Sidney, Sir Philip

(1554-1586)

   Born at Penshurst, Kent, the godson of Philip II of Spain, Queen Mary's husband, he was educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, but did not graduate. A favorite of Queen Elizabeth, he was sent on several diplomatic missions, was knighted in 1583, and appointed governor of Flushing in the Netherlands in 1585. In 1586 he joined an expedition sent to aid the Netherlands against Spain, where he died of wounds received in a raid on a Spanish convoy at Zutphen in the Netherlands. Legend has it that, when mortally wounded, Sidney gave his cup of water to another soldier, with the words "Thy need is greater than mine." He was buried in St. Pauls' Cathedral, London. His pastoral romance Arcadia (1590) became a model for later pastoral poetry; Astrophel and Stella (1591) was a sequence of 108 sonnets. The Defence of Poesie was published in 1595. Some of his poems: "Absence," "Dispraise of a Courtly Life," "He That Loves," "Leave Me O Love," "Love Me, O Love," "The Seven Wonders of England," "Thou Blind Man's Mark."

   Sources: Biography of Sir Philp Sidney (http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/sidbio.htm). Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. ChadwyckHealey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Erotic Poetry: The Lyrics, Ballads, Idylls, and Epics of Love-Classical to Contemporary. William Cole, ed. Random House, 1963. Microsoft Encarta 2006 (DVD). Microsoft Corporation, 2006. Selected Poems of Sir Philip Sidney. Catherine Bates, ed. Penguin Books, 1994. Silver Poets of the Sixteenth Century. Gerald Bullett, ed. J.M. Dent, 1947. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Heath Introduction to Poetry. 4th edition. Joseph DeRoche, ed. D.C. Heath, 1992. The London Book of English Verse. Herbert Read and Barbara Dobree, eds. MacMillan, 1952. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.