The Discipline of Love: a Critical Commentary on Sir Philip Sidney`s "Astrophyl and Stella"

Sir Philip Sidney produced the primary Elizabethan sonnet cycle “Astrophyl and Stella”, which was published posthumously in 1591. The stylistic elements of the sonnet with which he introduces this cycle — including overlap of phrase, sensory detail, imagery, and personification — culminate to portray a speaker’s attempt to compose a sonnet for his beloved in the style of the traditional Petrarchan conceit. Underlying this image is the speaker’s confusion, rage, despair - and eventual reconciliation with his own writing process, rendering a new understanding of what it is to write love poetry.

The poem’s speaker begins by quietly pronouncing his intention to convey his love through the raw, yet disciplined power of poetry: “Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,” (line 1). Bound into a rigid metrical ‘abab’ quatrain composed of iambic hexameter awaits an easily readable progression: “Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,” (line 3). Within the scansion, the speaker combines anaphora in both syntax, through the rhetorical device of overlap of phrase, and diction, by selecting the word “might” to hinge each phrase together. Not only is this plain speech a concise and memorable summary of his inner thoughts, but it reflects a deliberate choice to present those thoughts in a highly structured pattern. Thus his tone is contemplative to himself, inviting to the reader, and seductive to his idealized beloved. Overlapping phrase also sets a pattern for thematic development later in the poem.

Though the overlap of phrase ends in the fourth line, the pattern of overlap continues in the developmental interplay of imagery and themes. Line seven’s zeugma, “Others’ leaves,” (line seven) ties together the image of flipping through scholarly or poetic papers, and introduces more natural imagery for the next line. Line eight’s “fresh and fruitful showers,” adds alliteration and direct sensory detail to this nature imagery. Finally the image modulates into a personification of Nature in line ten as the mother of Invention. As images of the poem evolve, its thematic focus follows suit.

Tracing line eight’s metaphor of the speaker’s “sunburned brain” uncovers a similarly overlapping development into personification. Simple devices evolve throughout the poem into a complex interplay of themes. By the second quatrain, three personifications are activated, each with a separate agency. Line ten’s Nature, Invention and Study take on roles of their own, not only out of the speaker’s direct control, but actually subverting the rhetorical authority he wielded in the first quatrain. Their antics place the speaker in a position of the observer, attempting to learn what he can but remaining temporarily passive. The reader, who usually occupies this position, is displaced. More ironically, these are the very abstractions which were thought to guide a poet through the writing process.

Line eleven returns to the zeugmatic double meaning of “others’ feet,” conveying the sonnet’s thematic revolution. At this pivotal moment, the reader watches the speaker’s voice waver. His plain, confident meditation unravel into a brooding amalgamation of thoughts. Confusion and frustration replace the speaker’s initial “fain” (line 1) eagerness.

Once again at the threshold of his intended destination— others’ minds—the speaker finds himself at the same place as only four lines earlier but having lost his initial optimism. The hopeful voice is no more. Interestingly, the first quatrain is marked by tight, well-ordered formations of rhetoric and wit. This would seem to reflect an intellectual maturity in the speaker. However, by the second quatrain, the mood has changed to confusion, helplessness and frustration. “Biting my truant pen for spite,” (line 12) also references a regression to childhood. The contemporary understanding of “truant” was understood as an underachieving youth in the classroom: a misbehaving dunce.

The paradox culminates in the double meaning of the phrase “helpless in my throes” (line 12): the final word, denoting violent spasms or convulsions, may connote the agony of death as well as the pains of childbirth. It would seem as though the final epigrammatic couplet ironically undercuts the speaker’s original assertion. That is, it would seem as though the former connotation of “throes” is most accurate; the speaker resigns, letting oblivion take his verse. Then the speaker’s intimate meditation snaps into direct, plain dialogue. At a mere seven blunt monosyllabic words, the final line’s scansion breaks cleanly from the rest of the poem.

In the momentary, dramatic pause following this break, the speaker would seem to have nothing left to say. He has tried and failed. The speaker does not even bother to invoke his Muse, and why would he? Invention, Nature and Study have only shamed him. Instead his Muse invokes the momentarily passive speaker: “Fool,” my Muse said to me, look in thy heart and write,” (line 14).

At this point it may be useful to understand the context of Sidney’s poem. Long has been the fashion of the traditional Petrarchan sonnet to idealize the speaker’s beloved. Placed brightly among the stars for the starlover’s gaze to catch, Stella of Sir Philip Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella,” is a quintessential Petrarchan love object. She is ideal: infinitely desirable and unreachable to her lover. Thus the poet’s expression of love entails an idealized beloved, made perfect and sustained unattainably in the poet’s imagination. This introductory sonnet mentions “Dear she” only once in the first quatrain, and hastily moves on to phenomena within the speaker’s own mind.

Though the speaker testifies to the truth of his love, he has tremendous difficulty in channeling these emotions into such a meticulously prepared rhyme scheme. ``I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,” (line five). Though he is speaking of love, woe refers to his melancholy regarding the unattainable nature of his beloved.

The childlike temper, or “spite”, which rebels against the controlled discipline of writing supplies a genuine spontaneity to the final quatrain. This works to counter the speaker’s tendency to file his emotions into ordered segments of wit. Thus the speaker realizes that it is only through the personal, private plane of one’s own muse that love can be accessed. `look in thy heart, and write` (line 14).

Perhaps love, Sidney suggests through the speaker’s journey of composition, was never meant to be controlled, calculated or reduced into mere rhetoric. The writing of love suitable for the traditional Petrarchan sonnet must be an expression of the writer’s own heart. It becomes true when the emotions are accurately displayed: not arranged in a beautiful, orderly fashion designed to illicit praise from the reader, but written honestly, genuinely and to best convey the emotions in the writer’s heart.