The Old Arcadia

by Philip Sidney, Katherine Duncan-Jones (Editor)

Sidney was in his early twenties when he wrote his Old Arcadia for the amusement of his younger sister, the Countess of Pembroke. A romantic story in the manner of Shakespeare's early comedies, the Old Arcadia also includes over 70 poems in a variety of meters and genres. This edition contains a Glossary and an Index of First Lines.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, 16th Century, Renaissance, Literature, Romance

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1593

About the author

Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent literary figures of the Elizabethan Age.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Book to get lost in.

A Book chock full of High Fantasy.

A Book with the rarified manners of a cultivated Elizabethan gentleman and knight.

But above all -

This is the Renaissance BIBLE of UNREQUITED LOVE.

And we have ALL had heartache of that variety in our lives.

Like me, when I was ten years old...

I was smitten by a radiant Blonde who was the female equivalent of my own naively kinda ditzy. It was in Grade Five, when I was ten. And it was wintertime, the time in our glacial Canada of snow forts and icy snowballs.

It was a perfect coincidence that my crazy infatuation with Susan Peacock had become common gossip among our resident primary school Creeps at such an inauspicious season.

Well, those bad guys rassled my unattractive fat 'n flabby form onto the snow faster 'n you can say Jack Robinson. Then gave my shocked face a snow bath -

THEN they hauled my outraged blonde ladylove Susan on top of me, and forced her frigid lips onto my own.

Where were the monitors? Where were the teachers?

Probably chuckling over their lunches!

Laugh on, guys...

Cause I was now starting to ENJOY this!

Not little Sparkly, Doe-eyed Susan, though -

She didn't like it one itty bit...!

But any good thing in our lives, as we all know, draws inexorably fast to a rude and sudden close.

So it goes; but:
Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

So my love for Little Susan was plainly unrequited, as young Sir Philip Sidney's appears to have been.

Sir Philip, however, SUBLIMATED it all. He penned a lengthy epistle to his primary household confidante, his beloved sister - the Countess of Pembroke - attaching this long lamenting fable.

It is wonderful (high-falutin flowery lingo and all)!

It's full of arcane secret symbolism, for hidden secrets shared only between a bro & his sis...

It combines ancient Greek myth with medieval legend.

And it's replete with high-blown Shakespearean sentiment.

But the important thing is, surely, to us...

Is that all this artifice covers a young man's Badly Broken Heart -

Like my own, long, long after that aeons-ago stolen kiss with Susan Peacock -

My Grade Five Sweetheart.

And as Edgar Allan Poe says:

Quoth the Raven, Nevermore!

[Edward Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

UPDATE: The "New" Arcadia is superior to the "Old" one; take my word for it. It's the one you want to read, because it's the one that was read for more than two hundred years. And Sidney's craft had clearly matured. Get the Maurice Evans edition in the Penguin Classical Library.

I read this after being dazzled by Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, and though I think it an admirable achievement, I don't think it compares. It's youthful and exuberant, very technically accomplished, and sometimes insightful, in short a panoply of Elizabethan diversions, but I don't think that it compares favorably with Shakespeare's pastorals, which seem more modern, and it lacks the forcefulness of Astrophel and Stella or the depth of Spenser's Faerie Queene.

The eclogues are the most tiresome part; I was really dragging myself along through them at times, which made me lose the thread of the main story. If I had been listening to them, on the other hand, especially set to music, they would probably have set the main story off very nicely (some of them are beautiful), and so perhaps this is one way in which we simply don't encounter this text properly.

Despite all this, for a book Sidney characterized as "a trifle triflingly handled," Arcadia is awfully impressive.

[A.J. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I read all of this. I'm not even going to claim that heretofore allegedly there may or may not have been a point the duration of which is uncertain that a person, namely myself, might have concurrently been disposed to a proportionate reading of the aforementioned text which may or may not have resulted in the phrase, "I read most of it."

