In the previous post I discussed how Shakespeare used the source, style and perspective of Venus and Adonis to claim the mantle of Ovid with his first published work. In this I will consider how the specific story Shakespeare chose from Metamorphoses allowed him to engage the literary scene of 1590s London by invoking the figure and writing of Sir Philip Sidney.
“How similar is your fate to that of sweet Adonis! A beast gored his thigh with its tusk. How similar is my fate to that of sad Venus! For my favorite has now died too. Hateful human race, hateful race of beasts, why can’t a goddess’ favorite live in safety? Just now Sidney has died, dear to me, and likewise Adonis, dear to Venus
Henry Price, THE OBSEQUIES OF THAT RIGHT FAMOUS KNIGHT SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, Oxford, 1587.
According to R.L. Maslen, “Venus and Adonis (1593) is Shakespeare's cheeky and disturbing contribution to the fierce contemporary debate over the function of poetry.” No one was more central to that debate than Sidney, the courtier poet who had become a national icon after his tragic death in 1586 leading the English defence of Zutphen in the low countries against the armies of Philip of Spain. Sidney, who had been in and out of royal favor throughout his brief life, was never able to secure an office suitable to his talents and so in 1585 importuned his uncle Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, for a military position fighting the Spanish for the freedom of the protestant United Provinces of which Dudley was Governor General. As Governor of Flushing, Sidney led a successful raid on the Spanish garrison at Axel but was struck by a bullet which entered his thigh and shattered the bone while attempting to intercept troops and supplies near Zutphen in September of 1586. The wound turned gangrenous and he died a month later with his wife Frances Walsingham (daughter of Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and spymaster) at his side. England badly needed a national hero as they faced the impending threat of the Armada. Tales of Sidney’s battlefield heroism soon reached London; he had swooped in on horseback to relieve the surrounded Peregrine Bertie who after credited Sidney with saving his life, and after suffering the gunshot wound that would eventually kill him, he offered his waterskin to a common soldier, saying “your need is greater than mine.” When Sidney’s body was returned to England, he was celebrated with a state funeral that nearly bankrupted his father-in-law Walsingham, but began the process of immortalizing Sidney as soldier and statesman. In the following year both Cambridge University and Sidney’s alma mater Oxford produced volumes of poetry (in Latin) memorializing Sidney not just for his heroic death but also proclaiming him greatest of Elizabethan poets. Henry Price was an otherwise unknown Oxford undergraduate who contributed the Latin epigram comparing Sidney to Adonis that begins this essay.
In a 1986 article, Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and Sidney, John Buxton identified additional comparisons of Sidney to Adonis that appeared in these memorial compilations from William Gager, Lodowick Bryskett, John Lloyd, Edmund Spenser and an otherwise unidentified writer R.S. It is fair to say that it was a commonplace among Sidney’s friends and admirers.
The identification of Sidney with Adonis extended beyond the wound that caused his death. Philip Sidney was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney, Knight of the Garter, and best friend of King Edward VI, who died in his arms. His mother Mary was the daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Edward’s regent. Edward’s death brought ruin on their family as his attempt to crown Jane Grey successor to Edward failed and Mary claimed the crown backed by the forces of the Howard family and others that sought to return England to Catholicism. Henry Sidney had grown up in the household of the royal princes because his father William functioned as Steward for the Prince. Had Edward reached majority Henry was positioned to be his Charles Brandon (made a Duke and married to Henry VIIIs sister), but at least childhood affection spared him the fate of his in laws. In an effort to consolidate support Mary gave him an office supporting Thomas Radcliffe as Lord Deputy of Ireland (Radcliffe was married to Henry’s sister Francis), and Mary’s husband Philip II of Spain stood as Philip’s godfather. After Mary died, her half-sister Elizabeth made further use of the capable Sidney, while never quite allowing him into her inner circle. As Elizabeth’s Lord Deputy (Governor) of Ireland and President of the Council of Wales Henry governed two of the four countries Elizabeth ruled for much of her reign. When seventeen-year-old Philip left for the European tour customary for wealthy Elizabethans, he was feted as Prince of Ireland by monarchs who surely knew his real status, but none the less found him so impressive in his own right that he forged lifelong friendships with many of the political and intellectual leaders on the continent. Charles IX of France made him a Baron.
