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The Countess of Pembroke's Editorship of the Arcadia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Kenneth Thorpe Rowe
Kenneth Thorpe Rowe*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

The known facts of the several versions of the Arcadia have been presented many times. Briefly, the original version was widely circulated in manuscript but never printed. Sidney commenced an elaborate revision, which was left unfinished at his death in 1586. In 1590 the revised portion was published, superintended, without much doubt, by Fulke Greville. In 1593 appeared a new edition, supervised by Mary, Countess of Pembroke, which consisted of the revised portion with the addition of the third, fourth, and fifth books from the earlier manuscript version to complete the story.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 1939 , pp. 122 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939

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References

1 Sidney's Complete Works, Cambridge edition, ed. Albert Feuillerat, i, 524. Page references throughout are to the Cambridge edition.

2 The original manuscript version was lost sight of until 1907. Since then six copies have been discovered, one of which has been printed as Vol. iv of the Cambridge edition of the Complete Works. I shall follow throughout the convenient terminology now generally used: Old Arcadia for the original version; New Arcadia for the unfinished revision of the 1590 quarto; Arcadia for the version of the 1593 folio, and in a general sense for reference to the totality of the romance in all versions.

3 Introduction, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, a facsimile of the original quarto edition, p. 6.

4 Preface, Sidney's Complete Works, I, viii.

5 Sidney's Arcadia, a Comparison between the Two Versions (1929), pp. 23–29.

6 “New Light upon Sir Philip Sidney's ‘Arcadia’,” Quarterly Review, cix (1909), 78.

7 Sidney's Arcadia, a Comparative Study of the Two Versions (Amsterdam: N. V. Swets and Zeitlinger), p. 28. See also Samuel Lee Wolff, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Proze Fiction (Columbia University Press, 1912), pp. 346–347; Albert Feuillerat, prefatory note to the Cambridge edition of the quarto (1922); Mario Praz, “Sidney's Original Arcadia,” The London Mercury, xv (1927), 513–514.

8 See Edwin Greenlaw, “Sidney's Arcadia as an Example of Elizabethan Allegory,” Kittredge Anniversary Papers (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1913), p. 335, n. 3; William Dinsmore Briggs, “Political Ideas in Sidney's ‘Arcadia’,” SP, xviii (1931), 151, n. 24.

9 Works, i, 524.

10 Quoted by Wallace, Life of Sidney, p. 232; reference, “State Papers—Dom.—Eliz. vol. cxcv.”

11 Op. cit., p. 26.

12 Zandvoort, op. cit., pp. 24–25.

13 Ibid., p. 26.

14 Quoted by Wallace, Life of Sidney, p. 232; reference, “State Papers.—Dom.—Eliz. vol. cxcv.” See also Zandvoort, op. cit., p. 2.

15 Zandvoort, With, I interpret Greville's statement as applying to the revised version, not the Old Arcadia. See Zandvoort, op. cit., p. 6.Google Scholar

16 Zandvoort has reviewed the conflicting evidence for the time of composition of the Old Arcadia (op. cit., pp. 5–7), and I agree that the evidence is stronger for the later date, 1580.

17 Quoted by Zandvoort, op. cit., p. 5.

18 Greville's letter to Walsingham, “a correction . . . fitter to be printed then the first, which is so common.“

19 Op. cit., p. 67.

20 Op. cit., p. 26.

21 “Being done in loose sheetes of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest, by sheetes. sent unto you, as fast as they were done.”

22 Op. cit., p. 14.

23 Dobell discusses several passages, stressing the deletion of a frustrated attempt by Musidorus on Pamela's virginity, but curiously makes no mention of tie most elaborate revision, that of the episode of Pyrocles' visit to Philoclea's chamber, and summarizes the manuscript version in terms of the manner in which the episode appears in the folio. I can offer no possible explanation of this procedure on his part.

24 At the time of my first consideration of the subject no one, so far as I could discover, had suggested the view at which I arrived. In the following year, however, Miss Mona Wilson stated in regard to one of the revisions: “There can be little doubt that the alteration, though made by the Countess of Pembroke, follows Sidney's directions“; Sir Philip Sidney (London: Duckworth, 1931), p. 154. Miss Wilson gives no indication of the reasons for her conclusion. Dr. Kenneth O. Myrick, in Sir Philip Sidney as a Literary Craftsman (Harvard University Press, 1935), agrees with Miss Wilson and gives several pages to presentation of evidence (pp. 286–289). Dr. Myrick notes briefly and correctly the possibility of re-interpretation of the prefatory note, and presents one significant but inconclusive argument based on an adjustment of the revisions attributed to Lady Mary to a change in method of craftsmanship followed by Sidney in the major revision known to be of his authorship, evidence quite insufficient to offset the bulk of writing and analysis on the other side. Furthermore, Dr. Myrick's final argument is an attribution to Sidney himself of a desire to purify the sex-conduct of the Arcadia similar to that ascribed to Lady Mary. On this point, in spite of the sound and learned character of Dr. Myrick's work in its special field of Sidney's literary theory and craftsmanship, I believe there is misinterpretation, not only of Elizabethan literary and social background, but of the ethical organization of the Arcadia.

25 iv, 216 ff. and ii, 52 ff.; iv, 189 ff., 286, and ii, 27, 118–119.

26 i, 288 ff.

27 Op. cit., p. 38.

28 Op. cit., p. 39.

29 Op. dt., p. 38.

30 Dobell ascribes exaggerated autobiographical importance to these passages (Sidney having represented himself to some degree in Philisides) and considers the omission to be due to Mary's feeling of delicacy about the subject-matter, particularly in relation to Philisides' love for Mira by whom Penelope Devereux (Lady Rich at the time of publication) would be understood. That no such embarrassment could have been felt is evident from the general circulation of the Astrophd and Stella sonnets, far more intimate than the Arcadia songs and addressed directly to Penelope Devereux. From the preface to the folio, it appears that Lady Mary was planning a new edition of Astrophd and Stella. The prose passages are so general and conventional in their details that the motivation for their deletion pressed by Dobell could not possibly have existed. Friedrich Brie raises a question even as to how far the first passage is autobiographical: “Der ganze Bericht des Philisides in der vierten Ecklogue hat sein Vorbild in der siebenten Prosa bei Sannazaro, wo Sincero, der wie Philisides als ein Fremder unter den arkadischen Schäfern weilt, auf Bittern von Charino unter Seafzern seine Lebensgeschichte erzäht.” (Sidney's Arcadia, Eine Studie zur Englischen Renaissance, Strassburg: Trübner, 1918, p. 272. Zandvoort also notes this observation by Brie, op. cit., p. 191.) Enough parallels are cited to show the generally conventional character of the passage, although Sidney adapted the details to facts of his own life.

31 Op. cit., p. 29.

32 Op. cit., p. 32.

33 Op. cit., p. 36.

34 If close reasoning is attempted, the evidence is for revision by Sidney. In the New Arcadia, he uniformly used the terms of Christianity in situations of comparable religious seriousness. See i, 382–383; i, 407–410; i, 426–427; i, 448; i, 487. See also iv, 291–292 and ii, 123–124.

35 Op. cit., p. 35.

36 Op. cit., p. 36.

37 Sidney might also have been influenced towards changing the conduct of Pyrocles and Philoclea by the chaste association of the lovers in Heliodorus's Theagenes and Chariclea, which was one of the principal sources for the Old Arcadia, was much admired by Sidney, and was evidently freshly in his mind when he was working on the New Arcadia. See Samuel Lee Wolff, The Greek Romances and Elizabethan Prose Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1912).