Astrophel and Stella Study Guide

Astrophel and Stella

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Contents
Astrophel and Stella Study Guide................................................................................................ 1

Contents...................................................................................................................................... 2

Plot Summary.............................................................................................................................. 3

Sonnets 1 - 20............................................................................................................................. 4

Sonnets 21 - 40........................................................................................................................... 7

Sonnets 41 - 60......................................................................................................................... 10

Sonnets 61 - 75, Songs 1 - 2..................................................................................................... 13

Sonnets 76 - 86, Songs 3 - 9..................................................................................................... 16

Sonnets 87 - 108, Songs 10 - 11................................................................................................ 19

Characters................................................................................................................................. 22

Symbols and Symbolism............................................................................................................ 25

Settings...................................................................................................................................... 27

Themes and Motifs.................................................................................................................... 29

Styles......................................................................................................................................... 33

Quotes....................................................................................................................................... 35

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Plot Summary
The following version of this book was used to create this guide: Sidney, Philip. The
Major Works. Oxford, 2002.

Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella follows a lose narrative rife with
intimate drama between Astrophel, the speaker of the majority of the sonnets, and
Stella, his unattainable Beloved. The early sonnets in the sequence delineate
Astrophel's anxiety over embarking on a poetic project that many have already
mastered, yet he proceeds to tell the story of the first time he saw Stella, what she
looked like, and how he fell in love with her.

After providing the reader with a general outline of the past, the speaker moves into
describing his present state, which is one of melancholy and despair. Suffering from the
unrequited love of Stella, Astrophel obsesses over her physical beauty (especially her
dark eyes), her voice, and her ability to make any sour situation palatable.
Nevertheless, he continues to speak about the Beloved from a distance, acknowledging
that any interaction between them is mere fantasy that overwhelms his mind from day to
day.

As the sonnets progress, they become increasingly more intimate and the reader begins
to notice that Stella - at once a distant object of Astrophel's attention - is moving closer
to the speaker. Some sort of relationship or bond is formed between the two (the
sonnets are too vague to know the exact details of their relationship) and it is suggested
that they share a secret kiss in the garden outside her home. After the kiss, Astrophel is
elated with love and writes a series of sonnets detailing the wonders of bliss and the joy
of having found such romantic fulfillment after so much sadness.

However, just as Astrophel is sure he has won Stella over, she rejects him once more,
this time for good. Astrophel is devastated and takes his feelings out both on his poetry
and on his Beloved, writing a series of songs that blame Stella for her malicious
manipulation and attempt to cope with the new realization that he will remain lonely. The
later sonnets, written primarily about absence, raise questions of how to keep on living
and writing once one has been abandoned by his only love.

The end of the sequence sees the "death" of Stella, and it s not clear whether Sidney
means to imply a real death or a metaphorical one, in which the relationship Astrophel
so badly longed for is rendered impossible. Either way, Sidney's speaker ends up in
much the same position as he started: alone, melancholy, and still idealizing the
unattainable woman of his youth.

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Sonnets 1 - 20
Summary
Sidney begins his sequence with a classical invocation to the muse, imploring her for
inspiration so that Stella may read his words and return his love. The first sonnet
agonizes over the writing process, noting that "words came halting forth, wanting
invention's stay" (9), and the speaker feels markedly anxious over entering the already
rich poetic tradition. "Others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way" (11), he laments
before describing himself as a "great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes"
(12). The final couplet of the poem brings in the voice of the muse, who instructs the
tormented lover/speaker (whom she calls "fool") to simply "look in thy heart, and write"
(14).

Once the sequence is under way, Astrophel uses the following sonnets to begin crafting
the narrative of how he fell in love with Stella. He notes in Sonnet 2 that it was not love
at first sight but rather a gradual overtaking of his senses (1-4), which he perceives as
much more painful and constricting than falling instantly in love. These early sonnets
also dwell heavily on the physicality of Stella, making frequent reference to her face as
that which inspires him to write (Sonnet 3), as well as the motif of her dark eyes (Sonnet
7) and the fairness of her skin (Sonnet 9). The speaker's torment over his love is due in
part to the fact that he finds the Beloved both hot and cold, in that her physical
appearances stirs up excitement in him while her response toward him is generally full
of scorn, negligence, or apathy (Sonnet 8).