What I will say is, I read enough of it, and the enough I read was also enough to question whether or not the Renaissance ever actually happened, because a text this foul could only have come out of the Dark Ages. This was an excruciating book, the kind of small font, paragraph free, ye olden prose nightmare that I used to ponder as a kid leafing through my dad's med school textbooks. Aside from a few interesting poems (I have no use for poetry), the story was akin to something Shakespeare might have done with one notable exception. It wasn't Shakespeare.

Retreat from this novel like the Persians from Greece after Platea. Philip Sidney invented boredom in the late 1500s. This is the result. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like 16th C men trying to impress women by cross-dressing and fighting off bears . . .

[Kerry & naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are actually three versions of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia in existence: the first version, called The Old Arcadia; the second, unfinished version, referred to in this review as The New Arcadia; and the hybrid book completed by Sidney’s sister, the Countess of Pembroke and Sir William Alexander with a bridging passage and the last two books of The Old Arcadia attached, called The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. *

Some scholars argue against study of the hybrid edition of the Arcadia because it was not what Sidney intended and we do not know how Sidney would have finished The New Arcadia. However, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia is the form in which this romance novel was published and read for the first 340 years after Sidney’s untimely death in 1582.

The Old Arcadia

Two princes of Greece, Pyrocles and Musidorus, on their way to Pyrocles’ kingdom, Macedonia, from Musidorus’ kingdom, Thessalia, happen upon the duchy of Arcadia, ruled by Basilius. Basilius had consulted the Oracle of Delphi and received a rather ambiguous, but no less threatening, prophecy concerning his daughters and he and his wife, Gynecia. To thwart the prophecy, Basilius takes his family into a retreat in the Arcadian wilderness. His younger daughter, Philoclea, lives in one lodge with her parents. The older daughter and heir to the kingdom, lives in another lodge with Dametas, a clownish shepherd, and his shrewish wife, Miso, and their ignorant daughter Mopsa.

Pyrocles falls in love with Philoclea’s picture (one of the usual romantic devices of the time) and hatches a scheme to win his ladylove by disguising himself as an Amazon and taking the name Cleophila. Musidorus thinks Pyrocles/Cleophila is out of his mind until he sees and falls in love with Pamela. Musidorus disguises himself as a lowly shepherd and joins in the fun. Both princes gain access to their ladies since Basilius only keeps young, marriageable men away from them (lower class shepherds don’t count as “marriageable”). Pamela and Philoclea chafe under the rather harsh restrictions placed upon them in this backwater with only a shepherd’s wife and her daughter for company.

The princes infiltrate Basilius’ household in their disguises and almost instantaneously win his gratitude when they save the princesses and Gynecia from a lion and a bear that attack the picnicking party. The princes then save Basilius from being overthrown as the duke by a bunch of drunken rabble-rousers. Despite these feats and others reported about them in the shepherds’ eclogues, the princes belie their valor by not going to the aid of Erona when they learn that she has been imprisoned and will be killed within the year if they do not meet the challenge of her captor.

If this wasn’t enough, both Basilius and Gynecia fall in love with Pyrocles/Cleophila and he has difficulty getting Philoclea alone to court her properly; Musidorus has to contend with Mopsa who thinks the shepherd Dorus is in love with her. Through various events that I won’t spoil by writing about here, Musidorus and Pyrocles end up on trial for their crimes against Arcadia with their father/uncle, Euarchus, king of Macedonia, sitting as their judge. Euarchus has not seen either his son or his nephew since their childhood when Pyrocles mother died and he was sent to Thessalia to be brought up by Euarchus’ sister, and does not recognize the young princes who have not yet revealed their true identities.

Sidney packs in several plot twists and one does wonder how he’ll get our heroes out of each predicament and win their ladies too since this is, after all, a comedic romance. But Sidney does so rather ingeniously and even fulfills all the stipulations of the prophecy as well.

From a critical standpoint, however, the ending leaves the reader with an ethical conflict but a true picture of a paradox of Elizabethan society: while a man is young he should marry for love; once he’s married and the patriarch of a family, he should ensure that his children marry for social advantage—love has nothing to do with the marriage contract.

