{\b Sir Philip Sidney}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 30 November 1554

{\b Date of Death}.: 17 October 1586

{\b Works}.

English poet, courtier, patron of poets and scholars. One of the great 
literary figures of Elizabethan England, his heroic prose romance, the Arcadia 
(1580, revised 1584) was the most important work of prose fiction in 
sixteenth-century England. He wrote the first great Elizabethan sonnet cycles, 
Astrophil and Stella (1582), a sequence of one hundred and eight sonnets and 
eleven songs which explore the mind of the lover. His Defense of Poesie (1589) 
was the finest work of Elizabethan literary criticism. His successful 
experiments and technique influenced many other Renaissance poets like 
Spenser, Campion, Drayton and Jonson.

{\b Featured Works}.

'My True Love Hath My Heart, and I Have His', "Leave Me, O Love Which Reachest 
But to Dust", "Loving in Truth, and Fain in Verse My Love to Show", "Come 
Sleep, O Sleep! The Certain Knot of Peace", 'Astrophel and Stellafirst Song', 
'Astrophel and Stellaeleventh Song', 'Philomela', 'Astrophel and Stellasonnet 
LIV', 'Astrophel and Stellasonnet XXXI', 'Desire', 'A Farewell', 'To the Sad Moon',
'Sleep, baby mine, Desire', 'Voices at the Window'.

{\b General Comment}.

Sir Philip Sidney was born at Penshurst Place, Kent, eldest son of Sir Henry 
Sidney. He entered Shrewsbury School in 1564 on the same day as Fulke 
Greville, his friend and biographer. After attending Christ Church, Oxford 
(1568-72), he travelled in Europe where for three years he perfected his 
knowledge of Latin, French and Italian. In 1577, aged twenty-two, he was sent 
as ambassador to the German Emperor and the Prince of Orange. His strong 
Protestant sympathies made him advise Elizabeth I in a private letter (1579) 
against marrying the Duke of Anjou, Roman Catholic heir to the French throne. 
He was knighted in 1583 and became Member of Parliament for Kent in 1581 and 
1584-85. In 1585 he was appointed joint master of the ordnance, the office in 
charge of the country's military supplies. A patron of scholars, his wide 
range of interests accounted for the dedication to him of over forty works of 
various disciplines. The best-known poet to enjoy his patronage was Spenser 
who dedicated his Shepherd's Calendar to him. Avoiding commercialism, he did 
not publish his works in his lifetime. He was fighting against the Spaniards 
in the Netherlands when he received a wound which eventually killed him at the 
age of thirty-two. All England mourned this courtier and statesman who had 
embodied the Elizabethan ideal of virtue.