love being congruous with Adam’s knowledge of good
and evil.
See also ASTROPHIL AND STELLA (OVERVIEW); SIDNEY, SIR
PHILIP.
FURTHER READING
Richards, Jennifer. “Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney, and Prot-
estant Poetics.” Sidney Newsletter & Journal 14, no. 1
(1996): 28–37.
Joel B. Davis
Astrophil and Stella: Sonnet 18 (“With what
sharp checks I in myself am shent”) SIR PHILIP
SIDNEY (ca. 1582) This SONNET is the fi rst in the
Astrophil and Stella SONNET SEQUENCE that takes full
advantage of the contrastive possibilities of the terminal
COUPLET, projecting the object of desire as oppositional
to an entire set of inherited values. The opening OCTAVE
of this ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNET is also deeply
invested in the oppositional dialectic of desire. Through-
out the poem, three sets of opposites (reason–passion,
natural position–artful indolence, wealth–bankruptcy)
are combined to describe, through negation, the right-
ful place of the desiring subject. The speaker is “banck-
rout” (l. 3) and “unable quite to pay even Nature’s rent”
(l. 5) because “my wealth I have most idly spent” (l.
8)—a condition not unknown to the young aristocrats
of the day. It is “Reason’s audite” (l. 2) that demon-
strates that the speaker’s natural, aristocratic, and ulti-
mately desirable position has been pawned. This form
of rational introspection into the speaker’s failure to live
up to his inherited expectations leads to a kind of self-
loathing at the end of the octave.
The expected VOLTA between the octave and the SES-
TET never comes as the litany of self-abuse continues.
The rhyme of the intellectual “toyes” (l. 9) the speaker
creates—his poetry with “vaine annoyes” (l. 11)—is
reminiscent of SIR PHILIP SIDNEY’s own suggestions that
his writings Arcadia and the DEFENSE OF POESY were tri-
fl es and ink-wasting. The indolence and loss of pur-
pose is concluded and surpassed in line 12 with a
suggestion of the speaker’s own damnation: “I see my
course to lose my self doth bend.” In the loss of his
“self,” the speaker implies the loss of his own soul,
which is against nature and reason.
The COUPLET turns on the rest of the poem, framing
Stella and the inherited values of an aristocratic culture
as mutually incompatible. The speaker recognizes that
his actions are denying him his “birthright” (l. 6), yet he
is not as saddened by that as by the fact that he cannot
lose more “for Stella’s sake” (l. 14). The repeated “no”
midway through the couplet turns the speaker’s love
for Stella into desire for greater sorrow, thus pitting
Petrarchan self-loathing against a uniquely English her-
itage of aristocratic birthright and the loss of wealth.
See also ASTROPHIL AND STELLA (OVERVIEW).
Melissa A. ElmesAstrophil and Stella: Sonnet 20 (“Fly, fl y, my
friends, I have my death-wound, fl y”) SIR PHILIP
SIDNEY (ca. 1582) This SONNET refl ects the view-
point of a soldier who has just received a mortal
wound. The fi rst OCTAVE begins with the narrator tell-
ing his friends to fl y for he has received his “death
wound” (l. 1). A “muth’ring boy” (l. 2) lay in ambush
“like a thief” and assailed the narrator, the “wrongful
prey” (l. 4). The concluding SESTET details the narrator’s
naïve approach to the place of ambush—enjoying the
“prospect” (l. 10), yet unaware that his assailant lay in
wait. The narrator’s serenity is broken when he sees his
attacker move with “lightening grace” and fi re at him.
The fi nal line concludes with the narrator feeling the
bullet hitting his heart.
The sonnet displays a number of Renaissance con-
ventions. One is the horror of the advent of modern
warfare (the narrator is shot from ambush, not slain in
hand-to-hand combat). Another is the development of
an elaborate CONCEIT by which the entire sonnet could
be seen as an ALLEGORY for an individual falling in love:
The unsuspecting narrator is pierced in the heart by a
bullet from an unexpected source, just as the hapless
Astrophil was ambushed by the waiting Stella, who
struck his heart with love.
See also ASTROPHIL AND STELLA (OVERVIEW); SIDNEY, SIR
PHILIP,
FURTHER READING
Borris, Kenneth. Allegory and Epic in English Renaissance Lit-
erature: Heroic Form in Sidney, Spenser, and Milton. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Joseph BeckerASTROPHIL AND STELLA: SONNET 20 43