poetry (that is, literature) imitates the golden Idea, what should be, rather than the
br azen actuality, what is. It delights and moves us to virtue, unlike tedious philos-
ophy or unedifying history. Plato’s charge that poets lie and corrupt applies to bad
poets only. Contemporary poetry is full of abuses; ideally it would promote heroic
virtue.
The Defence is also a prospectus. English literature to date did not satisfy
Sidney;had he lived to be sixty, he could have seen all of Shakespeare’s plays. His
moral idealism is an attra ctive if simple version of the role-model theory,
animated by an enthusiasm for heroic literature. Yet for all the ardour and
exuberance of his 25 years, Sidney was no utopian: ‘our erected wit maketh us
know what perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto
it’ (Defence). The sobriety of northern Christian humanism informs the rewrit-
ing ofArcadia undertaken after the Defence: showing the follies of love, and the
wor se follies of honour and pride, to be avoided rather than imitated. Sidney’s
inventive play has hidden his sanity and seriousness. He was an original writer as
well as an origin.96 3 · TUDOR LITERATURE: 1500–1603
Elizabeth I,Queen of England and Ireland,c.1588
c.1588. A version of the Armada portrait
attributed to George Gower.