Starting at Sonnet 5, the speaker frequently calls on the figure of Cupid as the "quaking
boy" (8.10) who pierced him with his dart and made him fall in love with Stella. Cupid
continues to appear throughout these early sonnets in a variety of ways: as a
mischievous little boy (Sonnet 11), an emblem of martial power (Sonnet 13), and as a
tyrant to whom the speaker is utterly subject (Sonnet 20). Astrophel will often combine
the images of Cupid and Stella's face in order to explain how seeing Stella affects him.
In Sonnet 17, for example, after Venus (Cupid's mother) breaks her son's bow, Nature
(his grandmother) "Of Stella's brows made him two better bows, / And in her eyes of
arrows infinite" (10-11).

As the speaker tries to understand the force of his own unrelenting love, formerly
reliable concepts like "reason" and "truth" begin to get muddled by his overwhelming
affection for Stella. The most clear example of this disintegration of reason is in Sonnet
7, when Astrophel is describing Nature's creation of Stella's eyes. Wondering how
Nature was able to make Stella's eyes "in colour black" yet still maintain "beams so
bright" (2), the speaker questions how darkness in skin, hair, or eye color (traditionally
thought unattractive in comparison to fairness in early modern England) can seem so
full of light when one is in love. "Or would she her miraculous power show," he
questions of Nature, "That, whereas black seems beauty's contrary, / She even in black
doth make all beauties flow?" (9-11). The speaker continues to grapple with this tension

4
between darkness and beauty, frequently imploring how his attraction to the Beloved
can defy all logic and reason by making darkness seem bright.

Analysis
The beginning of Sidney's sequence introduces the reader to a number of motifs that
will be threaded throughout. Many of these motifs derive from the work of Petrarch, an
Italian poet whose sonnets were revisited and translated by a number of English writers
during the Renaissance. Petrarch is credited with the incorporation of "courtly love" into
the lyric form, in which a Lover (usually male) expresses desperation and weakness in
his overwhelming love for a Beloved (usually female). Sidney draws on this structure for
Astrophel and Stella, positioning Astrophel as the rather hopeless Lover of Stella, who
seems somewhat unaffected by his courtly pursuits.

Part of the configuration of this all-encompassing love for the Beloved is the notion of
paradox or breaks in logic that the Lover will frequently experience as a result of being
"blinded" by love's power. One of the major paradoxical elements of the early sonnets is
the coexistence of hot and cold, whereby the Lover feels overtaken by love's "fire" but
receives nothing but apathy or scorn from the Beloved. This "coldness" from the
Beloved, in turn, stirs the desire of the Lover even more, increasing the Lover's affection
by refusing to return that affection in the first place. in this way, the sequence addresses
another Petrarchan motif of cyclicality, in which the thing one desires most is made
more appealing by an increased amount of attainability. The further Stella moves away
from Astrophel, the more he experiences the pangs of love and the desire to be close to
her.

As he continues to describe the vicious cycle of desire and unrequited affection, the
speaker comes to rely heavily on the poetic technique of the blazon. The blazon is a
poetic term for when a poet describes various parts of someone's face or body and
often compares those parts to other objects. For instance, in Sonnet 9, the speaker
compares Stella's face to "Virtue's court," with "his front built of alabaster pure" and
"Whose porches rich (which name of 'cheeks' endure) / Marble, mixed red and white, do
interlace" (1-8). This technique of the blazon is yet another staple of the Petrarchan
sonnet that Sidney (and a number of other early modern English poets) will borrow. The
effect of the blazon is usually twofold: it at once fragments the portrait of the lover into
discreet parts, which allows the speaker to showcase his poetic prowess by inventing
new metaphorical comparisons between parts of the face and other objects or images.
Second, the blazon nearly always ends up commenting on the dynamic of desire
operative between the Loved and Beloved. In Sidney's case, by portraying Stella's face
as a court, Astrophel suggests that the Beloved is high esteemed, private, and
exclusive, therefore painting a portrait of his love that alerts the reader to its relative
impossibility: just as he cannot penetrate the highly-esteemed court, he also cannot get
through to Stella in a way that makes her return his favor.

Sidney's use of the blazon often introduces another paradoxical relationship between
reason and desire, in which Astrophel's love for Stella blinds him to logical thinking.

