S. M. Joshi College Hadapsar Pune – 28 M. A. 1st Year English Rayat Shikshan Sanstha’s S. M. Joshi College Hadapsar Pune – 28 M. A. 1st Year English Paper Name: 1.1 English Literature From 1550 to 1798 Topic: Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Loving in Truth Mr.Suresh Bhosale

Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Loving in Truth’

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86)

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) is often credited with writing the first sonnet sequence in English, and he was certainly the first English poet to write a long cycle of sonnets. Composed in the early 1580s, Astrophil and Stella (sometimes Astrophel and Stella) is a sequence of 108 sonnets – and a few songs – inspired by Sidney’s unrequited love for Penelope Rich (nee Devereux), who was offered to him as a potential wife a few years before. Sidney turned her down, she married Lord Robert Rich, and Sidney promptly realised he was in love with her.

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 sunburn’d brain. But words came halting forth, wanting invention’s stay; Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows;

And others’ feet still seem’d but strangers in my way And others’ feet still seem’d 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.’

How autobiographical the sonnets in Astrophil and Stella actually are is disputed, and many scholars incline towards thinking Sidney is adopting a persona in these poems. Still, ‘Astrophil’ (meaning ‘star-lover’; sometimes rendered as ‘Astrophel’) is clearly meant to bring ‘Philip Sidney’ to mind, partly because of the ‘phil’ contained in the name, and partly because of an obscure pun (‘Astro’ means ‘star’, punning on the ‘Sid’ of Sidney – similar to the Latin sidus, ‘star’). So Sidney clearly did ‘look into [his] heart’ before he wrote.

This opening sonnet sees Sidney introducing – and, indeed, inducing – the sonnet sequence as a whole. (Compare the first sonnet in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which is somewhat less ‘introductory’ in nature.) In summary, he acknowledges that he truly loves the woman he is to write about, and wants to convey that through the poetry he writes, so that his pain – in being transmuted into great verse – will please the woman he loves.