SIDNEY, PHILIP, sir. — Writer, b. at Peshurth on 30 Nov. 1554, d. at Arnheim (Netherlands) on 17 Oct. 1586.
He is regarded as the typical gentleman of Elizabethan England, combining the virtues of the courtier, the soldier and the climber, within the Italian and French Renaissance tradition, a patron of artists and men of letters, a man of letters himself, and a defender of the national religion. His posthumous works include the long epic-pastoral romance *Arcadia* (1590), which stands beside Sannazaro’s work and Jorge de Montemayor’s *Diana*, written in prose, at times prolix, interspersed with lyrics of a chiefly amorous character; the *Apologie for Poetrie* (1598), written in response to an attack on the theatre by Stephen Gosson, which makes him the first representative of Renaissance literary criticism in England and in which are found interesting judgments on contemporary production; and *Astrophel and Stella* (1591), a collection of sonnets addressed to Penelope Devereux, which places Sidney among the most prominent and original representatives in Europe of Petrarchan lyric poetry.