Upon his return Elizabeth was less enthusiastic. Ever jealous of courtiers who were not entirely dependent upon her favor, she pronounced that “my dogs wear my collars” and refused to give Sidney even the knighthood commonly granted to someone of his station. She did make Philip her cupbearer upon his return, a position which kept him near at hand as her personal servant, but Philip showed little enthusiasm for the traditional pantomime of courtship of the Queen, a convention complicated by his being the heir of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, her perennial favorite. When Leicester was out of favor after his secret marriage to royal cousin Lettice Knowles (widow of Walter Devereaux, Earl of Essex) it fell upon Philip to lead the opposition to the Queen’s proposed match to the French Duke d’Alencon. Philip’s widely circulated (but not published) letter offering reasons to decline the marriage transgressed acceptable counsel to the Queen from someone of his station (Puritan John Stubbes lost his right hand for publishing a pamphlet on the same theme). While this played out, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who favored the match, interrupted Sidney and his childhood friend Fulke Greville playing tennis at Greenwich. After de Vere demanded Sidney yield the court words were exchanged and a duel was arranged. Elizabeth pre-empted the duel, explaining to Sidney that he must know his place and banishing him from the court. He took refuge with his sister Mary, married at 15 to the 42-year-old Earl of Pembroke, among the wealthiest and most powerful men in England. At 18 in 1580 she was pregnant with their first child. While residing at Wilton, the Pembroke’s vast country estate, and at Mary’s private house Ivychurch a few miles away, Philip wrote stories to amuse his sister, bringing pages of a pastoral romance which would eventually be published as “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia.” He also wrote most of his Sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, exploring and subverting Petrarchan love poetry, and began a translation of the Psalms of David that Mary would finish after his death.
For his part de Vere fled to Paris where he conspired with other scions of ancient families (Charles Arundell and Charles Paget) to libel Leicester (in a scurrilous pamphlet entitled the Earl of Leicester’s Commonwealth published in 1584) and to depose the Queen and install the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots in her place. At length Oxford realized that the extent of his folly and returned seeking the pardon of the Queen and setting off a volley of accusations and recriminations with the other conspirators. He and Sidney wrote and performed a masque presented to the Queen in May of 1581 calculated to show that they had resolved their differences, but the perception then and later was that both had irreparably damaged their careers at court. That de Vere’s emblem was the blue boar gave the Adonis allegory additional significance as Oxford could be identified with Sidney’s nemesis. And if Sidney was Adonis and Oxford the Boar, the identification of Venus with the Queen was inescapable. It was commonplace in the courtly literature of the time to write fictional Goddesses and Queens as tributes to Elizabeth. But no one had ever created a literary figure like Shakespeare’s Venus. To entertain the image of Elizabeth in the fleshy, desperate cougar portrayed by Shakespeare was both unthinkable and unavoidable and lent Shakespeare’s poem an edge both thrilling and discomfiting that contributed to its success. It also had a vibrant topicality as Elizabeth’s new favorite, Leicester’s stepson Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, had already embarked on the fateful dance of politics and royal favor that would dominate the politics of the 1590s and eventually lead to his disgrace and execution.
During his lifetime Sidney followed the proscription against courtier poets publishing their work; his writing circulated only in manuscript among his friends. His aversion to publication is clear in the dedication he appended to his prose romance Arcadia.
“TO MY DEARE LADY AND SISTER, THE COVNTESSE OF PEMBROKE.
Here now haue you (most deare, and most worthye to bee most deare Lady) this idle worke of mine: which I feare (like the Spiders webbe) will be thought fitter to be swept away, then worne to any other purpose. For my part, in very trueth (as the cruell fathers among the Greekes, were woont to doe to the babes they would not foster) I could well finde in my heart, to cast out in some desert of forgetfulnesse this childe, which I am loath to father. But you desired me to doe it, and your desire, to my heart is an absolute commaundement. Now, it is done onely for you, only to you: if you keepe it to your selfe, or to such friends, who will weigh errors in the ballance of good will, I hope, for the fathers sake, it will be pardoned, perchaunce made much of, though in it selfe it haue deformities. For indeed, for seuerer eies it is not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled. Your deare selfe can best witnes the manner being done in loose sheetes of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest, by sheetes, sent vnto you, as fast as they were done. In summe, a young head, not so wel staied as I would it were, (and shall be when God will) hauing many many fancies begotten in it, if it had not beene in some way deliuered, woulde haue growen a monster, and more sorie might I be that they came in, then that they gat out. But his chiefe safety, shall bee the not walking abroade; and his chiefe protection, the bearing the liuery of your name; which (if much much good will doe not deceiue me) is worthie to be a sanctuarie for a greater offender. This say I, because I know the vertue so; and this say I, because it may be euer so, or to say better, because it will be euer so. Reade it then at your idle times, and the follies your good iudgement will finde in it, blame not, but laugh at. And so, looking for no better stuffe, then, as in a Haberdashers shoppe, glasses, or feathers, you will continue to loue the writer, who doth exceedingly loue you, and moste moste heartilie praies you may long liue, to be a principall ornament to the family of the Sidneis.
Your louing brother.
Philip Sidney”
This dedication, calling his writing “but a trifle” and noting that the Countess is “worthy to be a sanctuary for a greater offender” is echoed in the dedication of Venus and Adonis. The tone of the poem owes much to Sidney’s Arcadia as well. Both exemplify Sidney’s maxim that poetry should first delight, then instruct and their success was reflected in their being the most frequently printed works of the period. But it was Sidney’s work of literary criticism, his “Defence of Poesy” that provides the subtext of Shakespeare’s poem and elevates it into something much more than the scandalous romp through mythology it might appear at first glance.