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While the notion of paradox in general is borrowed from Petrarch, Sidney is largely
responsible for this particular fraught relationship between what the speaker sees or
experiences and what is empirically "true." Astrophel tries to make sense of how he can
find light in Stella's dark eyes, suggesting that love has the power to displace one's
thoughts about what is appealing, attractive, or desirable. This particular paradox of the
coexistence of light and dark is especially significant because it addresses notions of
desirability in early modern English society more generally, in which blonde fair-skinned
women were esteemed as more traditional representations of beauty. In his later sonnet
sequence, William Shakespeare takes up this same paradox of appealing darkness by
positing his mistress as not only a swarthy brunette, but as a revolting perversion of
traditional poetic portrayals of female beauty.

Discussion Question 1
Consider the different roles Cupid plays in the first 20 sonnets of the sequence. What
does the speaker achieve by characterizing the "little god" in a number of different
(sometimes directly counterintuitive) ways?

Discussion Question 2
In what ways does Sidney draw on metapoetic (commentary about poetry itself)
language in the beginning of the sequence? What is Astrophel's perception of his role
as a poet and Lover?

Discussion Question 3
Consider these words that appear again and again throughout the beginning of the
sequence: eyes, wit, reason, virtue. How does the speaker continue to redefine these
terms over the course of the first 20 sonnets?

Vocabulary
Muscovite, Pindar, sceptre, Cato, usurping, Jove, sober, mourning weed, alabaster,
vellum, citadel, rhubarb, poesy, shrewd

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Sonnets 21 - 40
Summary
Sonnet 21 introduces the character of the "friend," an unnamed entity to whom
Astrophel addresses a number of poems throughout the sequence. The friend counsels
Astrophel through his all-consuming love by scrutinizing his own poetry, maintaing that
Astrophel's lines "like bad servants show, / My wits, quick in vain thoughts, in virtue
lame" (3-4). Following the sonnet to the friend, Astrophel continues to dwell on Stella's
face and physical appearance, describing her as "sun-kissed" (22.14), and the part of
his thoughts that "hath neither stop nor start" (23.13).

Sonnet 24 familiarizes the reader with the motif that many sonneteers of the early
modern period, including Shakespeare, use in their sequences: that of money, wealth,
and riches. "Rich fools there be," the speaker opens, "whose base and filthy heart / Lies
hatching still the goods wherein they flow" (1-2), condemning those who are wealthy for
their "breeding want" (4) and greed that characterizes those who possess more than
most. Sidney revisits this motif in Sonnet 39 when he describes a nymph in Aurora's
court as "Rich in all beauties which man's eye can see" (5), only to conclude the sonnet
by asserting that the nymph's (Stella's) only misfortune is being rich in the first place.
Throughout this part of the sequence, Sidney uses the word "rich" to question the lives
of those who possess (and particularly that "rich fool" who already possesses Stella's
love) and why being "rich" is actually more of a curse than a blessing when one
considers that those rich in materials are "deprived of sweet but unfelt joys" (24.12).

Beginning in Sonnet 26, Sidney draws on another metaphor of the sky in order to
discuss Stella's face in greater detail. Opposing those "dusty wits" who "scorn astrology"
(1), Astrophel attempts to legitimize the concept of studying the stars by comparing
them to Stella's eyes: "For me, I do Nature unidle know," he says, "And know great
causes great effects procure, / And know those bodies on high reign on the low" (9-11).
The importance of the sky to the speaker in his emotional state reappears in Sonnet 31
as the speaker addresses the moon directly, asking how it can "climb the sky" with
"such sad steps" (1), drawing an affective parallel between the moon as a personified
object and the speaker himself. This focus on the sky, the moon, and the stars helps set
the stage for another prominent trope of both Sidney's sequence and other early
modern sequences alike: the speaker's insomnia caused by the agonizing energy of
being in love. Beginning in Sonnet 38 and extending well into the sequence, the
speaker laments not being able to sleep and even begs for sleep to come (Sonnet 39).
By Sonnet 40, the speaker draws a direct connection between insomnia and the way he
copes with it through writing. "Better to write," he says, "as for to lie and groan" (40.1),
before continuing to dwell on his unrequited love.

