A Defence of Poetry

Book Description

Often seen as a key to understanding Elizabethan poetry, Sidney's persuasive treatise follows the rules of rhetoric in presenting evidence of the virtues of poetry. Sidney argues with wit and irony that poetry is the art which best teaches what is good and true. This seems a fitting argument for this prominent experimental poet who himself is said to have represented 'life and action good and great'.

Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)

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"As what my heart still sees, thou canst not spy?"

Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
Philip Sidney
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia : The Old Arcadia (Oxford World's Classics)
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The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)

ASIN: 0192840800

Book Description

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Sidney's poetry and prose - all the major writing, complemented by letters and elegies - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Born in 1554, Sir Philip Sidney was hailed as the perfect Renaissance patron, soldier, lover, and courtier, but it was only after his untimely death at the age of 31 that his literary accomplishments were truly recognized. This collection ranges more widely through Sidney's works than any previous volume and includes substantial parts of both versions of the Arcadia, The Defence of Poesy and the whole of the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella. Supplementary texts, such as his letters and the numerous elegies which appeared after his death, help to illustrate the whole spectrum of his achievements, and the admiration he inspired in his contemporaries.

Customer Reviews:

"As what my heart still sees, thou canst not spy?".......2004-03-10

This review relates to the volume: -Sir Philip Sidney: Major
Works-. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Katherine
Duncan-Jones. Oxford World's Classics. 2002. 416 pp.
This volume contains the works: A dialogue between two
shepherds...Wilton/ Two Songs for an Accession Day Tilt/
Philisides, the shepherd good and true/ Sing, neighbours,
sing/ The Lady of the May/ Certain Sonnets (32 sonnets)/
The lad Philisides/ The Old Arcadia (Complete)--Four
Eclogues, as well as, "What tongue can her perfections tell",
and "Since nature's works be good"/Lamon's Tale/Astrophil
and Stella (Complete, a sequence of 108 sonnets with
11 numbered songs interspersed!)/ The Defense of Poesy/
4 poems from -The New Arcadia-/ Sidney's poetic versions
of Psalms 6, 13, 23, 29, 38/ Letters (15)/ and 4 Appendices
(Henry Goldwell, "Shows Performed, 1581"/ Edmund Molyneux,
"A historical remembrance of the Sidneys"/Anon., "The
manner of Sir Philip Sidney's Death"/ Three elegies on
Sidney from -The Phoenix Nest-, 1593/ Extract from Fulke
Greville, 16 October 1586)/ and excellent Notes to the
works from pp. 332 - 408.
Sir Philip Sidney was born on 30 November 1554 and died on
17 October 1586, from complications of a battle wound, at the
age of 31.
Perhaps the two best insights into Sidney are supplied by
Katherine Duncan-Jones in her "Introduction" -- the first
is a quote by the modern critic, Theodore Spencer, who
said: "Once the poet has set himself the task of writing
an amorous complaint, that deep melancholy which lay
beneath the surface of glamour of Elizabethan existence,
and which was so characteristic of Sidney himself, begins
to fill the conventional form with more than a conventional
weight. It surges through the magical adagio of the lines;
they have the depth of reverberation, like the sound of
gongs beaten under water, which is sometimes characteristic
of Sidney as of no other Elizabethan, not even Shakespeare."
["Introduction," p. xi]. The other quote follows some
critical introduction by the editor herself: "Tellingly,
Sidney's own persona, Philisides, is described on his first
appearance as diabled by unhappiness: "Another young shepherd
named Philisides...had all this time lain upon the ground
at the foot of a cypress tree, leaning upon his elbow, with
so deep a melancholy that his senses carried to his mind no
delight from any of their objects."
But these poems rarely dwell in melancholy. The slight
hindrance, sometimes, is Sidney's versification itself.
The reader may find it slightly stilted and a bit too
poetically "artificial" to meet the rhythm or the rhyme.
However, the glories far outweigh the slights. A further
help to understanding Sidney might come from applying
deeper SYMBOLISM and interpretation to his works, in
names and themes. There is this left to end:
Love makes the earth water to drink,
Love to earth makes water sink;
And if dumb things [without speech] be so witty
Shall a heavenly grace want pity?
[from: -Astrophil and Stella-.]
-- Robert Kilgore.

