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The Relations of Spenser and Sidney

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

T. P. Harrison Jr.
T. P. Harrison Jr.*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas
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Extract

Until further biographical information is disclosed the problem of the personal relations of Spenser and Sidney remains open to conjecture. Mainly two objections oppose the natural assumption that the two men were intimate in personal and literary matters: first, Spenser's vagueness, or perhaps reticence, when in a letter to Harvey, October, 1579, he speaks of being “in some use of familiarity” with Sidney; and second, his unaccountable delay in joining the chorus of grief at Sidney's death. These facts, and others less important, have been cited as indicating the absence of intimacy; while on the other hand effort has been made to explain them in such a way that the pleasing picture of friendship might not be damaged.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1930 , pp. 712 - 731
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1930

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References

1 The tradition of intimacy was begun by Edward Phillips, whose assertions were completely blind. Among the more or less enthusiastic subscribers to this tradition are Mackail, Grosart, Fox-Bourne, Church, Symonds, Addleshaw, Courthope, and Dodge; the most ardent of disclaimants are Long and Higginson. A sane and unbiased discussion of the probable personal relations of Spenser and Sidney is that of de Sélincourt (Oxford ed. of Spenser, 1916, xii-xiv).

2 Direct studies of this subject are those by Professor Edwin Greenlaw: “Sidney's Arcadia as an Example of Elizabethan Allegory,” Kittredge Anniversary Papers (1913), 327-337; “Shakespeare's Pastorals,” Studies in Philology, XIII (1916), 122-154; and “The Captivity Episode in Sidney's Arcadia,” Manly Anniversary Papers (1923), 54-63. Other studies are: P. W. Long, “Spenser and Sidney,” Anglia XXXVIII (1914), 173-193, J. J. Higginson, The Shepherd's Calender, Columbia Univ. Pr., 1912, 243-286, and J. B. Fletcher, “Areopagus and Pléiade,” J.E.G.Ph. II (1898), 429-453.

3 Professor A. S. Cook decides upon the latter date (cf. ed. of Defense, xiii). Wallace (Life, 239) suggests the years 1579-1583 as the period of composition.

4 Professor Greenlaw (“The Shepherd's Calendar, II,” St. in Ph. XI (1913), 1-25 has noticed that both Sidney and Spenser were interested in Leicester's attempts to prevent the French marriage, both aided him with their pens, and both suffered as a consequence. He points out that the evidence of Virgil's Gnat proves that, “Spenser was suffering exile for doing what Leicester encouraged him to do, perhaps ordered him to do” (15, n. 9); and he quotes part of a letter from Languet to Sidney suggesting that Sidney's bold advice to the Queen was prompted by Leicester.

5 This point is quite adequately demonstrated by Greenlaw, op. cit., K.A.P., 327.

6 In 1577 Sidney wrote “A Discourse on Irish Affairs,” only a fragment of which has survived. In effect this essay was a defense of Sir Henry's conduct as Governor-General. Spenser's tract, “A Veue of the Present State of Ireland,” was given in large part to a justification of the policy of Lord Grey (1580-82), who, like Sir Henry Sidney, was relieved of the management of Irish affairs by the dissatisfied queen. Professor Evelyn Albright “‘The Dating of Spenser's ‘Mutability’ Cantos,” St. in Ph. XXVI (1929), 482 ff.) believes it likely that as early as 1579 Sidney proposed to Spenser a book on Irish affairs, a book which was to justify Sir Henry's policies, and that later Spenser included in his defense Lord Grey, who before going to Ireland had been advised by Sir Henry and Sir Philip.

7 As Edward Fulton observes (“Spenser, Sidney, and the Areopagus,” Mod. Lang. Notes XXXI (1916), 372-4), absence of information about the Areopagus need not affect the likelihood of literary relations between Sidney and Spenser.

8 R. W. Zandvoort, in “Sidney's Arcadia, A Comparison between the Two Versions” (Amsterdam, 1929), 10-12, finds in the Ms. of the Old Arcadia in Queen's College, Oxford, a unique passage consisting of a debate between shepherds on the subject of native and classical metres. If authentic, it affords an interesting commentary upon Sidney's preoccupations at the time of the first draft, 1580.

9 Defense, ed. Cook, 46.

10 Op. cit., 431-432.

11 Op. cit., 262.

12 P. 47, ed. Cook. Greenlaw (St. in Ph. XI (1914), 9) seeks to identify the classical theories of Sidney and Spenser, the S.C. being Spenser's “romantic modifications of Aristotelian theory. In his Arcadia, written at about the same time as the Calender and the Defense, Sidney followed a pseudo-Aristotelian theory of the epic; the Calender is a precisely analogous modification of the classical pastoral, and is indeed nearer to Theocritus and Virgil than the Arcadia is to Homer and Virgil.”

13 Greenlaw (PMLA XXVI, 1911) supposes Sidney unwilling to speak freely about the Calender because of Spenser's unpopularity resulting from Mother Hubberds Tale. Professor C. R. Baskervill (PMLA XXVIII (1913), 309, n. 2) expresses a similar notion concerning Spenser's delayed elegy on Sidney's death: “Possibly his absence from England accounts sufficiently for his silence, but it also seems to me possible that he resented Leicester's failure to come to his support in the trouble which he mentions in Virgils Gnat, and that he included Sidney in his resentment.—Astrophel seems thoroughly perfunctory.”