My edition of The Old Arcadia is edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones. She indicated the footnotes with asterisks so that the reader then turns to the back of the book to find the appropriate footnote for that page. This edition also contains a glossary, which I found very useful for non-footnoted terms like “pantofle” (slipper). I did find the flipping back and forth somewhat cumbersome.

The New Arcadia

Sidney decided to rewrite his Arcadia as more of an epic romance, possibly thinking to publish the new volume for public consumption since The Old Arcadia was kept among a small group of Sidney’s and the Countess of Pembroke’s friends. He began expanding upon The Old Arcadia and was well into the third section (or “book”) when he was wounded in battle and died from the complications of his wound three weeks later.

The basic plot remains the same: Basilius has retreated to the Arcadian wilderness with his wife and daughters (though Arcadia is now a kingdom rather than a duchy) due to an oracular prophecy; Pyrocles and Musidorus fall in love with the princesses and disguise themselves to woo them though Pyrocles takes the name Zelmane (much less confusing than Cleophila). In addition, Sidney recounts Musidorus’ and Pyrocles’ adventures prior to arriving in Arcadia in great detail and not just casual mentions in the shepherd’s eclogues. Sidney also adds a great number of new characters: Amphialus, who is in love with Philoclea, and his evil mother Cecropia; Parthenia and her husband Argalus, a great knight; Helen of Corinth, who is in love with Amphialus; Erona’s marriage to her servant Antiphilus is recorded along with Artaxia’s and Plangus’ part in her imprisonment and many more subplots and story lines that turn the 364 pages of The Old Arcadia into 595 pages before Sidney finished the third book of The New Arcadia. Sidney added more battle scenes and jousts, more intrigues and love affairs, and, especially more wrangling between young people in love and parental authority figures.

The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia

The plot of the hybrid is the same as The New Arcadia and the ending is the same as The Old Arcadia with a few editorial changes. Sir William Alexander wrote a 30-page bridging passage before the addition of the last half of the third book and the fourth and fifth books of The Old Arcadia. The bridging passage serves to get the kidnapped princesses and Zelmane out of Cecropia’s castle and back to their father’s lodges while tying up loose ends with the myriad other characters whom Sidney had introduced. We pick up with Musidorus and Pamela fleeing Arcadia for Thessalia and Pyrocles tricking Basilius and Gynecia both so that he can spend the night with Philoclea. The scene of potential rape and other events of the same night were tastefully edited out of the hybrid edition by the Countess to preserve Sidney’s intent in The New Arcadia of making his heroes heroic in actuality and not half-grown boys playing at heroism.

Maurice Evans edited my edition of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. In lieu of a glossary he gives definitions of unfamiliar words, indicated by asterisks, at the bottom of each page and once again has the explanatory notes, though numbered, at the back of the volume, occasioning much flipping back and forth. This edition also contains a list of characters at the beginning which greatly assisted me in keeping track of who was in love with or related to whom.

Practical Matters

Both of my editions have standardized spelling and have moderately updated language from the original versions. Where possible for understanding and clear meaning, Sidney’s words were preserved in the books, just spelled in the 21st century manner rather than the wildly vacillating methods of the 16th century. While some might lament that one should read Sidney’s words just as he wrote them (very much like Shakespeare’s language), I personally like the updated volumes because they’re not nearly so arduous for the casual reader. Only scholars would read the originals, but these volumes are much better suited for general readers.

All three Arcadia are divided into books with pastoral eclogues providing poetic intervals between the books. The eclogues are not necessary for advancing the plot but ably demonstrate Sidney’s ability as a poet to move between different forms.

Overall

I highly recommend Sidney’s Arcadia. It has something for everyone: romance, adventure, violence (though not horribly graphic), a fantastic trial scene, irony, and enough twists to keep the reader interested. I especially recommend The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia to teenaged readers, although it runs nearly 850 pages, because it’s clean, the heroes and heroines are between 15 and 18 years of age, and the heroes win out over parental authority in a “coming of age” fashion.


