APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE- SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

  Philip Sidney was born at Penshurst, in kent, on the 29th November, 1554. He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. His father was a close companion of the young King Edward VI and continue to serve his country under Queen Mary and later, Queen Elizabeth. Sidney was named after his Godfather, King Philip II of Spain. Sidney attended Shrewsbury school with his lifelong friend Fulke Greville. In 1575, he returned to England and became a courtier at the court of Queen Elizabeth. It was here that he made the acquaintance of Penelope Devereux, the eldest daughter of Lord Essex, a girl of only 12 years old. It was to her that Sidney dedicated his sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella. However, Lady Penelope got married to Lord Rich in 1581; while Sidney married Frances Walsingham.In 1583, Sidney received the title of Knighthood. In 1586, Sidney, along with his younger brother Robert Sidney, took part in a skirmis against the spanish at Zutphen, and was wounded by a musket shot. few days later, he succumbed to this wound.
         
 Before launching a defence of poetry, Sidney justified his stand by referring in a half-humourous manner to a treatise on horseman-ship by Pietro Pugliano. If the art of horsemanship can deserve such an eloquent euology and vindication, surely poetry has better claims for euology and vindication. There is a just cause to plead a case for poetry since it has fallen from the highest estimation of learning to be “the laughing stock of children”.

            In 1579 appeared a treatise entitled The School of Abuse written by Stephen Gosson. There was a tendency among the puritans of that age to condemn poets and poetry in general and Stephen Gosson was also one among them. This work was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney.  Sidney no where makes any mention of Gosson, he was directly replying to him. Gosson calls poets Pipers and jesters denounces poetry, music and the drama all alike as caterpillars of the common wealth. Mainly his arguments are that a man can use his time in a better way than in poetry, that poetry is the mother of lies and the nurse of abuse and the Plato therefore banished poets from his ideal commonwealth. Sidney gives a reply to all these charges against poetry and also writers exhaustively on the nature and functions of poetry. The work has a great historical significance and was published posthumously in 1595 in two different titles, Apologie for Poetrie and The Defence of Poesie.

            Poetry, according to Sidney, “in a noblest nations and languages that are known, hath been the first light-giver to ignorance, and the first nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges”.

Ø  He regards Plato as essentially a poet. “ And truly even Plato whosoever well considereth, shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin, as it were, and beauty depended most of poetry”.

Ø  Sidney recalls the reverence paid to the poet, first by the Romans who had called him vates, a prophet, or seer.

Ø  Greeks who called him by the word poiein, which means marker or creator.

Ø  Poetry, according to Sidney, is essentially an art of imitation in accordance with Aristotelian theory, and its function as stated by Horace, is to teach and delight.

Ø  Poetic imitation is an exercise of the creative faculty.

Ø  Three kinds of poetry, according to Sidney, are 1. Religious poetry  2. Philosophical poetry  3. Poetry as an imaginative treatment of life and nature.

Ø  Poetry proper further divided into – the heroic, lyric, tragic, comic satiric, iambic, elegiac, pastoral and others. This classification is based partly on the subject matter, and partly on the metrical consideration.

Ø  Sidney agrees the end of all learning is to know “any by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying his own divine essence”.

Ø  The ultimate end of knowledge is not only well-knowing, but also well-doing.

Ø  The end of all knowledge is the teaching of virtue.

Ø  Poetry is superior to Philosophy and History.

Ø  In the promotion of virtue, both philosophy and history play their parts. Philosophy deals with its theoretical aspects and teaches virtues by precepts. History teaches practical virtue by drawing concrete examples from life. But poetry gives both precepts and practical examples.

Ø  Poetry gives perfect pictures of virtue which are far more effective than the mere definitions of philosophy. It also gives imaginary examples which are more instructive than the real examples of history.

Ø  Poet is the monarch of all sciences.

Ø  The pastoral poetry treats of the beauty of the simple life and miseries of the people under dictatorship of kings.

Ø  Elegiac poetry deals with the weakness of mankind and wretchedness of the world. It should evoke pity rather than blame.

Ø  Satiric poetry laughs at folly.

Ø  Iambic poetry tries to unmask villainy.

Ø  Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life presented in a ridiculous manner. It helps men keeping away from such errors.

Ø  Tragedy opens the greatest wounds in our hearts, teaches the uncertainty of this world. Nobody can resist the sweet violence of a tragedy.

Ø  The lyric gives moral precepts and soars to the heavens in singing the praises of God.

Ø  Epic and heroic poetry inculcate virtue to the highest degree by portraying heroic and moral goodness in the most effective manner.

Ø  Sidney asserts that the heroical is “not only a kind, but the best and most accomplished kind of poetry”.

Ø  A common complaint against poetry is that it is bound up with rhyming and versing. But verse is not essential for poetry. One may be a poet without versing and a versifier without poetry. Verse is used for musical, sensuous and emotional quality.

Ø  The chief objections to poetry are 1. That there being many other more fruitful knowledges, a man might better spend his time in them than in this; 2. That it is the mother of lies; 3. That it is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires; 4. That  Plato had banished poets from his ideal republic.

Ø  Sidney dismisses the first charge by saying that he has already established that ‘no learning is so good as that which reach and move to virtue, and that none can both teach and move thereto so much as poetry’.

Ø  He answers to the second objection that poets are liars is that of all writers under the sun the poet is the least liar. The Astronomer, the Geometrician, the historian, and others, all make false statements. But the poet ‘nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth’. His aim being ‘to tell not what is or is not, but what should or should not be’. So what he presents is not fact but fiction embodying truth of an ideal kind.

Ø  The third charge against poetry is that all its species are infected with love themes and amorous conceits, which have a demoralizing effect on readers. To this charge Sidney replies that poetry does not abuse man’s wit, it is man’s wit that abuseth poetry.

Ø  Sidney is rather perplexed at the last charge, namely Plato’s rejection of poetry. He wonders why Plato found fault with poetry. In fact, warned men not against poetry but against its abuse by his contemporary poets who filled the world with wrong opinions about the gods. So Plato’s objection was directed against the theological concepts. In Ion, Plato gives high and rightly divine commendation to poetry. His description of the poet as “a light winged and sacred thing’ reveals his attitude to poetry.

Ø  Poetry is not honoured in England. Sidney asks, “why has England grown so hard a step-mother to poets”? He thinks that it is so because poetry has come to be represented by ‘base men with servile wits’ or to men who, however studious, are not born poets. He says that ‘a poet no industry can make, if his own genius be not carried unto it’. Another cause is the want of serious cultivation of the Poetic art. Three things necessary for producing good poetry are Art, Imitation and Exercise which are lacking in the present generation of poets.

Ø  Sidney says that few good poems have been produced in England since Chaucer.

Ø  The state of dram is also degraded. The only redeeming tragedy is Gorboduc which itself is a faulty work. A tragedy should be tied to the laws of poetry and not of history.

Ø  There should not be no mingling of tragedies and comedies, English comedy is based on a false hypothesis. It aims at laughter, not delight. The proper aim of comedy is to afford delightful teaching, not mere coarse amusement. Comedy should not only amuse but morally instruct.

Ø  Sidney calls tragicomedy as mongrel tragicomedy.

Ø  Poetry is full of virtue-breeding delightfulness. It is void of no gift that ought to be in the noble name of learning. All the charges laid against it are false and baseless. The poets were the ancient treasurers of the Grecian divinity; they were the first bringers of all civility. There are many mysteries contained poetry. A poet can immortalize people in his verses.