Sir Philip Sidney: The Maker's Mind

Queen Elizabeths court 1580: Europe was at war or under Inquisition rule sea voyages were opening an exciting New World but England alone kept to a rare and tenuous peace. Philip Sidney was highly-educated well-travelled and fitted for a career in diplomacy or soldiery a friend to Europes most prominent Protestant intellectuals many of whom lived in exile. But at home he was idle and fell under a cloud when he opposed the Queens marriage to the French Duke of Anjou.Should Philip the child of royal servants and scion of the powerful Dudley family join the stream of exiles? Instead he made another choice: to become a maker or poet. In doing so despite his unpublished works and early death in 1586 at the age of thirty-two he became one of the glories of English literature.When his works were first published posthumously in the 1590s the playwright Shakespeare like others of a younger generation was strongly influenced to carry Sidneys style themes and stories onward into As You Like It King Lear his own Sonnets and other writings.Dorothy Connells book first published by Oxford University Press in 1977 now re-issued and updated for the digital age elegantly bridges the historical courtly playful and poetical elements so mixed in Sir Philip Sidneys life and work in order to give the reader a vibrant picture of the man his milieu and Renaissance Europe in his time.