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