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Astrophel: A Pastorall Elegy upon the Death of the Most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney is a poem by the English poet Edmund Spenser. [1] It is Spenser's tribute to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney, who had died in 1586, and was dedicated "To the most beautiful and vertuous Ladie, the Countesse of Essex", Frances Walsingham, Sidney's widow.
Astrophel was published in 1595 by William Ponsonby in a volume called Colin Clouts Come Home Againe . It includes other poems besides Spenser's: two elegies, "The Mourning Muse of Thestylis" and "A Pastorall Aeglogue Vpon the Death of Sir Philip Sidney Knight", which are attributed to "L.B.", generally assumed to be Lodowick Bryskett, and which show him to be a more than competent poet; one by Mathew Roydon; an epitaph by Walter Raleigh; the volume concluding with another epitaph by Fulke Greville or Edward Dyer.
The date of when Astrophel was written is unknown. It is assumed to be one of the latest formal elegies on Sidney, composed some time between 1591 (Complaints) and late 1595 (Colin Clout), but nothing in Spenser’s Astrophel indicates where it was written. However, given the close links between Spenser's elegies and Bryskett's, a third elegy in the volume, it seems likely that Astrophel was written in Ireland, some time between 1591 and Spenser’s return to London in the winter of 1595-96. [2]
The exact reason why Spenser delayed in publishing an elegy for Sidney is unknown. However, in his letter to the Countess of Pembroke which prefaces "Ruines of Time" in Complaints , he speaks of the deaths of Sidney and his two uncles, saying that since his arrival in England his friends have upbraided him "for that I have not shewed any thankful remembrance towards him or any of them; but suffer their names to sleep in silence and forgetfulness". [3]
Astrophel appears as a complex and integrated poem, with a number of European and Classical sources, including Ronsard and Ovid. Perhaps its most significant debt is to Moschus' lament for Bion, enabling Spenser to emphasize his own role as the funeral poet speaking for grieving nation. [4] Though the extreme sensuousness of Ronsard's poem may have made it an inappropriate model for celebrating the heroic Sidney, Spenser's transformation of it is thorough. [5]
The second source of the poem are the actual events leading up to Sidney's death in the Battle of Zutphen. The Netherlands, are transformed into "a forest wide and waste", the Spaniards, who shot him, into "the British nation", and the Dutch among whom Sidney died into "a sort of shepherds". The period between Sidney's wounding and death is imaged in the ten stanzas between Astrophel's wounding and death.
The poem consists of 3 prefatory stanzas, 33 stanzas of elegy, and 3 describing the grief of Astrophel's fellow shepherds, in sixains rhyming ababcc. The concluding lines prepare the reader for another elegy, "The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda", presumably written by the Countess of Pembroke. [6]
The 1595 edition separates the "Doleful Lay" from the rest of Astrophel without change in title or author but with a page break and borders. In 1855 these lines were attributed to Mary Sidney by footnote. However, stylistic evidence and the close links between the two poems convince some critics to attribute the poem to Spenser. [7]
Evidence of Mary Sidney's authorship includes her 1594 letter to Philip Sidney's friend Sir Edward Wotton, asking for his copy of a poem of mourning that she had written long ago and now needed; Spenser's parallel treatment of Lodowick Bryskett as "Thestylis" and the countess as "Clorinda"; the parallel separation of "Clorinda" from "Astrophel" and from "The Mourning Muse of Thestylis" by the use of borders and introductory stanzas in the first publication of the "Doleful Lay"; Spenser's own references to the countess in Astrophel and in "The Ruines of Time" (1591); and stylistic similarities to the Countess' other works. [8]
Spenser's work has been criticised for concentrating too heavily on literary conventions to the exclusion of wider contextual issues. Also a broader criticism of Astrophel has been that it is cold and conventional, that the quality of inspiration could not be summoned at the moment, or it was from a lack of material with which to round out an adequate poem. It has also been suggested that the poem is mediocre and lacking the simplicity belonging to the expression of true feeling because Spenser was sincerely mourning Sidney's death. Therefore, Spenser was too emotionally attached to the subject matter to write a good poem (Child 535).
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse, and he is considered one of the great poets in the English language.
The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books I–III were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IV–VI. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 stanzas, it is one of the longest poems in the English language; it is also the work in which Spenser invented the verse form known as the Spenserian stanza. On a literal level, the poem follows several knights as a means to examine different virtues, and though the text is primarily an allegorical work, it can be read on several levels of allegory, including as praise of Queen Elizabeth I. In Spenser's "Letter of the Authors", he states that the entire epic poem is "cloudily enwrapped in Allegorical devices", and that the aim of publishing The Faerie Queene was to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline".
Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include a sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella, a treatise, The Defence of Poesy and a pastoral romance, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.
Thomas Warton was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1785, following the death of William Whitehead.
Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet, and physician. He was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's inn. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.
Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) was an English poet, playwright and historian in the late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean eras. He was an innovator in a wide range of literary genres. His best-known works are the sonnet cycle Delia, the epic poem The Civil Wars Between the Houses of Lancaster and York, the dialogue in verse Musophilus, and the essay on English poetry A Defence of Rhyme. He was considered one of the preeminent authors of his time and his works had a significant influence on contemporary writers, including William Shakespeare. Daniel's writings continued to influence authors for centuries after his death, especially the Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. C. S. Lewis called Daniel "the most interesting man of letters" whom the sixteenth century produced in England.
This article is a summary of the literary events and publications of 1595.
Stephen Gosson was an English satirist.
Abraham Fraunce was an English poet.
Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke was among the first Englishwomen to gain notice for her poetry and her literary patronage. By the age of 39, she was listed with her brother Philip Sidney and with Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare among the notable authors of the day in John Bodenham's verse miscellany Belvidere. Her play Antonius is widely seen as reviving interest in soliloquy based on classical models and as a likely source of Samuel Daniel's closet drama Cleopatra (1594) and of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (1607). She was also known for translating Petrarch's "Triumph of Death", for the poetry anthology Triumphs, and above all for a lyrical, metrical translation of the Psalms.
The Shepheardes Calender was Edmund Spenser's first major poetic work, published in 1579. In emulation of Virgil's first work, the Eclogues, Spenser wrote this series of pastorals at the commencement of his career. However, Spenser's models were rather the Renaissance eclogues of Mantuanus. The title, like the entire work, is written using deliberately archaic spellings, in order to suggest a connection to medieval literature, and to Geoffrey Chaucer in particular. Spenser dedicated the poem to Philip Sidney. The poem introduces Colin Clout, a folk character originated by John Skelton, and depicts his life as a shepherd through the twelve months of the year. The Calender encompasses considerable formal innovations, anticipating the even more virtuosic Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, the classic pastoral romance by Sir Philip Sidney, with whom Spenser was acquainted. It is also remarkable for the extensive commentary or gloss included with the work in its first publication, ascribed to an "E.K." E.K. is an intelligent, very subtle, sometimes wrong, and often deeply ironic commentator, who is sometimes assumed to be an alias of Spenser himself. The term sarcasm (Sarcasmus) is first recorded in English in Spenser's poem (October).
A sonnet sequence is a group of sonnets thematically unified to create a long work, although generally, unlike the stanza, each sonnet so connected can also be read as a meaningful separate unit.
Mathew Roydon was an English poet associated with the School of Night group of poets and writers.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Colin Clouts Come Home Againe is a pastoral poem by the English poet Edmund Spenser and published in 1595. It has been the focus of little critical attention in comparison with the poet's other works such as The Faerie Queene, yet it has been called the "greatest pastoral eclogue in the English language". In a tradition going back to Petrarch, the pastoral eclogue contains a dialogue between shepherds with a narrative or song as an inset, and which also can conceal allegories of a political or ecclesiastical nature.
Alice Spencer, Countess of Derby was an English noblewoman from the Spencer family and noted patron of the arts. Poet Edmund Spenser represented her as "Amaryllis" in his eclogue Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595) and dedicated his poem The Teares of the Muses (1591) to her.
Lodowick Bryskett, was a poet, translator, diplomat and Irish official. He served as Special Ambassador from England to Tuscany in 1600-01.
Epithalamion is an ode written by Edmund Spenser to his bride, Elizabeth Boyle, on their wedding day in 1594. It was first published in 1595 in London by William Ponsonby as part of a volume entitled Amoretti and Epithalamion. Written not long since by Edmunde Spenser. The volume included the sequence of 89 sonnets (Amoretti), along with a series of short poems called Anacreontics and the Epithalamion, a public poetic celebration of marriage. Only six complete copies of this first edition remain today, including one at the Folger Shakespeare Library and one at the Bodleian Library.
Complaints is a poetry collection by Edmund Spenser, published in 1591. It contains nine poems. Its publisher, William Ponsonby, added an introduction of his own.