1. Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age.
19 Facts About Philip Sidney
1. 2.
Philip Sidney's works include a sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, a treatise, The Defence of Poesy and a pastoral romance, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.
3.
Philip Sidney died fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands, age 31, and his funeral procession in London was one of the most lavish ever seen.
4.
Philip Sidney was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley.
5.
Philip Sidney's mother was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and the sister of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.
6.
Philip Sidney's sister, Mary, was a writer, translator and literary patron, and married Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke.
7.
Philip Sidney's brother Robert Sidney was a statesman and patron of the arts, and was created Earl of Leicester in 1618.
8.
Philip Sidney spent the next several years in mainland Europe, moving through Germany, Italy, Poland, the Kingdom of Hungary and Austria.
9.
Philip Sidney defended his father's administration of Ireland in a lengthy document.
10.
Philip Sidney then wrote a lengthy letter to the Queen detailing the foolishness of the French marriage.
11.
Characteristically, Elizabeth bristled at his presumption, and Philip Sidney prudently retired from court.
12.
Philip Sidney had returned to court by the middle of 1581.
13.
Philip Sidney's finest achievement was a sequence of 108 love sonnets.
14.
In form Philip Sidney usually adopts the Petrarchan octave, with variations in the sestet that include the English final couplet.
15.
Philip Sidney noticed that one of his men was not fully armoured.
16.
Philip Sidney took off his thigh armour on the grounds that it would be wrong to be better armored than his men.
17.
An early biography of Philip Sidney was written by his devoted friend and schoolfellow, Fulke Greville.
18.
Philip Sidney was known to be friendly and sympathetic towards individual Catholics.
19.
Philip Sidney appears as a young man in Elizabeth Goudge's third novel, Towers in the Mist, visiting Oxford around the time Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford.