tient schoolboy refusing to learn, and Astrophil, while
appearing clever, also appears in an unfl attering light.
See also ASTROPHIL AND STELLA (OVERVIEW).
Joel B. Davis
Astrophil and Stella: Sonnet 60 (“When my
good Angel guides me to the place”) SIR PHILIP
SIDNEY (ca. 1582) Sonnet 60 describes the effects of
Astrophil’s effort in Sonnet 45 to make himself a fi c-
tional character, thereby encouraging Stella to love and
pity his image, not himself. Discussing Stella in the
third person, Astrophil begins by describing in typical
Petrarchan terms his pleasure in Stella’s presence. Yet
as he sees Stella, he must realize that she takes no plea-
sure in his presence. Her eyes deliver fi erce looks of
disdain. When he is away from her, however, Stella
laments and pities him in his absence. He is trapped in
a paradoxical situation: In order to have Stella’s love,
he must forego her presence; if he is to have her pres-
ence, she will not love him. As in Sonnet 45, he can
only win her pity through his own absence from her.
This ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNET introduces sad-
ness and dejection on the part of Astrophil that lasts
through the end of the sequence. This shift is made par-
ticularly poignant by the relative levity of the previous
sonnet. Sonnet 59 is a fairly lighthearted CONCEIT of the
lover competing with his lady’s lapdog. This somewhat
congenial domestic scene of Astrophil vying with Stella
and her dog is abruptly replaced in Sonnet 60 by Astro-
phil languishing far from his beloved. He gazes up, pin-
ing “all my good I do in Stella see” (l. 2), while she, in
response to his gaze, “throwes only down on [him] /
Thundred disdaines and lightnings of disgrace” (ll. 3–
4). The phrase all my good complicates the fi rst QUA-
TRAIN. It might mean that the lover uses Stella’s presence
to manifest his own goodness, a narcissistic maneuver
common in Petrarchan verse. Although such poems
seem to be in praise of a beloved, often the speaker uses
his beloved as proof of his own worth. The fact that
Astrophil loves Stella says less about her worthiness
than about his excellent taste in loving her. She is, how-
ever, blind to the goodness in Astrophil that she refl ects.
There is a gap between Astrophil’s perception of him-
self and what Stella sees. His presence before her
inspires her scorn. It is equally plausible that all my good
refers more generally to the good qualities he recog-
nizes and appreciates in Stella. Stella’s response to
Astrophil’s gaze is itself notable because it introduces
the notion that love and presence are incompatible.
This incompatibility pervades Sonnet 60 and recurs
throughout the rest of the SONNET SEQUENCE.
The second quatrain answers the fi rst. If the fi rst
suggests that presence cannot lead to love, the second
suggests that absence can. As soon as Astrophil is
made to “fall from her site, then sweetly she / With
words, wherein the Muses’s treasures be, / Shewes
love and pitie to [his] absent case” (ll. 6–8). Stella her-
self becomes a poet, her voice carrying the “Muses’s
treasures” (l. 7). She is inspired by the Muses of classi-
cal mythology who preside over poetry and the other
arts. Her words of pity, however, require her lover’s
absence, which suggests that she refashions the absent
Astrophil into an at least partially imagined lover
whose case she wishes to plead. She has taken the
advice Astrophil provides her in Sonnet 45 and has
begun to “pity the tale” of him. (l. 14). Thus, the poem
intimates, Stella engages in the same idealized “pres-
encing” of Astrophil as he does of her in almost every
poem.
Stella’s paradoxical behavior makes Astrophil con-
fused, and he expresses this confusion through oxy-
moron, a fi gure commonly used to express the torment
of unrequited love in Petrarchan verse. He fi nds he
“cannot looke into / The ground of this fi erce Love and
lovely hate” (ll. 10–11). This CHIASMUS presents the
lack of logic Astrophil perceives at Stella’s inability to
love him while he stands before her, though she can
love him when he is out of view. The illogical situation
leads the language of the poem into confusion as well.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY conveys this confusion by again using
oxymoron and chiasmus: “Then some good body tell
me how I do, / Whose presence, absence, absence pres-
ence is; / Blist in my curse, and cursed in my blisse” (ll.
12–14). For Astrophil, his presence before the lady
means his absence in her affections and vice versa. He
is thus blessed by her love when he is cursed by not
being near her, and cursed by her scorn when he
stands blissfully before her.ASTROPHIL AND STELLA: SONNET 60 55