Writing after Sidney: The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney 1586-1640

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Writing after Sidney: The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney 1586-1640
Gavin Alexander
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0199285470

Book Description

Writing After Sidney examines the literary response to Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), author of the Arcadia, Astrophil and Stella, and The Defence of Poesy, and the most immediately influential writer of the Elizabethan period. It does so by looking closely both at Sidney and at four writers who had an important stake in his afterlife: his sister Mary Sidney, his brother Robert Sidney, his best friend Fulke Greville, and his niece Mary Wroth. At the same time as these authors wrote their own works in response to Sidney they presented his life and writings to the world, and were shaped by other writers as his literary and political heirs. Readings of these five central authors are embedded in a more general study of the literary and cultural scene in the years after Sidney's death, examining the work of such writers as Spenser, Jonson, Daniel, Drayton, and Herbert. The study uses a wide range of manuscript and printed sources, and key use is made of perspectives from Renaissance literary theory, especially Renaissance rhetoric. The book aims to come to a better understanding of the nature of Sidney's impact on the literature of the fifty or so years after his death in 1586; it also aims to improve our understanding both of Sidney and of the other writers discussed by developing a more nuanced approach to the questions of imitation and example so central to Renaissance literature. It thereby adds to the general store of our understanding of how writing of the English Renaissance offered examples to later readers and writers, and of how it encountered and responded to such examples itself.

Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry and Astrophil and Stella: Texts and Contexts

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A well-priced and reliable classroom text

Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry and Astrophil and Stella: Texts and Contexts
Philip Sidney
Manufacturer: College Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Edmund Spenser's Poetry (Norton Critical Editions)
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The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Women Writers in English 1350-1850)

ASIN: 0967912113

Book Description

This edition presents together Sir Philip Sidney's response to the many attacks on poetry current in early modern England, An Apology for Poetry, and his path-breaking sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella. The introduction provides biographical and historical contexts for reading Sidney's works, and to help students explore how the Apology arises from and intervenes in the "Quarrel over Poetry," this volume provides substantial excerpts from such texts as Plato's Republic, Scaliger's Poetics, Gosson's The School of Abuse, and Richard Wiles's A Disputation Concerning Poetry (the first extended discussion of poetry in Englad). This edition also includes excerpts from Sidney's letters to his brother, Robert, and his friend, Sir Edward Denny. All the texts are newly edited, annotated, and modernized.

Customer Reviews:

A well-priced and reliable classroom text.......2005-07-21

Has Astrophil and Stella as well as the Apology for Poetry, and contextualizes the Apology well with selections from other classical and renaissance writing about the value of poetry. A good, clean text. Recommended for classes.

Sir Philip Sidney: A Study of His Life and Works

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Sir Philip Sidney: A Study of His Life and Works
A. C. Hamilton
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0521214238

English Essays From Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay (Harvard Classics, Part 27)

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English Essays From Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay (Harvard Classics, Part 27)

Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

1910. Contents: The Defense of Poesy by Sir Philip Sidney. On Shakespeare; On Bacon by Ben Jonson. Of Agriculture by Abraham Cowley. The Vision of Mirza; Westminster Abbey by Joseph Addison. The Spectator Club by Sir Richard Steele. Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation; A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding; A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet; On the Death of Esther Johnson (Stella) by Jonathan Swift. The Shortest Way With the Dissenters; The Education of Women by Daniel Defoe. Life of Addison by Samuel Johnson. Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume. Fallacies of Anti-reformers by Sydney Smith. On Posey or Art by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen by William Hazlitt. Deaths of Little Children; On the Realities of Imagination by Leigh Hunt. On the Tragedies of Shakespeare by Charles Lamb. Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow by Thomas De Quincey. A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Machiavelli by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

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A great resource
Readers are AWful not AWEful
Embarrassingly bad readings
Absolute garbage
One Hundred Poems Murdered

Classic Hundred All-Time Favorite Poems
Sir Thomas Wyatt , Sir Walter Ralegh , Sir Philip Sidney , Christopher Marlowe , William Shakespeare , John Donne , Ben Jonson , Robert Herrick , George Herbert , Thomas Carew , Edmund Waller , John Milton , Sir John Suckling , Richard Lovelace , and Andrew Marvell
Manufacturer: Highbridge Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 1565112458

Book Description

Imagine if Billboard compiled a list of the top 100 poems, chosen not by critics or professors but by the people themselves. That's the concept behind The Classic Hundred, and it works brilliantly. William Harmon found the 100 most anthologized poems in English, based on the ninth edition of The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry—the most objective measurement of greatness available, representing consensus among the editors of some 400 anthologies. Then he put them in order and prefaced each one with concise, erudite, often humorous commentary. The range of poets, subjects, and forms—from Shakespeare to Frost, from love and death to crime and punishment, from sonnets to odes—makes this an entertaining, enlightening, and indispensable aural guide to the finest verse in the English language.

