A sonnet sequence composed by poet, courtier and swashbuckler, Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella is a treatment of courtly love

between two (to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare) "star cross'd" lovers. It constitutes a number of poems supposedly written by a man called Astrophil to his lover Stella. Both names are derived from words referring to stars--the first is also a pun on the true author's name. In addition to poking a great deal of fun at the notion of true love and the way that a knight should go about loving, the poems are also--on occasion--tender and understanding. The sonnet sequence creates the myth of a great lover, whilst quite firmly puncturing that myth.

Overview: Astrophil and Stella

Although the sonnets take a lyrical form, this sequence, more than any other comparable poetry collection, has a strong narrative thread. This element is emphasised by the 11 additional songs, which offer a slightly more objective view of the two lovers than Astrophil's subjective sonnets. Astrophil espies Stella and falls in love with her (in true romantic style) at first sight. She is caring and understanding, but when he makes an advance to her, she rejects him.

Much of the sonnet sequence is taken up with Astrophil's attempts to wrestle with his own anger and depression, with unrequited love. He blames Stella, himself, the stars, and the meaning of love; and he does so through a number of apostrophes--personifications of various abstract forms: making desire, love, and the moon into people with whom he can discuss the agony. Elizabethan Love Poetry: Astrophil and Stella

Astrophil and Stella very much follows the generic conventions of Elizabethan love poetry, and speaks convincingly of the power that love has to affect the life of an individual. However the sonnet sequence stands in marked contrast with the love poetry that preceds it. Astrophil and Stella particularly finds itself in opposition to--and in parody of--the notion of love poetry as created by the Italian poet Petrach.

Whereas most love poetry--an example contemporary to Sidney might be William Shakespeare's sonnets--tries to enter into the mode and the meaning of the writer's passion, Sidney's sonnets quite purposefully retreat to an ironic distance. Sidney's poems speak more about the nature of love poetry, than they do about love. Also, there are a number of references in Astrophil and Stella to the way that love is communicated, rather than how it is felt. Love, under the mocking stare of Sidney's writing, is reduced to a narrative strategy or a series of words on a page.

Sidney, by creating an elaborate pastiche of Astrophil's love, is not satirizing love per se, but is rather satirizing how poets capture and codify it. Astrophil appears more interested in how to talk about his love, than actually loving. Sonnets: Astrophil and Stella

The sonnet form is one that was incredibly popular during the Elizabethan age, and yet it did not have a mass audience. Like many poets of his day, Sidney preferred to have a few hand-written copies of his work, which he circulated around a number of his friends. In fact, scholars have taken great enjoyment combing through the poems trying to find references and in-jokes referring to Sidney's exalted circle.

Printing was considered vulgar, and subsequently a copy of Astrophil and Stella wasn't published until after Sidney died in 1586. This gives the versifying the air of an elaborate exercise. Sidney certainly does enjoy playing with both the sonnet form and the different forms that he invented-to bring expression to the "songs" that accompany his shorter poems.

This linguistic inventiveness provides a free-flowing style, while maintaining very strict restrictions--which gives Sidney's poetry vitality and intellect. Sidney creates poetry in the genre of courtly love, but he also jokes about the insufficiencies of writing as a form. Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is not the most passionate love poetry ever written, but it is one of the great poetic achievements of the Elizabethan age. The collection more than lives up to the great claims that he made in his treatise on the poetic form, "The Defence of Poesy." All the vibrancy of Philip's character flows through his work.