History Commons^™

Sidney's Debt To Machiavelli: A New Look, William R. Drennan

Quidditas

"I wish not there should be / Graved in mine epitaph a poet's name," asserts Astrophil late in Sidney's sonnet sequence (AS 90.8-9), and on this point at least we may safely assume that Astrophil speaks for Sidney as well. Indeed, recent scholarship emphasizes that Sidney was drawn more to the arena of politics than to the world of letters, a world that he himself called only his "unelected vocation" (Works 3: 3). James M. Osborn, for example, in his Young Philip Sidney 1572-1577, stresses Sidney's patient preparation for and lifelong commitment to the theory and practice of …