Sir Philip Sidney was born on November 30,
1554, at Penshurst, Kent. He was the eldest son of Sir Henry
Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and nephew of Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester. He was named after his godfather,
King Philip II of Spain.
After private tutelage, Philip Sidney entered Shrewsbury School
at the age of ten in 1564, on the same day as Fulke Greville,
Lord Brooke, who became his fast friend and, later, his
biographer. After attending Christ Church, Oxford, (1568-1571) he
left without taking a degree in order to complete his education
by travelling the continent. Among the places he visited were
Paris, Frankfurt, Venice, and Vienna.
Sidney returned to England in 1575, living the life of a popular
and eminent courtier. In 1577, he was sent as ambassador to the
German Emperor and the Prince of Orange. Officially, he had been
sent to condole the princes on the deaths of their fathers. His
real mission was to feel out the chances for the creation of a
Protestant league. Yet, the budding diplomatic career was cut
short because Queen Elizabeth I found Sidney to be perhaps too
ardent in his Protestantism, the Queen preferring a more cautious
approach.
Upon his return, Sidney attended the court of Elizabeth I, and
was considered "the flower of chivalry." He was
also a patron of the arts, actively encouraging such authors as
Edward Dyer, Greville, and most importantly, the young poet
Edmund Spenser, who dedicated The Shepheardes Calender
to him. In 1580, he incurred the Queen Elizabeth's displeasure by
opposing her projected marriage to the Duke of Anjou, Roman
Catholic heir to the French throne, and was dismissed from court
for a time. He left the court for the estate of his cherished
sister Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. During his stay,
he wrote the long pastoral romance Arcadia.
At some uncertain date, he composed a major piece of critical
prose that was published after his death under the two titles, The
Defence of Poesy and An Apology for Poetry. Sidney's
Astrophil and Stella ("Starlover and Star") was begun
probably around 1576, during Sidney's courtship with Penelope
Devereux. Astrophil and Stella, which includes 108 sonnets
and 11 songs, is the first in the long line of Elizabethan sonnet
cycles. Most of the sonnets are influenced by Petrarchan
conventions — the abject lover laments the coldness of his
beloved lady towards him, even though he is so true of love and
her neglect causes him so much anguish. Penelope Rich married
another man soon after, Sir Philip Sidney never married.
While Sidney's career as courtier ran smoothly, he was growing
restless with lack of appointments. In 1585, he made a covert
attempt to join Sir Francis Drake's expedition to Cadiz without
Queen Elizabeth's permission. Elizabeth instead summoned Sidney
to court, and appointed him governor of Flushing in the
Netherlands. In 1586 Sidney, along with his younger brother
Robert Sidney, another poet in this family of poets, took part in
a skirmish against the Spanish at Zutphen, and was wounded of a
musket shot that shattered his thigh-bone. Some twenty-two days
later Sidney died of the unhealed wound at not yet thirty-two
years of age. His death occasioned much mourning in England as
the Queen and her subjects grieved for the man who had come to
exemplify the ideal courtier. It is said that Londoners, come out
to see the funeral progression, cried out "Farewell, the
worthiest knight that lived".
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