Sir Philip Sidney

(1554-1586)

Sidney attended Oxford but left without taking a degree and completed his education by extended
travels on the Continent. There he met many of the most important people of the time, from kings
and queens to philosophers, theologians, and poets. As an ardent protestant (which had been
inculcated by his family background and education), he wanted to help save Europe from what he
viewed as the Roman Catholic menace. He found the direct path to heroic action blocked by the
caution realism of Queen Elizabeth and her principle advisers. Though she sent him on some
diplomatic missions, the queen clearly regarded the zealous young man with considerable
skepticism. As a prominent, well-connected courtier with literary interests, Sidney actively
encouraged authors (among whom was Edmund Spenser), but he clearly longed to be something
more than an influential patron of letters.
Sidney’s finest literary achievement is Astrophil and Stella (Star-lover and Star), the first of the
major Elizabethan sonnet cycles, probably written in the 1580s, and it narrates the story of
Astrophil and his hopeless passion for Stella. The 108 sonnets and 11 songs rely heavily, as do
virtually all sonnets in the period, on the conventions established by the great 14 th century Italian
poet Petrarch; talking about love relationships from its starting point in the lover’s attraction to the
lady’s beauty, through various trials, sufferings, conflicts, to a conclusion in which nothing is
resolved. The poet undertook to produce an anatomy of love, displaying its shifts and, often,
contradictory states: hope and despair, tenderness and bitterness, exultation and modesty, bodily
desire and spiritual transcendence. Astrophil and Stella explores the lover’s state of mind and soul,
the contradictory impulses, intense desires, and frustrations that haunt him.
Sidney called poetry his “unelected vocation”, but he did not publish any of his major literary works
himself. His ambition was to be a man of action whose deeds would affect his country’s destiny. Yet
he was the author of the most ambitious work of prose fiction, the most important piece of literary
criticism, and the most influential sonnet cycle of the Elizabethan age.
Sidney seemed to the Elizabethans to embody all the traits of character and personality they
admired: knight, soldier, poet, friend, and patron. When he was killed in battle in the Low Countries
at the age of 32, fighting for the Protestant cause, all England mourned.

Following is Sonnet 31, featured in Astrophil and Stella, which conveys Astrophil’s emotions and
thoughts about Stella while seeing the moon at night.

Sonnet 31

With how sad steps, O Moone, thou climb’st the skies! Moone: Moon / climb’st: climbs
How silently, and with how wane a face! Wane: wan
What, may it be that even in heav’nly place heav’nly: heavenly
That busy archer his sharpe arrowes tries? Sharpe: sharp / arrowes: arrows
Sure if that long-with-Love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of Love, thou feel’st as a Lover’s case; feel’st: feels
I reade it in thy looks: thy languisht grace reade: read / languisht: languished
To me that feele the like, thy state descries.
Then ev’n of fellowship, O Moone, tell me, ev’n: even
Is constant Love deem’d there but want of wit? deem’d: deemed
Are Beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be lov’d, and yet lov’d: loved
Those Lovers scorne whom that Love doth possesse? scorne: scorn / possesse: possess
Do they call Vertue there ungratefulnesse? Vertue: Virtue

Vocabulary
Line 2 – wane: wan, pale, faint, weak, dull, dim.
Line 4 – busy archer: reference to Cupid.
Line 5 – acquainted: familiar, intimate, make known, present.
Line 6 – case: condition, status, situation, issue, example.
Line 7 – languisht: weaken, fade, tire, decline, thin / grace: favor, mercy, graciousness, beauty,
virtue, comfort, relief.
Line 8 – descries: suggests, hints, beholds, glimpses.
Line 9 – fellowship: friendship, cordiality, companionship.
Line 10 – deem’d: considered, treated, counted, believed, rated / wit: intelligence, cuteness,
reason, intellect, insight.
Line 11 – beauties: reference to pretty girls or the beloved ladies.
Line 13 – scorne: disrespect, disfavor, reject, desert, neglect / possesse: reign, control, dominate,
control, capture, command
Line 14 – Vertue: grace, purity, honor, integrity.

