feel sorry for Sidney: “O Philomela fair, O take some
gladness, / That here is juster cause of plaintful sad-
ness” (ll. 9–10).
Initially commiserating with Philomela, Sidney then
berates her for vocalizing her pain when he himself
cannot. Philomela, Sidney claims, at least can express
her sadness through song and thus purge herself of it,
but he, as a man, must suffer in silence. With her song,
he claims, “Thine earth now springs,” but as he can say
nothing in his situation, “mine fadeth” (l. 11). He ends
the fi rst STANZA by underscoring her emotional release
through song and his own emotional strain in silence:
“Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth” (l.
12). At this point, it becomes clear that this poem is
not only a retelling of the Philomela myth and a clever
parody of a popular song, but is also in part a criticism
of the social mores dictating that a woman may express
her emotions openly while a man may not. It also refers
to the popular belief that certain songbirds sang their
most beautiful song immediately before their death,
caused by plunging their breast onto a thorn.
In the second stanza, Sidney continues his diatribe
against Philomela’s vocalization of her experience, fl ip-
pantly observing that “Alas, she has no other cause of
anguish / But Tereus’ love, on her by strong hand wro-
ken, / Wherein she suffering, all her spirits languish; /
Full womanlike complains her will was broken” (ll.
13–16). Indeed, Sidney almost seems to be implying
here that Philomela did not mind things as much as
she claims, but rather is making use of her position as
a woman to claim she has been wronged, therefore
maintaining her own innocence and chastity in the face
of the act committed. In other words, she could enjoy
physical love without social consequences, something
permitted to no man in polite society.
Sidney then continues on with his own side of
things, claiming, “I, who daily craving, / Cannot have
to content me, / Have more cause to lament me, / Since
wanting is more woe than too much having” (ll. 17–
20). These lines clearly reveal the difference between
the sexes: Women see sexuality as an onerous duty
forced upon them, while men see it as something
desired but rarely achieved.
Sidney embraces the male perspective: Women are
cruel torturers who tease men with their allure but
then protest when men pursue them, unfairly exploit-
ing the woman’s generally acknowledged right to voice
her emotions and causing men to suffer in agonized
silence at their cruel behavior. By making use of the
classic Philomela myth, he indicates that this sort of
behavior and these tensions between the sexes have
been going on since the beginnings of civilization, and
the tongue-in-cheek parody of a contemporary Italian
love song allows him to express this highly vitriolic
point of view in a fashionable and nonthreatening
manner via a recognizable, enjoyable form that allows
the whole thing to appear innocuous. He is able to air
his views safely in the guise of a poetry-writing exer-
cise. Sidney may claim again in the second stanza that
Philomela has a voice and he has none, that “Thine
earth now springs, mine fadeth; / Thy thorn without,
my thorn my heart invadeth” (ll. 23–24), but the poem
itself is his song, and Philomela, a mere myth now
dead and gone, has nothing more to say on the matter.
Sidney has therefore cleverly won his argument and
had the last word.
Recent gender criticism has examined the implica-
tions of Sidney’s gender role swapping—something he
occasionally does in the SONNETs as well, while feminist
critics have looked at his views of rape. Contextualized
within early modern society, Sidney’s views are not
surprising; however, they still validate the false percep-
tion of women as commodities and lustful.
FURTHER READING
Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. Sir Philip Sidney: The Major
Works. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kay, Dennis, ed. Sir Philip Sidney: An Anthology of Modern
Criticism. Oxford University Press, 1988.
Melissa A. ElmesNORMAN CONQUEST, THE (1066) The
Norman Conquest of England began on September 27,
1066, when the forces of William the Bastard, duke of
Normandy, later known as William the Conqueror,
landed on the southern coast of England at Pevensey,
but it continued throughout the formative years of the
English nation. William completed military conquest
of England when he successfully defeated the last
Anglo-Saxon king of England, Harold Godwinson, onNORMAN CONQUEST, THE 289