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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Put off by the casual tone of the poet who in his Arcadia, a “trifle … triflinglie handled,” seemed to be guided only by the whim of his sister, readers are often unable to reconcile the sprightly air of the cavalier raconteur with the serious intent of the young defender of poets and poesy. But giving proper weight to Sidney's “poetry must teach as well as delight,” critics have come to concede his sober purpose in romance as well as in apologetic. Sprezzatura, courtly grace, conceals, however, not only moral seriousness but also equal seriousness in poetic plan and procedure. We must look in the Arcadia for the careful artist as well as the edifying teacher. We must try to discover there that strong rein of order which Sidney thought necessary to check the “high flying libertie of conceit proper to the Poet,” that art which “doth give the fashion,” the traces of that Dedalus whom “the highest flying wit” must have to guide him.
1 Preface, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, ed. Albert Feuillerat, The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (Cambridge, 1916), i, 3.
2 There can be little doubt that the interest of the reader was always in Sidney's mind as he composed. See Miss Emma Denkinger's vivid picture: “If Lady Mary decided she wanted a tilt, he stopped his tale on the instant, and introduced one, as gorgeous as ever was seen at Hampton Court. If her mind ran to bear-baiting, he obligingly shifted his Arcadians, to whom time and space were nothing, to ‘a goodly greene two miles hence,‘ and gave her that rural sport. If she cried a hunt would be brave, hunt there was with horses and tantartaree” (Immortal Sidney [New York, 1931], pp. 162-163).
3 The Defence of Poetry, ed. A. Feuillerat, op. cit., iii, 9.
4 See, e.g., M. S. Goldman, Sir Philip Sidney and the Arcadia (Urbana, 1934), p. 215, and Kenneth O. Myrick, Sir Philip Sidney as a Literary Craftsman (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), p. 299.
5 Defence, op. cit., p. 6.
6 Ibid., p. 37.
7 See Samuel Lee Wolff, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction (New York, 1912), pp. 328 ff.; E. A. Baker, The History of the English Novel (London, 1929), ii, 70; and R. W. Zandvoort, Sidney's Arcadia, A Comparison Between the Two Versions (Amsterdam, 1929).
8 The first exponent of this theory was William Vaughan Moody. I have been unable to see Moody's ms., and have relied on Zandvoort's summary (op. cit., pp. 192 ff.). See also T. P. Harrison, “A Source of Sidney's Arcadia,” Studies in English, University of Texas Bulletin, No. 2647 (1926), 54-60.
9 Goldman, op. cit., pp. 193 ff.
10 Myrick, op. cit., passim. The belief that Sidney intended to write an heroic epic is to be found also in Friedrich Brie, Sidney's Arcadia (Strassburg, 1918), p. 179, and in A. G. D. Wiles, “Parallel Analyses of the Two Versions of Sidney's Arcadia,” Studies in Philology, xxxix (1942), 168.
11 Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, 10.148-150, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, Ben Jonson (Oxford, 1925—), i, 136.
12 “An Apologie for Poetrie,” Orlando Furioso in English Heroidal Verse (London, 1591).
13 Defence, op. cit., p. 8.
14 Loc. cit.
15 See R. E. N. Dodge, “Spenser's Imitations from Ariosto,” PMLA, xii (1897), 159.
16 Orlando Furioso, ed. Santorre Debenedetti (Bari, 1928), 14.65.
17 See, e.g., the formula for the heroic poem in Antonio Minturno, L'Arte Poetica (Napoli, 1725), p. 27 ff., and in Torquato Tasso, Discorsi del Poema Heroica (Napoli, 1594).
18 For a discussion of Ariosto's artistry see J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy (New York, 1888), pp. 5 ff., and Francesco de Sanctis, Storia della Letteratura Italiana (Napoli, 1937), pp. 19 ff. De Sanctis makes much of Ariosto's search for an ultimate form: “Ciò che lo anima e lo preoccupa, è un sentimento superiore, che è per lui fede, moralitá, e tutto; ed è il culto della bella forma, la schietta inspirazione artistica. E lo vedi mutare e rimutare, finché abbia dato alle sue creazione l'ultima forma che lo contenti” (p. 20). He points out the careful order in seeming disorder, the unity in variety: “Perché di sopra di quest' anarchia cavalleresca ci è uno spirito sereno e armonico, che tiene in mano la fila e le ordisce sapientemente, e sa stuzziacare la curiosita e non affaticare l'attenzione, causare in tanta varietá e spontaneitá di movimento il cumulo e l'imbroglio, ricondurti innanzi improvviso personaggi e avventimenti che credevi, da lui dimenticati, e nello maggiore apparenza del disordine raccogliere la fila, egli salo tranquillo e sorridente in mezzo al tumulti di tanti elementi cozzanti” (p. 26).
19 Zandvoort, op. cit., p. 192.
20 Wolff, op. cit., p. 353.
21 Baker, op. cit., ii, 72.
22 Zandvoort, op. cit., pp. 192-193.
23 Ibid., p. 106.
24 “New Light on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia,” Quarterly Review, 211 (1909), 100. Cf. also Mario Praz, “Sidney's Original Arcadia,” London Mercury, xv (1926-27), 509.