Sidney wrote the Defence of Poesy in response to Stephen Gosson’s School of Abuse, an attack on the public stage and its players. Gosson dedicated the polemic to Philip expecting that the Protestant champion would be sympathetic to his cause. Instead, Philip wrote what would remain the most influential work of literary criticism for centuries, elevating Poesy (fiction) writing above all other literary endeavors. Gossen’s primary charge was that poets (and playwrights) made vice too attractive with their stories of the sexual adventures of gods and heroes and plots and connivances of mortal villains. In perhaps his most famous passage from his subsequent Apology for the School of Abuse, Gosson complains about poets’ admiration for the Goddess of Love in terms that apparently inspired Shakespeare’s poem:
“Venus a notorious strumpet, that lay with Mars, with Mercurie, with Jupiter, with Anchises, with Butes, with Adones, that taught the women in Cyprus to set up a Stewes, too hyre out themselues as hackneies, for gaine, and that made her self as common as a Barbars chayre, by Poets is placed for a goddesse in heauen. Al these whome the Poetes haue called gods and goddesses, for the most part, were bastardes begotten in adulterie, or very lewde livers, which had no sooner defiled their beddes, but they were snatchte up to the skyes and made starres, in so much that Juno crieth out in Seneca, Tellus colenda eſt, pellicles cælum tenent ; Lets dwel in earth , for heauen is full of whores.”
Gosson calls for Elizabethans to follow Plato’s remedy and ban poets and their lascivious plays from the “Republic.” The dangers of writing being misinterpreted to evil ends was a commonplace in period, particularly associated with the Latin poet Ovid. In the preface to his translation of Metamorphosis Arthur Golding warns:
And therfore whooso dooth attempt the Poets woorkes too reede, Must bring with him a stayed head and judgement too proceede. For as there bee most wholsome hestes and precepts too bee found. So are theyr rockes and shallowe shelves too ronne the ship a ground. Some naughtie persone seeing vyce shewd lyvely in his hew, Dooth take occasion by and by like vices too ensew. Another beeing more severe than wisdome dooth requyre, Beeholding vice (too outward shewe) exalted in desyre, Condemneth by and by the booke and him that did it make, And willes it too be burnd with fyre for lewd example sake.
It was these latter from whom Sidney defended poesy, quoting Scaliger, “Qua authoritate barbari quidam atq; hispidi abuti velint ad poetas e rep. Exigendos.” (There are some barbarians who would exile poets from the republic on the authority of Plato). Sidney found a response in another dialogue of Plato, Phaedrus.
In Phaedrus the eponymous character is a student of rhetoric in Athens who encounters Socrates shortly after hearing a Sophist argue that a young man should bestow his favors on a (male) patron that does not love him rather than one that does. He challenges Socrates to make a better argument, which he does by arguing that love is a madness which leads to regret and not a reliable basis for action. Socrates then reverses himself and, apologizing for offending the Gods, provides a counter argument that love is a divinely inspired madness that is essential to awaken human potential. He famously compares the soul to chariot drawn by two horses, a white horse disposed to reason that pulls man toward enlightenment and black one subject to swings of passion that can divert him from a true path. He likens rhetoric to the black horse, purposing to sway men as a means to achieving the speaker’s desire rather than to lead them to virtue. Finally, he claims that in contrast Philosophy aims to impart divine truths to be fostered in men of virtue by planting seeds of wisdom in the ears (a play on ploughed rows in fields) of those prepared to receive them.
The heart of Sidney’s Defense was to remove poetry (used as a synonym for fiction) from rhetoric and instead make it an expression of Philosophy. He noted that men learned virtue from the examples of history and from the arguments of those who preached virtue, but that both were unreliable, history because it so often mixed virtue and vice in ways that left unclear its lessons and rhetoric because it was too often a tool for those pursuing their own less than virtuous agendas, and both because the prize of learning was hidden within the tedium of scholarship. Unlike these purportedly more respectable pursuits, Sidney claimed that poets could not lie because they promised no truths. But more, he claimed that, being free from the constraints of describing experienced reality, poets could create a fictional world in which deeper truths could shine forth for those who could see them. Sidney in turn got the core of his idea from Julius Caesar Scaliger who advanced the idea of poet as maker from the Greek word poesis, a view echoed by Jonson’s favorite classical writer Horace in his Ars Poetica and referenced in Jonson’s elegy to Shakespeare in the First Folio.
For Sidney the virtuous poet wrapped divine truth in delightful wrappings – a prescription Shakespeare follows in exploring the role of literature and the interplay of reason and passion in his sometime scandalous and sometime comic tale.
Continue reading: Henry Wriothesley and Clapham's Narcissus