Customer Reviews:

A great resource.......2007-05-18

I love listening to this cassette while I drive! I think the commentary is first rate, insightful and learned. I find the readers, who are generally great poets in their own right, sensitive and the readings clear and nuanced.

Readers are AWful not AWEful.......2006-09-26

Every review here is correct. The readers are amazingly inept. It's hard to believe that the publisher thought this was working. Any average, passionate, good reader would have done so much better. It's very sad. I really wanted to like this work.

Embarrassingly bad readings.......2006-01-14

In this age of sight and sound, one might hope for a renewed interest in poetry read aloud. After all, your average Ipod can store all the world's great poetry. Any such prospect will quickly be extinguished if there are many productions as bad as this one. At first I thought the readers had been chosen in accordance with some manic diversity template, without the slightest concern for whether they could actually read poetry with even minimal competence. In fact, this project was not ruined by political correctness (though that would be typical these days). Instead, the readers are poets themselves. This is a perennially tempting, and invariably bad, idea. The gift of writing poetry is utterly distinct from the gift of reading it. (Perhaps this is the one arena where the deconstructionists are right: here, the "reader" is as important as the writer.) The truths, and the feelings embodied in these poems would be far better conveyed by professional actors or readers; o for a Derek Jacoby, or a Kenneth Branagh, or a Michael York, to substitute for these awful readers. Give these discs to your child in high school if you want to ensure that he or she will never, ever want to read, or hear, another poem.

Absolute garbage.......2004-11-05

I can't believe that anyone found a good word to say about this production of poetic vandalism. It's more than bad, it's criminal,and I, for one, would certainly agree that some of the readers sound as if they might have recently escaped from some institution. How bad is it? Well, I've bought more than one set, which might sound contradictory. However, the reason that one set wasn't enough is that I keep giving my cassettes away as warnings, as jokes, and just to share what must be the absolutely worst set of readings ever recorded. This, of course, means that I have to replace them, because something this bad is precious. Anyway, to be more specific, the problem is with the reading of the poems. To be fair, the best of the of the lot reach mediocrity, but the worst....well, they bring a new meaning to "apalling." Some ot the readers do try, and some of them have a vague idea of how to read poetry, but some of them, one with a Pulitizer prize for poetry! sound like they're reading the yellow pages in a language they don't understand. Do yourself a favor. Unless you delight in the perverse, or would like to have something to contribute to the Guiness Book of Records, don't buy this set.

One Hundred Poems Murdered.......2003-11-28

What could be an acceptable reading of standards is degraded by sophomoric introductions.
Don't buy this, unless for skeet shooting.

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A so-so rendering of a fascinating life
Philip Sidney: A Boring Life (Until the end, when he dies)

Philip Sidney: A Double Life
Alan Stewart
Manufacturer: Thomas Dunne Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Among the gilded youth of Elizabethan England, none was more golden than Philip Sidney. Courtier, poet, soldier, diplomat-he was one of the most promising young men of his time. Son of Elizabeth I's deputy in Ireland, nephew and heir to her favorite, Leicester, he received an exemplary education. On leaving Oxford University he was tipped for high office-and was even a candidate to inherit the throne. But Philip soon found himself caught up in the intricate politics of Elizabeth's court and forced to become as Machiavellian as everyone around him if he was to achieve his ambitions.

Against a backdrop of Elizabethan intrigue and the battle between the Protestants and the Catholics for predominance in Europe, Alan Stewart tells the riveting story of Philip Sidney's struggle to succeed. Seeing that his continental allies had a greater sense of his importance than his English contemporaries, Philip turned his attention to Europe. He was made a French baron at seventeen, corresponded with leading foreign scholars, considered marriage proposals from two princesses and, in 1586, he cemented his fame by dying on the battlefront in the Low Countries at the tragically young age of thirty-one.