25 Zandvoort, op. cit., p. 106.
26 Wolff, op. cit., p. 352.
27 Ariosto's non-classical qualities have been similarly deplored by English critics. See, e.g., Rymer's attack on Spenser for allowing himself to be misled by Ariosto (Preface to Rapin, ed. J. E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century [Oxford, 1908], ii, 167-168); Warton's complaint of Ariosto's irregularities (Observations on the Faerie Queene [London, 1908], i, 17 ff.; Hurd's inability to find any real unity in the “Gothic composition” of Ariosto (Letters on Chivalry and Romance, ed. E. Morley [Oxford, 1911], pp. 118-131). Even Gardner's modern study considers Ariosto as a writer of a classic epic (Ariosto, King of Court Poets [London, 1906], pp. 267-268).
28 Minturno, op. cit., p. 24.
29 Myrick, op. cit., p. 155.
30 Ibid., pp. 129-130.
31 Ibid., p. 153.
32 Ibid., p. 155.
33 Ibid., p. 166.
34 Ibid., p. 170.
35 Minturno, op. cit., p. 27.
36 Loc. cit.
37 Ibid., pp. 27-28.
38 Cf. Myrick: “Beauty to a true classicist resides in form, to the men of the Renaissance it often lies in ornamental detail” (pp. cit., p. 151). There is a school of thought which strongly contends that Renaissance writers and critics did not understand and were not interested in Aristotelian unity of action. See, e.g., Thomas R. Lounsbury, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (New York, 1901), Chap. i; Louis S. Friedland, “The Dramatic Unities in England,” JEGP, x (1911), 56-89; Joel E. Spingarn, Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (New York, 1924), pp. 29 ff.
39 Giovambattista Giraldi Cintio, De Romanzi, ed.G. B. Pigna (Milano, 1864), p. 46. Giraldi's repudiation of Aristotelian unity in opposition to Minturno's more orthodox view is given some treatment by R. C. Williams, The Theory of the Heroic Epic in Italian Criticism of the Sixteenth Century (John Hopkins University, 1917), pp. 12, 20-21.
40 Ibid., pp. 50-51.
41 Harrington, op. cit.
42 “Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh,” ed. A. H. Gilbert, Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden (New York, 1940), p. 463. For a study of Spenser's structure as it was affected by Ariosto, see Dodge, op. cit., and Josephine Waters Bennett, The Evolution of The Fairie Queene (Chicago, 1942). A detailed summary of Spenser's borrowings from Ariosto may be found in Dodge, op. cit.; A. H. Gilbert, “Spenser's Imitations from Ariosto: Supplement,” PMLA, xxxiv (1919), 225-232, and Dodge, “Spenser's Imitations from Ariosto: Addenda,” PMLA, xxxv (1920), 91-92.
43 Defence, op. cit., p. 32. Sidney also coupled one of the heroes of Orlando Furioso with the most famous literary “champions”: “For by what conceit can a tongue bee directed to speake evil of that which draweth with him no lesse champions then Achilles, Cirus, Aeneas, Turnus, Tideus, Rinaldo, who doeth not onely teache and moove to a truth, but teacheth and moveth to the most high and excellent truth” (ibid., p. 25).
44 Sidney's return in his revision to “the older form of chivalric fiction” has been pointed out by Dobell (op. cit., p. 89). Feuillerat and Goldman also see Sidney as a romance-writer (Feuillerat, op. cit., iv, v-vi; Goldman, op. cit., passim).
45 Even Goldman, who is concerned with Sidney's indebtedness to Malory, does not liken the Arcadia structurally to the Morte Darthur (193 ff.).
46 For a discussion of this, see Eugène Vinaver, Malory (Oxford, 1929), pp. 29-42.
47 Giraldi, op. cit., pp. 46-48.
48 Sidney breaks and resumes stories on the following pages of the Old Arcadia: 6, 7, 27, 28, 36, 39, 41 (2), 43, 47, 49, 50, 90, 91, 92, 93 (2), 103, 111, 112, 116, 118, 120 (2), 122, 123, 125, 174, 178, 182, 190, 204, 212, 215, 247, 250, 255, 266, 269, 285, 299, 327, 340, 341, 343, 348, 368, 380, 387. These do not include the breaks for the eclogues: pp. 52-56; 129-158; 288-246, and 306-326. The edition used is that of Albert Feuillerat, op. cit., iv.
49 There are 28 additional characters and over 350 pages of added material in the unfinished three books of the revised Arcadia, ed. A. Feuilerat, op. cit., i.
50 In references to both Orlando Furioso and the Arcadia only the stanza or page at which the story begins is given. All page numbers refer to the revised Arcadia, unless otherwise indicated.
51 Cf. Wolff: “An immediate result of this interpolation and interlacing of episode with main plot, and with previous history, is that no story is ever finished at a sitting. One story must be suspended while another is begun; and that in its turn must give way to a third; then the main current may be resumed for a moment, only to stop again while one of the inserted stories is continued” (op. cit., p. 350).
52 For possible imitations by Sidney, cf. Cecropia with Beatrice (Arcadia, 98; O. F., 46.72); Agenor with Alzirdo (389; 12.74); Argalus with Brandimart (426; 43.160); Erona and Olimpia (233; 9.26).