*One could easily argue that all three Arcadia are “The Countess of Pembroke’s,” since Sidney wrote them for her, dedicated them to her, and gave her control of his literary estate upon his death. I’m employing the titles “Old,” “New,” and “The Countess of Pembroke’s” to clarify which volume I’m referring to in this review.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I also have The Old Arcadia (editor Katherine Duncan-Jones), his original 'trifle' written in his twenties. But give me The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (editor Maurice Evans) -- at twice the page count -- baroque and in confusion and unfinished at his death. The first was a silly romance, that he tried to make into an epic with serious concerns. I was most struck by the imprisonment sequence, late in the book, that becomes quite gothic in its extraction of drama from tortured characters.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’m convinced that every notable renaissance author was on crack, sidney in particular

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sidney's Old Arcadia is a novel written a century before the rise of the novel as a major English literary form, a pastoral tragicomedy decades before pastoral tragicomedy had its day on the English stage (and indeed, it was to become a play via the pen of James Shirley in 1640), and a compendium of poetic innovation that goes beyond simple experimentation with songs and sonnets, to embrace asclepiadics, dizains, phaleuciacs, and many other forms, some of which even come with metrical annotation. If all of this makes the book sound like hard work... well, it can be a bit of a challenge to get through at times, especially during the four eclogue sections; and I enjoy a bit of Theocritean and Virgilean bucolic poetry as much as the next man. But the main story is hugely entertaining, full of incident and lively interest; surprisingly lively, given the length of many of the speeches that the main characters address to each other. Indeed, the perlocutionary power of rhetorical speech is one of the book's main themes, which comes to the fore in the opposing speeches of Philanax, Pyrocles, and Musidorus at the trial of the two princes with which the romance concludes. It's not all serious - the comedy of the Arcadia can be found as much in the high romance world of the disguised princes and the Arcadian princesses as in the low subplot of Dametas, Miso, and Mopsa - but the comic effect is subtly modulated by the sense throughout that this is a story of people who seldom fail to elicit or to deserve our sympathy, but whose actions are not always as admirable as their exalted characters, speeches, and sentiments. As the book concludes of Gynecia: "so uncertain are moral judgements, the same person most infamous and most famous, and neither justly."

[Keegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually like things that are old, especially stuffy prose from the 1500s, but Sidney's masterpiece (at least his prose masterpiece) is wonderfully relatable and actually quite funny. Who doesn't love a story where two heroes kill a full-grown lion and bear within the first 100 pages.

Spoiler alert: it does turn quite serious and the ending raises questions of authenticity, but the text as a whole is one that everyone should read in the canon of literature in English.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I consider it a feat to have read and understood this book.

Each sentence is a sculpture, of which the author provides you the pieces, but you are required to assemble. The process is exhausting — beautiful, but exhausting.

[Gastjäle · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Old Arcadia is an early prose work from the 16th century, written by the famous and merited poet Sir Philip Sidney. It is, simultaneously, a fitting tribute for the likes of Virgil and Theocritus, and a showcase of youthful ardour, offering a mixture of carefully crafted monologues and several styles of poetry, embedded in a framework of comic drama whose structure is not brought to shame when placed next to his successor Shakespeare's comedies.

The prose reads mostly like a drawn-out play: while there are passages that describe actions, reactions and thought processes, for the most part the work consists of lengthy speeches that are all delivered in a very uniform style. Sidney absolutely loves paradoxes and juxtapositions, and there is hardly a page herein that would not have a handful of contrasts thrown at the reader. The rhythm of the speeches also becomes very apparent to the reader as the story progresses, even if it is a bit difficult to explain in plain words. What also adds to the curiosity of the prose narrative is that it is a first-person narrator recounting a tale that is supposedly an old legend, and that this narrator also commands a sense of the dramatic: he can cut off a scene with vehement apologies in order to move temporarily to another, and he even terms two main characters by their fake names, while they are in disguise (going as far as to term Pyrocles "she").

