Once Sir Philip Sidney died of an infected thigh wound in 1586 at 31, myth-making forces went to work. We know Sidney now as a courtier-poet cut down in his prime in a useless skirmish in the Netherlands and for giving his water to a dying soldier on the battlefield—an incident that never happened, says British historian Stewart (coauthor of Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon). This man, known as the "epitome of Elizabethan chivalry" and "quintessential Englishman," appears here as disappointingly less than his reputation. The subtitular "double life" alludes to the fact that the handsome, talented, well-born Sir Philip was belittled and neglected in England by status-sensitive, conspiracy-minded Queen Elizabeth, while on the continent his poetry and his statesmanship earned him acclaim. Except for the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572 in Paris, which he most likely witnessed, there was little drama in his life until the small war in which he was mortally wounded. Stewart furnishes a litany of Sidney's frustrations (his connections to noble families under royal suspicion injured his prospects), and examines his literary projects, which, but for the convoluted pastoral epic Arcadia, the lofty Defense of Poesie
and the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, remained unfinished. In Stewart's demythologized study, Sidney is the prisoner of his birthright. It is ironic that, because of his death, his less-talented younger brother Robert became Earl of Leicester and built a London mansion (which gave its name to Leicester Square), for which he is more widely remembered than his more accomplished older brother. Scrupulously researched but a bit sluggish in pace, this biography will appeal to fans of Elizabethan England. Illus. (Oct. 1)
