Prompts for Astrophil and Stella

1. Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is the first of the Elizabethan sonnet sequences that others, including Spenser and Shakespeare, would also embrace. The cycle includes 108 sonnets and 11 songs. Though each sonnet is a poem unto itself, the progression of sonnets creates a kind of dramatic narrative. In this case (as in most cases since the sonnet is an Italian-derived form of love poetry), the narrative is of a courtship. You are only reading excerpts from the sequence, but what can you piece together about the nature of this courtship? Use specific lines from the poems as your evidence.

2. In Sonnet 1, the speaker, Astrophil, is in search of a subject. The notion of "Invention" is important here. The poet wants to be completely original, and his need to give birth to his art is as intense and painful as a woman in labor. The problem is, he can find no formal models in books or in the current conventions of poetry. (Ironically, this "problem" is itself a convention, one that Sidney is borrowing from Petrarch.) The answer for Astrophil is to look into his heart and forget everything else. Can you make any contemporary parallels with this need to appear original, to rely on the heart as opposed to conventions?

3. Some critics have seen Astrophil and Stella as autobiographical. Stella means "star," as does "Astro." "Phil" means "love," so Astrophil is a "star-lover." "Phil" is also, of course, the first name of the poet, and "sidus," the latin word for "star," has the same first three letters as the poet's last name. Sidney had intended to marry Lady Penelope Devereaux, who was promised to him as a young girl, but when a better prospect came along--Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick--Penelope was given to him. Critics sometimes point to Sonnet 37, with its frequent repetition of the word "Rich," as evidence that the poem is really about Sidney and Penelope. Sonnet 37 isn't on the reading list, but if you want to play detective, read it and then try to deduce how Sidney feels about her marriage to another. (See also your footnote to sonnet 24.)

4. In the Fourth Song, the refrain line at the end of each stanza is "No, no, no, no, my dear, let be." In Petrarch's sonnets (and remember that it is from Petrarch that the sonnet form is being adapted into English), the speaker is always pining for Laura, a woman that is beautiful, graceful, and inspiring but is also taken. There comes, as a result, the idea that love burns best and brightest when it cannot be consummated. Do you see other examples of this idea in Sidney's sonnets?

See you Thursday