14 Cf. Old Arcadia (ed. Feuillerat) 265-266 and 307-309; the latter is a “double sestina.”

15 Greville's statements require modification, as shown by R. W. Zandvoort (op. cit., 120-124), though there is no reason, as this writer believes, to discount altogether Greville's interpretation of Sidney's motives in writing. The point will be discussed later.

16 Long (op. cit. 39) quotes a sentence from the Defense in which apparently Sidney encourages Spenser: “I dare undertake Orlando or honest King Arthur will never displease a soldier” (ed. Cook, 39). Long disclaims the theory of personal intimacy and entirely discounts the possibility of mutual influence.

17 The following account depends greatly upon the studies of Greenlaw, who, however, is perhaps extreme in his precise identification of the methods of Sidney and Spenser.

18 D. L. Clark (Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance, Columbia Univ. Pr., 1922, 149-150) is clearly wrong in his belief that Harington disagreed with Sidney as to poetical aims and content; on the contrary, their ideas entirely coincide in this regard.

19 Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904), II, 216-217.

20 That this involved method of introducing new personages and new histories was derived in part from Montemayor's Diana, has been suggested by the present writer (Tex. St. in Engl., no. 6 (1926), 53 ff.). Spenser's structural plan owes a good deal to Ariosto, as indicated by A. H. Gilbert (PMLA XXXIV (1919), 225 ff.).

21 Op. cit., 332.

22 Cook (op. cit., 94-95), finding this Renaissance sentiment in the Defense, quotes Milton's famous passage describing “the true wayfaring Christian,” and traces parallels in Plutarch and Euripides. Had not Milton the grudge against Sidney incurred in Charles I's possession of Pamela's prayer, perhaps he would have admitted Sidney, too, as “a better teacher than Aquinas” and the Arcadia other than a “vain amatorious poem.”

23 In many of the late chivalric and pastoral romances a knight assumes shepherd's garb in order to woo a rustic maiden.

24 “The Faerie Queene and the Diana,” Phil. Quarterly IX (1930), 51-56.

25 “Spenser and Lucretius,” St. in Ph. XVII (1920), 440 ff.

26 “The Cecropia Episode in Sidney's Arcadia,” Manly Anniversary Papers (1923), 54 ff.

27 Spenser's Cosmic Philosophy and his Religion,“ PMLA XLIV (1929), 715 ff.

28 Ed. Feuillerat, I, 402-410.

29 Op. cit., M.A.P., 63.

30 Greenlaw (op. cit., 61-62) perceives direct paraphrase of the Latin poem. 31 “Concerning Nature in The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia,” St. in Ph. XXIV (1927), 207 ff. Cf. p. 213.

32 Op. cit., 62.

33 Op. cit., 211.

34 Translation of H. A. J. Munro, p. 42.

35 Cf. John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1920), pp. 204 ff., especially p. 237, and Frank Thilly, History of Philosophy (1922), p. 32.

36 “Curiously enough practically all of the borrowings from this book in the Arcadia are from the first six chapters, although they form but a small fragment of the book as a whole” (Whitney, op. cit., p. 209).

37 “The Trewnesse of the Christian Religion,” ed. Feuillerat, III, 267.

38 Op. cit., 737 ff.

39 Op. cit., 211-212.

40 Ibid., 209-210.

41 Arcadia, 410.

42 Op. cit., 737.

43 Ed., Defense, xiii-xiv.

44 Ronald B. Levinson, “Spenser and Bruno,” PMLA XLIII (1928), 675 ff.

45 Op. cit., 747-749.

46 “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost.” St. in Ph. XVII (1920), 320 ff.

47 Op. cit., 720.

48 Op. cit., M.A.P., 56-59.

49 Ibid., 56-58.

50 This theory was first set forth in Notes and Queries (Third Series, vols. III and IV, 1863), “The Arcadia Unveiled” and “The Faerie Queene Unveiled.” The author, who signs himself as C (Collier?), professes to reveal the identities of all the major figures in Sidney and Spenser.

51 Justifying Greville's exposition of Sidney's purposes in the Arcadia, Greenlaw (op. cit., K.A.P. and M.A.P.) admits without reservation the presence of historical allegory. Zandvoort (loc. cit.) rejects the conclusions of both Greville and Greenlaw, asserting that in spite of the unconscious intrusion of political and philosophical matter, Sidney's purpose as he proceeded to revise remained unchanged; that is, he merely continued to need “an outlet for his fancies and ideas” (p. 198). Between the two views a middle ground should be sought.

52 Merritt Y. Hughes (“Virgilian Allegory and The Faerie Queene,” PMLA XLIV (1929), 696 ff.), quoting from the Defense, concludes that in Spenser “Sidney's direct appreciation of the worthies created by Homer, Virgil, and Ariosto is stiffened by allegory.” Sidney's aims in the Arcadia, however, include “an ensample of a good governour” as well as that “of a vertuous man.”

53 Op. cit., K.A.P., 331 ff.

54 Ibid., 337.

55 “Spenser and Utopia,” St. in Ph. XVII (1919), 144.

56 Spenser's Veue and the F.Q. V attest his undoubted sympathy with Machiavellian political policy. Certain characters in the Arcadia and allusions to the Italian in the Sidney-Languet Letters indicate Sidney's acquaintance (cf. Greenlaw, op. cit., K.A.P., 334.). Miss Albright (op. cit., St. in Ph. XXVI (1929), 482 ff.), noting in Sidney's Discourse on Irish Affairs his advocacy of Machiavellian measures, suggests Spenser's later dependence upon Sidney's tract. There is no evidence to support the conjecture; both men express the traditional attitude.