Customer Reviews:

A so-so rendering of a fascinating life.......2002-07-23

Alan Stewart's book might not be great (and, indeed, Katherine Duncan-Jones's biography of Sidney is, in my opinion, much more engrossing and insightful), but it is not as hopelessly boring as a previous reviewer would have us think. According to the opinions expressed by that reviewer, it would seem that any life that is not well documented would not be worth writing a biography about. That is obviously not so, since lack of evidence has always added to a subject's historical fascination. This is especially true of everything Elizabethan. I believe that Philip Sidney was indeed an interesting character, not least because of his tolerance and compassion in a world where neither of these virtues was terribly commonplace. I also believe he was a gifted writer. He was also a member of a politically active family in a politically driven, factious age. Any of these elements alone justifies writing a biography about him. So there's no question of a "boring life" here. I think that the problem here is that Stewart gives a lot of facts, but little insight into what Sidney was really like. In regard to aspects of his emotional life, such as his real feelings for Penelope Rich and his wife Frances, this is probably due to lack of evidence. But, in regard to his more-than-documented public life, that can hardly be the case. I would have appreciated more interpretation together with the naked facts. Also, I think that the subject of Sidney as a writer was insufficiently addressed. Katherine Duncan-Jones's biography is much better at both these issues, and it is the book I would recommend to anyone interested in this remarkable man. Let me say, however, that all is not wrong: Stewart's attempt at depicting Elizabethan politics and power struggles is good enough. This is not what I'd call a gripping book, but it's not a bad one either. What is clear, though, is that in no way can any of its flaws be attributed to its subject. Philip Sidney was certainly a fascinating person in a weird, enthralling, fascinating age.

Philip Sidney: A Boring Life (Until the end, when he dies).......2002-03-24

Admittedly I've never read another biography of Philip Sidney, but this one was a tough read. The author choose a tough topic, the often venerated, seldom understood Sir Philip Sidney courtier during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. I decided to read this book because it received a good review in the Atlantic Monthly which said Philip Sidney has been considered a true life embodiment of Castiglione's Perfect Courtier. From what I could tell this was because he died long before he was old enough to do anything unlike a perfect courtier.

The "Double Life" suggests the different ways Sidney was appreciated in England and on the continent. At home, Sidney was constantly being stifled by the whims and maneouvres of the Queen. (Elizabeth's actions are not well justified in Stewart's portrayal.) On the Continent, Sidney is venerated,befriended, and appreciated by Protestants and Catholics alike, for reasons that are not well explained in the text.

The biography also struggles to portray Sidney as a person. I could never get a handle on his personality because it seems that there is not enough documentation to determine what he was really like. Everytime his life got interesting or controversial, records or letters are absent. Thus his story, while fundamentally uninteresting is compounded with a series of anticlimaxes. The only event which was well documented was his death. This was particularly frustrating (after 310 pages) as the reader does not know whether to weep or to cheer.

The problem with Pillip Sidney: A Double Life was whether it should have been written in this format at all. The text is much more useful as an academic reference than as a "good read," yet it is packaged and written as if it were filled with intrigue, controversy, romance and interest. It is not, and probably could not be written so, due to scores of missing letters or other substantive evidence.

I gave the book two stars because it did convey a great deal of information, uninteresting or otherwise. It also did not seem to fail for any reason on its own merits of argument or fact.

I question whether this book should have been published. While I'm sure the author knows a great deal about Elizabethan England, he did not know that there simply isn't enough information about Philip Sidney to either get excited or to write an entire book about.

Book Description

Out of the intellectual ferment of the English Renaissance came a number of outstanding critical works that sought to define and defend the role of literature in society and to comment on the craft of writing. Foremost among these is Sir Philip Sidney's “The Defence of Poesy,” an eloquent argument for fiction as a means of inspiring its readers to virtuous action. George Puttenham's “The Art of English Poesy” is an entertaining examination of poetry, verse form, and rhetoric, while Samuel Daniel's “A Defence of Rhyme” considers the practice of versification and praises the English literary tradition. Along with pieces by such writers as Sir John Harrington, Francis Bacon, and Ben Jonson, these works reveal the emergence of key critical ideas and approaches, and celebrate the possibilities of the English language.

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Ian Myles Slater on: Multiple Identities and Versions
A monument of dullness?

The Old Arcadia
Philip Sidney , and Sir Philip Sidney
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
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ASIN: 019281690X

Book Description

Sidney was in his early twenties when he wrote his 'Old' Arcadia for the amusement of his younger sister, the Countess of Pembroke. A romantic story in the manner of Shakespeare's early comedies, the 'Old' Arcadia also includes over 70 poems in a variety of meters and genres. This edition
contains a Glossary and an Index of First Lines.

