But in these poems the “speaker” is pretty reliably the Philip Sidney who is in love with Penelope Devereux Rich. It is conventional to refer to “the speaker” in discussing a lyric poem, since the speaker and the poet are not necessarily the same. The name Stella has overt symbolic reference to the translation “star.” The name Astrophil (“star-lover”) was inserted in the title after the fact, and only appears in the Eighth and Ninth Songs, which are in the pastoral mode.
Stella is quite definitely identified with Penelope (there are puns on her husband’s suggestive name), and if the sonnets are autobiographical beyond that (always a tricky assumption), they suggest that Sidney tried to persuade her to become his mistress, and she stoutly refused, in spite of her clear and continuing affection for him. At about the same time, Sidney began the sonnet sequence which was published after his death with the title of Astrophil and Stella. A marriage was arranged, but in a circumstance straight out of renaissance comedy, Penelope’s father died before the deal was completed, and her new guardian arranged a more mercenary marriage, against her will, to Robert, Lord Rich, in 1581. In 1575, the Sidney family accompanied Queen Elizabeth on her famous visit to Kenilworth, and the trip afterward included a stop at the home of young Penelope Devereux-13 or 14 at the time-with whom Philip was immediately smitten with a love that lasted the rest of his life. Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain. Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow Both at university, though, and in subsequent travels on the continent as soldier and diplomat, he had ample exposure to the poets of the time, and he moved in literary circles Sonnet 1 of Astrophil and Stella freely acknowledges that he has emulated others in developing his own poetic voice: He would likely have learned figures of speech as tools of rhetoric, but sonnet-writing would probably not have been an academic discipline.
He had the best education the age could afford, having gone first to Shrewsbury School and then to Oxford. He was a very handsome, talented, pedigreed, and well-connected aristocrat and courtier-his uncle was the Earl of Leicester, for example-and even a Member of Parliament at the precocious age of 18. Sir Philip Sidney had a short life (1554-1586, 32 years), crowded with incident. (NOTE: The first two entries in this blog were first posted elsewhere, so I have included them together in my first post on this site.)
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