Sidney: The Critical Heritage

Sir Philip Sidney (1554‐1586) was a soldier, courtier, poet and writer of Arcadian prose who died on the field of Zutphen, reportedly passing on his flask of water to a wounded soldier and saying: “Thy necessity is greater than mine”. His literary output was not prolific but, as this book shows, it gave rise to a great volume of critical comment, both contemporary and continuing over the years. The reason for this is that Sidney’s influence on the English literature produced in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras was profound. Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other writers of those years owed...