There are copious poems included in this work, and while they are nowhere near Sidney's later poetry, they occasionally have a cool whiff of Renaissance freshness, and not unredolent of the leisurely melancholy of the aforementioned eclogists.

I repeat: the work is a showcase of youthful ardour. In that it should deserve a mention in the annals of literature. Sidney, in his early 20s, clearly knew what he wanted and how he wanted to write: like a 16th-century courtier for whom Christianity, estate, virtue and manners are paramount (not that there aren't pagan gods in here, but the way the characters invoke a single "God" in times of trouble is rather telling).

But endow us a chance for a brief simulation to bring to light what my light treatment might otherwise have overshadowed, showing that well-meant praise can serve as fuel for the most ill-intentioned condemnation. Originally inapparent, how apparent doth it become by and by that what are served in droves are but few in number, potentially meritorious but base alloy in actuality; by unfolding doth the tale fold its beauty, summoning a dire deluge for the irrigation of frail stalks and inhuming in profusion what in unearthed choiceness best doth thrive. Such hath the mild lute imparted cruel fury that in the vehement professions, in demonstrations most avowed, ringeth merely listless strings of rhetoric, most avowedly demonstrating nothing at all. In all overarching, it doth all undermine, and in nothing leaving to imagination, nothing therein retaineth. 'Tis a tale well known that God a world out of nothing created, and like a God himself, though less well or known, hath the poet eke to the void recourse, wherefrom in order to fill a single page he emptieth the book entire. Out of thin air attempteth voluminous soil to grow a garden for her Countess' pleasure, for the displeasure of the modern reader offereth a wasteland wherein little growth obtaineth. For to paint a picture effaceth the picture with the application of paint, for to erect a monument pursuing the tenets of architecture, with architecture itself razeth all to the ground. How like the moon for her beautious beams their silver from the golden sun doth borrow, little expecting to return yet many a praise from languishing lovers greedily exacting, doth the bard his borrowed raiment flaunt, peacock-like, yet for the hundred Argus eyes the Phorcidean orb mistaking. The most sweeping gesture the most constricted in scope, the most passionate word the most bereft of passion, the most egregious display of art a display of nothing but egregious art. With trifles attempting to alleviate the tedium, doth those very trifles with unassailable tedium apparel, and by seeking to distract the heavy mind with heavy distraction doth the mind end taxing. How by approaching the end doth the poet distance the reader from his ends, how by crafting his sentences with care thus carelessly sentences his craft. In fine, though the babe in arms by constant application of ambient impressions a sense of the world developeth, though the youth by strenuous trial and error the treacherous allure of the false ways doth learn to navigate, though the man in his prime the dashing team of passion needs must time and time again with the two-fold reins of reason and virtue bring to subjugation and though the aged one, in the hoary twilight of life's appointed time, by the test of memory without let revieweth the wisdom divine of earthly stay; no amount of sense, no supply of allure, no reserve of reason and virtue nor no provision of wisdom doth justify the interminable gratuity of the dull parakeeting herein.

[David]

Another one for the "me" shelf; I do not have a 'DNF' shelf! (See Boswell's Life of Johnson review for clarification, if interested).

My biggest 'takeaway' from this one is confirmation that I don't like the genre any more in its earlier days than I usually do in the present. The Arcadia is far more sword than sorcery, but it is the forerunner of much speculative 'romance' fiction in our own time. As with most "me" books, I found a lot to skip, but occasionally slowed down long enough to be genuinely interested. The Woman Warrior is an interesting trope--though here, at least, the female 'knight' is not "anatomically correct" ... all an Amazonian plot, doncha know ... and the occasional moment of characters bursting into song is the 16th-century equivalent of the modern 'story with music' (as distinct from the largely 'story IN music' that is the stuff of much of what is currently labelled 'musical theatre'). In any case, although I enjoyed the 12th-century verse romanz of Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, I haven't really been much into anything in that genre since about 1215!

