"Old" Arcadia

Sir Philip Sidney wrote two romances which he called Arcadia. The revised version he never finished because of his untimely death on the battlefield. The less complicated but finished earlier version, here recorded, was written while the author resided with his sister, the Countess of Pembroke.

To a greater degree than other romances having pastoral settings, like Lodge's Rosalynde, the main characters, the chief secondary ones, and even some minor ones are not shepherds but great persons sojourning in the countryside of Arcadia, an idealized pagan Greek duchy, the heroes disguised in order to court the daughters of the duke, who is vacationing in his own realm. They themselves have already made a reputation for themselves, which they conceal to conform to the Duke’s rusticating mood. They are not yet old enough to shave, giving one of them the opportunity to pose as an Amazon. These disguises serve more complicated ends as the plot develops.

The style is ornamental, the syntax tangled, and at times the author himself gets lost in his own Chinese boxes, which become yet more difficult to parse in the eclogues. To readers accustomed to today’s fragmented style, Sidney’s balanced antitheses will seem alien, as will the highly sophisticated poetry that springs extempore from the lips of shepherds and disguised courtiers alike, and the prose bejeweled with platitudes. These aspects of style, however, befit the idealized landscape that resembles the scenes on fine painted china. Moreover, the author’s penchant for balancing one concept with another (e.g., "what for many was made should not for one be broken") is reflected in the plot, from the very beginning, where the great world outside begins to invade the pastoral retreat.

The occasional hints of irony, as in a battle scene which starkly contrasts with the rural setting, is described in language rivaling Ovid’s high camp. Yet, in spite of the mild self-mockery, the writer’s admiration for his two pairs of lovers registers as sincere, and as the fist of Justice comes slamming down upon the pastoral retreat, one’s hope that the maxim "Et in Arcadia Ego" is a myth becomes tenuous.

(comment by Thomas A. Copeland)