part of his reign and who were, to Surrey’s way of
thinking, corrupting the king. During his short life,
Surrey sometimes fell afoul of the king and his advisers
and was jailed more than once. It is no wonder, there-
fore, that many critics have understood this poem as
an implicit criticism of Henry VIII, though we have no
direct evidence to support this conjecture.
The poem’s rhyme scheme is that of the ENGLISH
SONNET; however, unlike the vast majority of Surrey’s
other sonnets, which deal with amatory themes, this
poem’s theme is civic. The speaker is disgusted by the
unnamed king’s lack of self-control, the unnamed king
being King Sardanapalus, a legendary king of Assyria
whom earlier authors such as JOHN GOWER and JOHN
LYDGATE had used as an EXEMPLUM of degenerate king-
ship. Throughout the poem, Surrey masterfully uses
antithesis, a common Renaissance rhetorical fi gure, to
illuminate the degeneracy of this king. For example,
the opening QUATRAIN contrasts corrupted peace (ll.
1–2) with dignifi ed war (ll. 3–4). The Assyrians’ king
has yielded to sloth, living “in peace with foul desire”
(l. 1), and has shown no interest in nobly defi ning
himself through “martial art” (l. 4). This personal irre-
sponsibility is signifi cant because Renaissance theories
of kingship identifi ed the king’s personal body with
the body politic. If the king permitted his body to
degenerate through irresponsible living, the body poli-
tic would inevitably follow suit.
The second quatrain employs an even more tightly
focused antithetical structure. On each side of the four
lines’ CAESURAs, Surrey places contrasting images:
swords and kisses (l. 5); the king’s “lady’s side” and his
“targe [his shield]” (l. 6), “glutton feasts” and “soldier’s
fare” (l. 7), and fi nally contrasting the weight of the
king’s helmet to “a garland’s charge [weight]” (l. 8).
The quatrain also manages to appeal to all fi ve senses:
Not only do we clearly see all that the speaker describes,
we also hear the “dint of swords,” feel the “lady’s side,”
taste the “glutton feasts,” and smell the king’s garland.
The fi nal quatrain again employs an antithetical
structure, this time making more explicit what the sec-
ond quatrain implied: The king has become danger-
ously effeminate. He “scace [scarcely]” retains “the
name of manhood” (l. 9), because he has permitted
himself to be “Drenched in sloth and womanish
delight” (l. 10). His less than manly approach to living
(read less than Stoical) has left him “Feeble of sprite,
impatient of pain” (l. 11) and as a result he has “lost his
honor and his right” (l. 12). The couplet fi nishes on an
ironical note, given that only by means of suicide does
the king “show some manful deed” (l. 14).
Surrey has been called the quintessential courtier-
poet because he was not only a nobleman of great
intelligence and learning, he was also a man of action,
who, when on good terms with Henry VIII, led the
king’s troops into battle against the French and served
on numerous occasions as Henry’s personal ambassa-
dor to other monarchs. In short, he lived a dutiful
life—the absolute antithesis of the life lived by the
Assyrians’ king.
FURTHER READING
Session, William A. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Twayne’s
English Authors Series. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1986.
Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medi-
aeval Political Theory. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1957.
Surrey, Henry Howard, earl of. Henry Howard, Earl of Sur-
rey: Selected Poems. Edited by Dennis Keane. New York:
Routledge, 2003.
Richard J. ErableASTROPHIL AND STELLA (OVERVIEW)
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (ca. 1582) SIR PHILIP SIDNEY’s
Astrophil and Stella, a monument of English Renais-
sance verse, is considered the fi rst complete SONNET
SEQUENCE in English. Though its exact date of composi-
tion is unknown, the poems are thought to have been
written in the early 1580s, and the sequence was fi rst
published in 1591. Publisher Thomas Newman
released two editions of the poems during this year:
The fi rst was unauthorized, based on a circulating
manuscript, and the second was reportedly based on a
manuscript provided by the Sidney family. What has
become the authorized and authoritative version
appeared in the 1598 printing of The Countess of Pem-
broke’s Arcadia. The 1591 edition excluded Sidney’s
Sonnet 37, the 11th Song, and portions of the Eighth
Song, placing them at the end of the sonnets, while the
1598 edition distributes the songs throughout the text.
The substance and ordering of the 1598 edition is34 ASTROPHIL AND STELLA