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What marvel then, I take a woman’s hue,
Since what I see, think, know, is all but you?"

"And truly I think hereupon it first got the name of love: for indeed the true love hath that excellent nature in it, that it doth transform the very essence of the lover into the thing loved, uniting, and as it were, incorporating it with a secret and inward working. And herein do these kinds of loves imitate the excellent: for, as the love of heaven makes one heavenly, the love of virtue, virtuous, so doth the love of the world make one become worldly: and this effeminate love of a woman doth so womanize a man, that, if he yield to it, it will not only make him an Amazon, but a launder, a distaff, a spinner, or whatsoever other vile occupation their idle heads can imagine and their weak hands perform.”

[Nicki Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Old Arcadia, as the blurb suggests, has a plot that would not be out of place in a Shakespeare comedy, with cross-dressing disguises and romantic problems. That part of this work was quite whimsical and fun, if you can bear with the density of the prose. For me personally, the poetic interludes between the main parts of action were a bit of a drag, so I did skim a little faster through those, but appreciation of those sections will probably depend on how much of a poetry fan you are. I am glad I finally got around to reading this work, but I don't see it as one I would be much inclined to reread in the future, so I am giving it three stars. It's worth checking out if you are a fan of 16th century literature or enjoy the plots of Shakespeare's earlier works.

[Alice]

Finally! Very, very long, due to the flowery prose and complex syntax (as in one sentence will last half the page.) No unity of action, which makes the length pay off less because there isn't as much build-up. That said, Sidney has some inventive turns of phrase that I personally could never come up with, and the book raises interesting questions about gender, love, and good governance. Not my favourite, but still rewarding.

Note: I only read the unfinished New Arcadia, not the chapters from the Old Arcadia that are tacked onto the end of this edition.

[Kyra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Screaming into the expansive void of my own stupidity. What on earth

[Jemma Forster · Rating 4 out of 5]

PhD chapter = upended
(in a good way, big up Cleophila)

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

okay so this started off okay & from an academic perspective i think i'll find researching/analysing this interesting HOWEVER this genuinely was one of the worst reading experiences i've ever had. so many pointless songs (i get that digressions are the point, but from a purely entertainment perspective, they added no value for meee), the plot was okay but DRAGGED
3 the fact that sidney HIMSELF at the start feared his work '(like the spider's web) will be thought fitter to be swept away than worn to any other purpose' says it all really. if you aren't reading this for uni/research seriously - there are so so many better things to read 😭😭

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review available at warmdayswillnevercease.wordpress.com

Philip Sidney weaves a wonderful pastoral romance which includes sex, politics, violence, drugs, mobs, and cross-dressing. A typical pastoral romance of the era, really. It’s a hybrid between prose and drama which made for a very interesting structure. I actually really enjoyed the mix because it enabled Sidney to give his story a recognisable five-act structure while experimenting with prose. Prose wasn’t a popular form of writing during this time and novels didn’t exist in English so it makes sense that he chose a more common drama structure.

I did find the plot and the characters very entertaining! The plot itself has a lot of twists and turns where fortune turns against the characters and, to be honest, there’s nothing I love more in a story than a good bit of hoodwinking, a runaway Princess, and a drunken mob. The characters find themselves in a series of unlikely, and sometimes extremely tragic, situations which you’d definitely find in a Shakespearean pastoral comedy but the plot and the character explorations are expanded thanks to the capabilities of prose. Sidney could waffle on for as long as he wanted without worrying about time restraints (or about who was reading it because it was supposed to be for his sister’s entertainment only) and there’s even a long trial scene in the final book of the text.

I think the reason I enjoyed reading this so much is because I love this era of literature. It was a time of experimentation where writers were taking the popular themes of the era and attempting to mould them into new forms of writing. The Old Arcadia is definitely worth reading if you can get past the wall of text you’re presented with on the page – which is occasionally broken up with small sections of poetry – and accept that it isn’t going to be as ‘perfect’ as a pastoral play by the likes of Shakespeare. Just enjoy the weird and wonderful ride that Sidney takes you on!