Customer Reviews:

Ian Myles Slater on: Multiple Identities and Versions .......2004-10-05

"The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia" is a book that has been in and out of fashion for about four centuries. It is a story of disguised princes, an impersonated princess, infatuated shepherds, and gender and identity confusions on a rather large scale, all set in a strikingly English version of ancient Greece. It was written in a mixture of prose and verse by the Elizabethan courtier, Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), beginning in 1579, supposedly to amuse his sister, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. (Hence the book's title; the Sidney family itself was recent upper-gentry rather than old nobility, but the received title may have been as much a selling point for the original publisher as personal snobbery.) It seems in fact to have been part of an ambitious project for elevating English, a second- or third-rate language in a Europe dominated by literature in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish.

It was a key text for English society in the seventeenth century, and received a variety of political and cultural readings -- a long story in itself, involving King Charles I and John Milton, among others. Although Sidney had offered himself as a champion of Elizabeth's officially Calvinist Church, some Puritans tended to find both poetry and fiction at best a distraction, at worst a threat, and the "Arcadia" combined them; not to mention the erotic element. The resulting debate over the "Arcadia," transferred from theological-moral to aesthetic frames of reference, continues; for some critics, liking this book is itself a Bad Thing. Of course, there are those who simply don't like it; nothing appeals to every taste.

As originally published in 1590, it was a fragment, in two and a half books, breaking off in mid-story (Book III, Chapter 29), where the author left his revisions when he went to the Netherlands, and his death fighting the Spanish, in a self-assumed role as the Protestant Knight-Errant. (There is an on-line version of this text, in the original spelling, transcribed by Richard Bear, at Renascence Editions.) Its publication came near the beginning of several decades of staggering importance in English literature, which included Christopher Marlowe's major works, and those of Shakespeare, Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Donne, among others.

The 1593 edition, in five books, was more complete, with a conclusion presented as being drawn from an earlier draft, edited to conform to Sidney's alterations. This was undoubtedly true, for, even if no other evidence had survived, the handling of these texts gave rise to a dispute between the Countess and one of her fellow editors, and the additions did not quite join with the previously printed section, leaving plot-lines dangling. (This version, likewise in Elizabethan spelling, is available as an e-book from Kessinger; in that edition, the gap is on page 453.) Later printings included one or another (or both) of two more-or-less authorized bridge passages, linking up the unfinished original part of Sidney's revised and expanded narrative to the old conclusion. (There was a 1983 facsimile edition of the 1598 printing, from Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, apparently still available.) The original "old" version was later assumed to be lost, with Sidney's manuscripts.

This 1593 version of the work has been edited twice in recent years. First, by Maurice Evans, as "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia," now in the Penguin Classics series (included 1987; originally for the Penguin English Library, 1977), for the general reader, complete with the longer of the two "bridge" sections, and useful, but limited, notes. Second, by Victor Skretkowicz, as "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The New Arcadia)," a critical edition from Oxford University Press (1987), more useful for scholars and students, but probably less attractive to others. The Penguin version is probably the more widely read of the two, and, having read and referred to it for over twenty-five years, I think that it will serve the interested reader well for most purposes. (Beyond the great advantage of being in print....)

Besides the semi-offical bridge passages, other hands offered supplements and sequels to the 1593 version, some of which have recently come in for new attention. The series "Women Writers in English 1350-1850" includes "A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's *Arcadia*" by Anna Weamys, edited by Patrick Colborn Cullen (1994); this represents a mid-seventeenth-century Royalist reading. An interesting critical approach is offered by Elizabeth A. Spiller in "Speaking for the Dead: King Charles, Anna Weamys, and the Commemorations of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia," available on-line.

The book's popularity faded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly with the rise of the modern novel as a preferred type of narrative fiction. Although it still had some readers and admirers, the romantic essayist and critic William Hazlitt called it "one of the great monuments of the abuse of intellectual power." Hazlitt's antipathy was in part a legitimate reaction to types of prose and verse he found overblown, in part a sign of a chronological cultural gap; the temporal equivalent of despising foreign literatures as being, well, so foreign.