Paraphrase
Personifying the moon, Sidney describes its slow and silent ascent into the sky with a pale face,
suggesting a shared sense of sorrow. He guesses that Cupid must have hit the moon with his
arrows and inflicted him with lovesickness. The speaker can see how the moon appears to be
immersed in love, and wonders if it can sympathize with his pain. He observes the languishing
beauty of the moon as evidence that they both share the same suffering.
Then the poem shifts to address the moon directly, asking whether love is considered a lack of
intelligence in the heavens and if celestial beauties are equally haughty as their earthly
counterparts. The speaker contemplates with the moon, how beautiful ladies desire to be loved,
and value being loved, yet scorn those who are in love with them. This suggests a universal struggle
with the complexities of love and the potential for rejection.
The poem follows the example of a Petrarchan sonnet written in iambic pentameter, divided into
an octet and a sestet; and it has an ABBA-ABABA-CDCDEE rhyme scheme.

Analysis
Lines 1-4 depict the lyrical voice’s perception of the moon. The moon is carefully described as an
individual (an example of personification where elements of nature appear to have human
emotions). He starts by describing how the moon rises in the sky at night. The speaker looks up at
the pale moon and notices that it appears to rise in the sky sorrowfully, as though taking “sad
steps”. Sidney picks out the wan face of the moon and interprets this paleness as a sign of sorrow.
There is a repetition of the word “how”, in order to emphasize the attention to the object that he is
describing.
The speaker, then, questions the moon’s sadness. He wonders whether the moon’s sorrow is
actually lovesickness, and that Cupid, the Roman god of love, even seeks to pierce heavenly bodies
with his arrows, so as to bring them under love’s spell. The moon obviously stands alone in the
night sky – set apart from the stars by its relative size – and so becomes a symbol of the solitary
lover who is suffering from unrequited love.
In lines 5-8, the lyrical voice furthers the personification of the moon, and suggests that the moon
is struggling with sentimental problems, as he can see them from experiencing them himself. He
goes on to assert that the moon, if it has been “long-with-love-acquainted”, is a fit judge of love,
and well-placed to feel what suffering lovers down on earth feel. The poet states that he has read
the moon’s love-experiences in its appearance. The moon’s “languisht grace” (it is graceful, but
nevertheless weakened by the effects of love) reveals to the poet, who is similarly afflicted by love,
that the moon is a fellow-sufferer. This portrait of the moon assures his being lovesick. Once again,
the speaker compares the moon’s state to his, making a direct relationship between the moon’s
suffering and his.
Lines 9-14 present a series of questions that are crucial to the poet. The focus of the poem shifts
from the description of the moon to the speaker’s reflections about love. This is the typical volta a
(turn that occurs in the Petrarchan sonnet).
Sidney now wants to know some truths about unrequited love as the moon experiences it, by
posing a series of questions related to problems he himself is dealing with.
He asks the moon, since they both are now fellows in the experience of lovesickness, whether in
the sky, love is also treated as “want of wit”, that is, lacking intelligence. The speaker directly asks
the moon: if you are a true and faithful lover up there, are you considered foolish?
He then asks if women up in the sky are as proud as they are on earth. He wonders whether the
moon’s beautiful beloved feels as superior and disdainful as the woman loved by Sidney. He further
wants to know how women above like to be loved (notice the internal rhyme in line12). Does the
woman you love, moon, love the attention but at the same time feel contempt for the one who has
been “possessed” by love for her?
Notice how the final line continues with the questions and the complaints that the speaker has
expressed through the sestet. He concludes wondering whether “above” love is despised too. Is
ungratefulness (i.e. the way the woman treats the man who truly loves her so) considered a virtue
up there as well as down here? He feels that love is a virtue, but it sounds like his beloved one
(Stella) does not feel the same way about his display of virtue and constant love. The tone of the
shows how much Astrophil is deeply wounded and the rhetorical questions illustrate this pain.

Theme
The sonnet has love and nature as the main themes. The tone is reflective and it gets aggrieved as
the lines go by. Compared to other works by Sidney, this sonnet shares the theme of unrequited
love present in his “Astrophil and Stella” sonnets. However, it differs in its use of the moon as a
symbol, and its more introspective and philosophical tone. Sidney focuses on the moon as a symbol
of the his own sadness and lowliness. He addresses the moon as a potential fellow-sufferer from
Cupid’s arrows. He personifies the moon and projects his own sorrows on the moon. In the context
of the Elizabethan era, the poem reflects the period’s fascination with “courtly love” and the
idealized but often unfulfilled nature of romantic relationships.
Any analysis of “With how sad steps, O Moon” should address the extent to which Sidney is being
serious when he offers up this somewhat excessively romanticized conversation between the poet
and the moon. As with many of the poems in Astrophil and Stella, Sidney is aware of how ridiculous
love can render us, even while that love is felt sincerely and keenly. Still, writing about “courtly
love”, Sidney was approaching an already familiar theme: the idea of admiring an unattainable
woman from afar and experiencing the first pangs of hopeless love.

