because of the formulaic nature of much courtier love poetry and Sidney’s poems do follow in that tradition; for example the life and death pains suffered by the male speaker/poet and the elevation of the lady into some kind of goddess.

Sonnet number 1
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she (dear she) might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know;
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows;
And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”

In the very first sonnet Sidney addresses these issues. The first line states he is writing poems of his true love in verse and emphasises this point in the last line. He says that ‘oft turning other’s leaves’ is not good enough he is looking for ‘Invention’. It is for the reader to decide (if he/she wishes) how successful Sidney has been.

In my opinion Sidney does take his sonnet collection to another level from those that had preceded him. For a start most of the poems read well, there is very little awkwardness and when there is, it is usually for poetic effect. His poems are well structured with rhyming schemes that work well and with variations from the Italian formula that points to a more particular English sonnet style. He stresses in his first sonnet that Invention is key to his poetry making and while he does not always stray too far away from traditional courtier love poetry his poems have a level of invention that makes them consistently interesting. I read through these 108 sonnets always looking forward to reading the next one.

The sonnets seem to fit together, they seem to describe an actual love affair, however one sided it might be. We have to wait until sonnet 73 when he steals a kiss while Stella is asleep and this is possibly for the speaker the high point of the affair. It is sonnet 82 where he tries to have the last word on that stolen kiss, but now the writing is on the wall and Stella has become angry with him and it is a short step for her not wishing, or being prevented from seeing him again. Throughout the collection there is an ongoing debate about reason versus passion as the speaker struggles to contain himself. There are poems that personify certain feelings or sins, there are poems of serious reflection and there are poems based around small incidents. There are many poems about the beauty of Stella particularly the power emanating from her eyes. Much of this ground was covered in Petrarch’s Laura sonnets, but Sidney finds different, perhaps better, perhaps less artificial ways of dealing with themes that had become cliché.

There are many poems that can stand alone outside of the collection for example sonnet 78 that takes jealousy as its subject; warning in the final line that the beast of jealousy can lead the sufferer into wearing the horns of a cuckold.

O how the pleasant airs of true love be
Infected by those vapours which arise
From out that noisome gulf, which gaping lies
Between the jaws of hellish jealousy:
A monster, others’ harm, self-misery,
Beauty’s plague, virtue’s scourge, succour of lies;
Who his own joy to his own hurt applies,
And only cherish doth with injury;
Who since he hath, by nature’s special grace,
So piercing paws as spoil when they embrace,
So nimble feet, as stir still, though on thorns;
So many eyes aye seeking their own woe,
So ample ears, as never good news know:
Is it not ill that such a devil wants horns?

Astrophil and Stella has been one of the high points of my reading in Tudor literature. I suppose readers unaware of the cultural differences and not used to reading poetry might find many of these poems artificial and/or difficult, but for me they were a five star read. ( )

I reread this for work, and the sonnets are better than I remembered. (I read this sequence first in 2005, I think.) ( )

I have read Come Sleep, O, Sleep and Loving in Truth ( )