action,” and the most perfect of all his poems was his own life. Three centuries have passed since he died at Arnhem, yet we can still feel the fascination of his gracious personality, and catch something of the charm that made all men love him. New ideas may have come before our eyes, and life has perhaps been made more complex and more difficult for us that it was for him, but it is well to keep him in our memory, the courtly Elizabethan hero, the writer of the sonnets to Stella, the Christian gentleman who gave the cup of water to the wounded soldier at Zutphen.”
Wilson, A. N. The Elizabethans. 2011.
The revised Arcadia “is a much richer, more complicated, more satisfying reading experience than the simpler version (known as the Old Arcadia). [Sidney] purged the story of improprieties—Pyrocles does not, as in the old version, sleep with Philoclea, nor is Musidorus tempted to rape Pamela. The comedy is still there; the inherent absurdity of the older characters, Basilius and his wife Gynecia, both being in love with Pyrocles in drag is exquisitely worked out. And the scene in which Basilius thinks he is sleeping with ‘Zelmane,’ but in fact makes love to his own wife in the dark, is both hilarious and deeply touching. The device, taken up and imitated by Shakespeare in his comedies, of Zelmane, disguised as a pageboy and loving Pyrocles, is extremely affecting: her death one of the finest things in English literature. To the old version is added a much sharper sense of menace, especially in the character of wicked Cecropia. … You never feel the emotions in the Arcadia are fake. These are real young people with real passions, real sexual frustrations, and real anguish in a grown-up world not of their making. … It is a book aware of the realities of the sordid political world: spies are ‘the necessary evil servants to a King’ … —and the multifaceted and variegated prose is interrupted at regular intervals with verse of dazzling proficiency.” (213-214)
Woolf, Virginia. “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia.” The Second Common Reader. 1932.
“In the Arcadia, as in some luminous globe, all the seeds of English fiction lie latent.” (Collected Essays 1 [1996] 27)
Maps
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
1593
T0
My Dear Lady And Sister,
The Countess Of Pembroke
Most dear—and most worthy to be most dear—lady:
You have here this idle work of mine which, I fear, like the spider’s web will be thought more fit to be swept away than read to any purpose. For my part, in truth, as the cruel fathers among the Greeks would cast out the babes they did not want to foster, I could well find in my heart to cast out in some desert of forgetfulness this child, which I am loathe to claim. But you desired me to write it, and your desire is an absolute commandment to my heart.
Now it is done only for you, only to you. If you keep it to yourself or to such friends who will weigh errors in the balance of good will, I hope it will be pardoned for the father’s sake. Perhaps it will be made much of, though in itself it has some deformities. Indeed, it is not fit for severer eyes, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled.
Your dear self can best witness how it was written on loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets sent unto you as fast as they were done. In sum, a young head, not so well stayed as I would it were (and shall be when God wills), having many fancies begotten in it, would have grown a monster if it had not been in some way delivered. More sorry might I be that those fancies came in than that they got out.
This work’s chief safety will be not to walk abroad, and its chief protection that it bears the livery of your name—which, if much good will does not deceive me, is worthy to be the sanctuary for a greater offender. This I say because I know your virtue, and this I say, that it may ever be so—or, to say it better, because it will ever be so.
Read it, then, at your idle times, and blame not the follies your good judgment will find in it, but laugh at them. If you look for no better stuff than you would when looking for mirrors or feathers in a haberdasher’s shop, you will continue to love the writer, who loves you exceedingly and prays most heartily that you may long live to be a principal ornament to the family of the Sidneys.
To the Reader
The disfigured face, gentle reader, with which this work not long since appeared to the common view, moved the noble lady (to whose honor it was consecrated and to whose protection committed) to take in hand the wiping away those spots by which its beauties were unworthily blemished.
As often in repairing a ruinous house, the mending of some old part occasions the making of some new, so here her honorable labor, begun in correcting faults, ended in supplying defects. Her view of what was ill done guided her to consider what was not done.
Those unfurnished with the means to discern are entreated not to define with what advice the lady entered her task and what success completed it. The rest (it is hoped) will favorably censure. They shall for their better satisfaction understand that though they do not find here the perfection of Arcadia or as much as was intended, yet they will find the conclusion, and that no further than the author’s own writing, or known determinations, could direct.
Whoever does not see the reason for this must consider that there may be reasons they do not see, albeit I dare affirm such a person either sees (or some wiser judgments than his own may hear) that Sir Philip Sidney’s writings can no more be perfected without Sir Philip Sidney, than Apelles’ pictures without Apelles. There are those who think the contrary. And no wonder. Arcadia was never free from the encumbrance of such cattle. These people say that to them, the pastures are not pleasant. And as for the flowers, such as they light on they take no delight in, and most of them grow out of their reach. Poor souls! What talk they of flowers? They need roses, not flowers, to transform them from asses, and if they do not find them here, they shall do well to go feed elsewhere. Any place will be better for them, for outside the boundaries of Arcadia nothing grows more plentifully than lettuce suitable to their lips.
If it be true that likeness is a great cause of liking, and that contraries infer contrary consequences, then is it true that a worthless reader can never worthily esteem of so worthy a writing. And it is equally true that the noble, the wise, the virtuous, the courteous, and as many as have any acquaintance with true learning and knowledge will with all love and dearness entertain this book, as well for its affinity with themselves, as that it is the child of such a father. For although it does not exactly and in every lineament represent him, yet considering that the father’s untimely death prevented the timely birth of the child, this book may happily seem a thankworthy labor. The great unlikeness is not in deformity but in what is missing, although such defects are few and small and do not affect the principal parts.
However it is, it is now by more than one interest The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia: done, as it was, for her; as it is, by her. Neither shall these pains be the last (if no unexpected accident cut off her determination) which the everlasting love of her excellent brother will make her consecrate to his memory.
H. S.1
Hugh Sanford, secretary to the Second Earl of Pembroke, Henry Herbert, b. 1534, married Mary Sidney in 1577.