Sidney was one of the key figures of the "English Renaissance" -- the (by European standards) delayed flowering of literature in England in the 1580s and 1590s (and several decades thereafter), most of which he didn't live to see, but which he promoted by propaganda and example. An aspect of the "new learning" of the Renaissance which doesn't get a lot of emphasis in standard textbooks was the popularity of the late (Hellenistic and Roman) romance in classical Greek; novels of love and adventure, often involving shepherds, disguised nobles, and lost princesses (or at least missing heiresses). The most widely read example of this genre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the brief "Daphnis and Chloe" of Longus, but in earlier times there were equal or greater favorites; for example, the long and complex adventure story, "Aethiopica" by Heliodorus (first English translation by Thomas Underdowne, 1587). Their Renaissance vogue produced a series of imitations across Europe, most notably Jacopo Sannazaro's "Arcadia" (1502) and Jorge de Montemayor's "La Diana" (1558?). These were themselves international sensations; Sidney was trying to bring English literature into the (for him) modern age, just as, say, Coleridge, was trying to do in his day -- or Hazlitt, for that matter.

Maybe Sidney's example had nothing to do with the appearance of Spenser or Shakespeare as major poets; but Spenser certainly didn't think so, and some of Shakespeare's plays show every sign of being aimed at an audience that had enjoyed and absorbed the "Arcadia" and its various lesser imitators.

Beginning in 1909, the situation was complicated by the rediscovery (by Bertram Dobell) of manuscript copies of what came to be known to scholars as the "Old Arcadia" -- the complete first version, very differently arranged, with some different characterizations of the protagonists. It was not actually "lost," just ignored. This shorter, simpler, "unpublished" work, although not printed, turns out to have had a fair circulation among the Elizabethan elite, in a sort of ruling-class *samizdat*. First printed in 1926, as part of a multi-volume edition of Sidney's works, it was acclaimed by some critics -- including its editor, Albert Feuillerat -- as the true, preferred, version. Sidney's extensive revisions were dismissed as an abandoned experiment in unfortunate elaboration, and the 1593 edition as a sad botch, a pieced-together work without artistic merit.

Others -- notably C.S. Lewis -- championed the 1593 "New" Arcadia as that closest to the author's considered intent, and a work of actual historical importance. In this view, Sidney's most radical change -- opening in the middle of the action, and using his original first part as an inset story, or "flashback" -- was a serious attempt at classicism, modeled on Homer, Virgil, and Heliodorus, not a product of muddled thinking. Editors of anthologies and volumes of "selected works" have often resorted to providing selections from both redactions.

The "Old Arcadia" was critically re-edited by Jean Robertson for Oxford University Press in 1973 as "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The Old Arcadia)," and, again, in a popular edition, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones for the World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 1985; with new bibliography, 1994); for some reason, this out-of-print edition currently appears on Amazon with an image of a volume of Jonathan Swift(!).

The Duncan-Jones text was reprinted in 1999 in the re-designed Oxford World's Classics series, and this version is in print (for now). The cover title of this edition is simply "The Old Arcadia," but Amazon, following the publisher's own web site, lists it as "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia: The Old Arcadia" (and variations). Both are, of course, legitimate, but this is a little confusing.

The [Oxford] World's Classics "Old Arcadia" is a good companion to the Penguin "New Arcadia" -- and I am not going to take sides on which of Sidney's versions is "better."

A monument of dullness?.......2000-08-24

T.S. Eliot labelled Sidney's Arcadia as a "monument of dullness," and about 100 pages into the book, I felt inclined to agree with his assessment. Sidney was a poet first and foremost, and even he admitted to his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, that this particular work was but "a trifle."

Yet, surprisingly, I found myself getting captivated by the plot of two princes disguised as shepherds to win the girls of their dreams (in the process, of course, they also win girls -- and guys -- of their nightmares). The somewhat stilted (even by Renaissance standards) language makes it difficult to plod through at times, but the plot is interesting and keeps your attention -- and that's ultimately what counts.

Re: this edition, it is one of the few good editions of the original "Old" Arcadia around. Sidney revised the work during his lifetime and his friend and biographer, Fulke Greville, later published a bizarre composite of the old and revised versions that for centuries stood as the definitive "Arcadia". K. Duncan-Jones provides a clean text with useful scholarly apparatus. One caveat: in my edition, pp. 297-306 were *missing*, mistakenly replaced by a double-printed pp. 307-316. This is an annoyance for someone who is reading the book as a scholar, which I believe represents the majority readership of the book, as I can't imagine casual readers picking it up for bedstand reading!
All in all, a fun work and better than the first act leads one to believe!

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