Following is sonnet 38 (the first of a three-sonnet series of “bed-time” thoughts – when sleep
closes the speaker’s eyes with its “heavy wings”) from Astrophil and Stella.

From Astrophil and Stella – Sonnet 38

This night while sleep begins with heavy wings

To hatch mine eyes, and that unbitted thought
Doth fall to stray, and my chief powers are brought
To leave the specter of all subject things,
The first that straight my fancy’s error brings
Unto my mind, is Stella’s image, wrought
By Love’s own self, but with so curious draught,
That she, methinks, not only shines but sings.
I start, look, hark, but what in clos’d-up sense
Was held, in open’d sense it flies away,
Leaving me nought but wailing eloquence:
I, seeing better sights in sight’s decay,
Call’d it anew, and wooed sleep again:
But him her host unkind guest had slain.

Vocabulary
Line 1 – there is metaphor: comparison of sleep to a flying creature.
Line 2 – hatch: close / unbitted: unrestrained, uncontrolled, released.
Line 3 – fall to stray: wander, roam (Astroplil’s thoughts wander) / chief powers: reference to
reason, ability
Line 4 – leave: lose / scepter: control / subject things: what he thinks about.
Line 5 – my fancy’s error: the errant (roving) ways of Astrophil’s imagination.
Line 6 – wrought: shaped, processed, drawn.
Line 7 – curious draught: strange outline, drawing; unusual picture of Stella.
Line 9 – start: leap / hark: listen, pay attention / sense: feeling, awareness, sensation
Line 11 – naught: nothing / wailing: crying, lamentation, screaming / eloquence: rhetoric
Line 13 – wooed: pursue, court, chase – reading note: wooed is two syllables (woo-ed).
Line 14 – him her host unkind guest had slain: Stella has killed her host, ‘sleep’. Stella is a guest in
Astrophil’s dream; when she leaves suddenly – that is when the dream dissolves – he awakens.
Paraphrase
When sleep comes upon Astrophil, he is finally able to release his rational thoughts and delight in
his imagination. He describes the resignation of Reason, that yields up its “scepter” in sleep, leaving
“straying” Fancy to replace it and take over. The first thing Fancy produces is the image of Stella,
drawn by mischievous Cupid (“Love”).
Love constructs a perfect vision of Stella for Astrophil; she is depicted so miraculously in a vision
that she not only looks like an angel (“shines”), but also has a sound-track like singing. Yet, he is
unable to maintain that vision and wakes up, hearing his own wailing rather than the singing of her
image.
When he tries to call sleep again and regain Stella’s image, he fails: Stella has ‘killed’ Sleep with her
beauty. The vague references in the final lines can be sorted as follows: “it” in line 13 refers to the
“better sight” the speaker has lost; “him” (to which “her host” is an appositive) is sleep; and Stella
is the “unkind guest” who slew him. Slaying one’s host is of course an “unkind” thing for a guest to
do; it is undutiful and lacking in natural gratitude, all of which applies to Stella.

Analysis
Sleep offers Astrophil a type of release he cannot obtain in his waking hours. It shields the lover
from despair at Stella’s seeming scorn. Most importantly, sleep allows Astrophil to see Stella’s
image in his mind. The vision of Stella provides one of the few moments when Astrophil is able to
see her without being plagued with uncertainty and anxiety. The vision of Stella’s beauty is so
brilliant but fleeing; it cannot be maintained, which leads to the broken rhythms of Astrophil.
The volta between the octave and sestet in this poem represents an actual change from sleeping to
waking state: “I start, look, hark” means “I wake up, look, and listen.” But awake, the dream is fled.
The image could only stay while the actual senses were “closed-up” in sleep. So, paradoxically, the
sweet music of the dream has led only to a far less satisfying vision: the wailing eloquence.
The bottom line in the poem’s story is obvious: there is no going back to sleep after that
experience.

Theme
The main theme is love – anguished, passionate joyous love. But in the end, it is unrequited love,
for Astrophil and Stella remain separated. In sonnet 38, we have one of Sidney’s little lessons on
Renaissance commonplace understandings; that is, the relationship between Reason and Fancy in
the waking and sleeping states.

The rhyme scheme in the sonnet is abbaabbb cdcdee, and is written in iambic pentameter, as in the
first two lines of the poem.
This NIGHT / while SLEEP / be GINS / with HEA / vy WINGS
To HATCH / mine EYES / and THAT / un BIT / ted THOUGHT