[Alper Yılmaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whereas The Faerie Queene excelled in its technical execution but was brought down by its insecure ambition, Sidney's Arcadia is redeemed of its technical deficiencies -quite overlong and rather tedious to keep track of- by its ambition in being so unprecedented and seminal a work, and full of so much genius.

No Western work before this, with the exception of Metamorphoses, The Divine Comedy and maybe Orlando Furioso and the Iliad, is as in tune with human psychology and character as this one, and though Sidney's rigid beliefs in what "proper poetry" should be like, it still manages to entertain an unexpected amount.

The poetry can feel tiresome or needless, but it's perhaps the most innovative and exciting collection of English poetry until itself.

Lastly, Sidney is a master of metaphors and similes. The idea of the redness of a woman's cheeks causing lilies to grow pale in envy and roses to blush in shame (a metaphor borrowed by Shakespeare in his own narrative poetry) is so remarkable in so many ways that I have trouble expressing how much I love it, and the book is full of this stuff.

Everyone interested in older English literature should at least have a taste of this book.

[Rachel Brand · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for EN4341: Renaissance Sexualities: Rhetoric and the Body 1580-1660.

This one is really difficult to rate as, as interesting as this book was, it was very difficult to read because of how dense the text was. It had a tendency to go off on tangents that, while apparently being essential to the text (if what I learned in my tutorials was true), almost put me to sleep at times. I have a feeling that my lecturer never expected any of us to finish this book as she gave a very detailed description of each section of the book before our second lecture, then gave us a handout describing the order of events in the novel. It is difficult to read, so bravo if you do manage to finish this book. I'm afraid this isn't even going on my "someday I will finish" shelf as I don't think it's worth the effort. It was interesting to study, I'll give it that, and parts of the book did hold my attention, just not very often. 2*

[Edward Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the "New" Arcadia, which is "new" in the sense that it is Sidney's late, unfinished revision of his earlier novel, but it is "old" in the sense that this is the one people read for over two hundred years before the "old" version, which had only circulated privately and then been forgotten, was rediscovered.

Don't worry about all that. This is the Arcadia you want to read, and this is the perfect edition to read it in (the one edited by Maurice Evans and published by Penguin). It is clearly superior to the "old" version, with much more flair and a more modern feel.

[T. Tokunaga · Rating 4 out of 5]

【The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney / Oxford University Press, 1962】

--I have no shewes of wealth: my wealth is you,
My beautie's hewe your beames, my health your deeds;
My minde for weeds your vertue's liverie weares. (P18, 7, 135-137, Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia)

--Then to an earnest Love what doth best victorie lend? -- Ende. (P63, 31, 15, Countess)

--Such is their speech, who be of sober wit;
But who doo let their tongues shew well their rage,
Lord, what bywords they speake, what spite they spit?
The house is made a very lothsome cage,
Wherein the birde doth never sing but cry; (P104-5, 67, 46-50, Countess)

Immoral, and sometimes even adulterous world of Elizabethan poetry always amazes me at how they are not actually free from the distinction, but you can see the hidden ardour for Elizabeth I as the idol of the age, and people surrounding the early modern Diana (no pun intended) trying their best to be hypocritical or "intertextual" - the flame of "I want."

--Then might I thinke what thoughts were best to thinke:
Then might I wisely swimme or gladly sinke. (P148, 19, 5-6, Certain Sonnets)

--Reason hath thy words removed,
Finding that but words they proved. (P156, 27, 11-12, Sonnets)

--On Cupid's bow how are my heart-strings bent,
That see my wracke, and yet embrace the same?
When most I glorie, then I feele most shame:
I willing run, yet while I run, repent. (P174, 19, 1-4, Astrophil and Stella)

--A strife is growne between Vertue and Love,
While each pretends that Stella must be his:
(P190, 51, 1-2, Astrophil)

Under the cover of Catullus, Petrarch, Ovid, Chaucer and even the Muse, the poetry focuses on "I want" or very likely "I." Showing the subject must've been the last thing considered elegant in the day when Latin was dominant (you usually tell the subject in Latin from the verb's conjugation).

--'Foole,' said my Muse to me, 'looke in thy heart and write.' (P165, 1, 13-14, Astrophil)

--'But ah,' Desire still cries, 'give me some food.' (P201, 71, 13-14, Astrophil)

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This prose romance with a pastoral eclogue at the end of each book was penned by Sidney in 1580 for the delight of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. However, it was not published until 1590, after Sidney's bereavement. The title of the work was suggested by romances, well-liked in Italy and in Spain, in which the scenes are laid in an idyllic country like the ancient Arcadia. The prose tale is episodic at intervals by passages of verse, replicated from the eclogues of Virgil and Theocritus, in which the shepherds sing of love and the delights of bucolic life. The plot of Arcadia is as obscure as the pattern in a Persian carpet, but its style made it reasonably a success. So triumphant was Arcadia that ten editions were published before 1600 and it was in fact turned into a play by James Shirley. Read it way back in 2008.

[Matthew Gurteen · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ Page 148

This book is just going over my head. Katherine Duncan-Jones says in her introduction to the Oxford World's Classic's edition that people either love or hate this book. I know which one I am. The prose is a chore to crawl through. To a certain extent, I expect that with classics. It just felt like every other page was repeating itself, however. As much as I hate DNFing another book this year - and making this the only book I have DNFed in my Shakespeare reading challenge, which I have almost finished -I can't bring myself to finish Philip Sidney's 'The Old Arcadia'. I can see why some people would enjoy it, and if the plot interests you, I'd say give it a go. It just wasn't for me.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really a rather wonderful book, though hard going: don't imagine you're going to read more than about two or three chapters a day (it's taken me about six months), but a glorious, class-bound cross-dressing Arabian Nights of a novel, that you can see being so influential on Shakespeare, Webster, Cervantes and that crowd.

The introduction in the Penguin Classics edition is superb, but the notes (sorry, Maurice Evans) are a bit meaningless: there's so much you could notate in this, and the notes choose what is often either meaningless or (frankly) obvious to comment on.

It's an immersive experience, and glorious.

[Richard Clay · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star is a rating of this book's appeal to anyone but the mad-keen lover of all things sixteenth century. The general reader should stick to Astrophil and Stella and The Apology for Poetry. As an attempt to create a morally instructive narrative, Arcadia pales in comparison to what Bunyan was to achieve seventy-odd years later and it's so bloody long I confess I wound up longing for it to be over. But there is some beautiful language in it and the poems are as accomplished as you'd expect.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book and what Sidney is trying to do here for so many reasons. It's fantastic. But it's thicker than any of the ancient novels it unconsciously emulates (he would only discover Heliodorus' Aithiopika *after* he wrote it!) and as such, it can get a bit ponderous at times. I will say that if you read this novel Shakespeare will never seem the same again - you will know him as a plagiarist, for here is his source material.

[Rickey McKown · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I enjoyed Sidney's convoluted plot and the cast of characters, which, as others have noted, one could readily visualise on stage in enjoyable Shakespearean-style comedy, I did find that the dialogue often ran on into long rhetorical speeches which became quite tedious, and while I enjoy narrative poetry from this period (such as Spencer's Faerie Queene), I did not warm to Sidney's lyrical poetry. So enjoyable, but something of a slog at times.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather wonderfully topical, actually -- the hero spending 700 pages in drag, pronouns dutifully following suit, chaste young ensemble with too-sophisticated mores, overchoreographed and cooly-aestheticized episodic violence, a franchise always already in iterated reboot. The Countess' stitched-together version is a brick but a page-turner: I found it (and especially it in the midst of the now) funny, surreal, delightful.