This group of sonnets also takes an interest in power dynamics, furthering the military
metaphors of the first 20 sonnets and exploring the more political ramifications of being
a "weak lord neighboured by mighty kings" (29.1), an image he compares to Stella's

7
heart that is able to arm itself from invasion. In the following sonnet, it is Astrophel who
has been conquered and overcome by his love for Stella, and he compares himself to
invaded nations like Spain, Russia, and Scotland. Sonnet 36 makes a similar move by
accusing Stella of "assaulting" the speaker's eyes with "whole armies of thy beauties"
(4) that he will never be able to escape.

Analysis
The figure of the unnamed friend is crucial not only for Sidney but for many early
modern poets who worked with the sonnet form. In a sequence, the friend serves a very
specific purpose: foiling the overwhelming and all-consuming love of the speaker with
more clearer reason, logic, and caution over becoming too invested in the Beloved.
Usually, the friend serves as a means by which the speaker can incorporate an "outside
perspective" in a sequence that usually only contains a couple of key characters and is
always referring back to itself. Sidney's "friend" of his sequence is no different, warning
the speaker that his "young mind" has been "marred" by his love for Stella and he can
no longer write good poetry (21.1). Almost always, sonnets addressed to an
oppositional friend end with the speaker offering an "argument" against the friend in
favor of the Beloved, but it is usually clear that this argument is made not through
reason but through the speaker's continued preoccupation with the object of his desire.

The inclusion of the motif of wealth and riches is common in sonnet sequences as poets
attempt to redefine what makes one "rich" and what makes on "poor," asserting that
having requited love is all the wealth one needs in this world (this is primarily
Shakespeare's assertion in his sonnet sequence which appeared later). For Sidney,
however, the issue of wealth and riches is especially significant because he not only
scorns those whom he deems wealthy "fools" 24, directly interrogating some of his
readership itself, but also infuses his sequence with its most autobiographical quality:
since he was a young boy, Sidney was supposed to marry Penelope Devereux, a
woman who was betrothed to Sidney early in their lives but who eventually ended up
marrying someone else. Many scholars maintain that the Astrophel of the sequence is
Sidney while the Stella is actually Penelope Devereux, who later became Penelope
Rich after she married her husband, Robert Rich. Thus, Sidney's seemingly obsessive
repetition of the word "rich" in this earlier part of the sequence can be said to reflect his
feelings toward the man who was already in possession of Stella's love. Critics will often
draw on Sonnet 37, where the word is repeated 7 times in just 14 lines, as evidence that
the sequence is primarily autobiographical.

The prevalence of the sky in the sequence is significant in two major ways: first, "Stella"
means "star" in Italian, so when the speaker is dwelling on the night sky and "those
bodies high" (26.11), he is maintaining his focus on the Beloved and the way her
glances at him and physical presence affect his life. The preoccupation with Stella
influences him so much, in fact, that he cannot sleep, and the motif of insomnia is the
second way that the night sky plays a crucial role in the sequence. Overwhelmed by the
image of Stella's face, the speaker falls in and out of consciousness, each time
beginning to dream of Stella's face but each time rudely awakened from his reverie

8
(Sonnet 38). The ensuing sonnets go on to describe the psychological realism of
exhaustion without the ability to sleep, using words like "groan" and "moan" to describe
the speaker's response to his situation (Sonnet 40). That response, more often than not,
ends up manifesting as poetry writing itself, and Sidney thus creates a difficult tension
between the agony of insomnia and the bliss of creation, using the former as both an
antidote to and perpetuation of the latter.

As the speaker continues to draw on martial imagery and paradigms of power, invasion,
and war, the sequence becomes more and more fraught with questions of power in the
arena of love itself. Both Lover and Beloved are characterized, at different times, as
both conquered nation and conqueror, confusing the power relations between them and
ultimately implying that Stella does harbor some affection for Astrophel after all. These
small seeds of affection that Sidney hints at through his military metaphors will become
more prominent and tangible as the sequence develops and Stella actually begins to
move closer to the speaker, both physically and emotionally.

Discussion Question 1
What are some of the images Sidney uses to describe one's inability to sleep? Why
might he have chosen these images in particular?

Discussion Question 2
Is Stella Penelope Rich? What are the benefits and limitations of this autobiographical
reading of the sonnets?

Discussion Question 3
What are some of the different power dynamics Sidney articulates in this group of
sonnets? How do they differ from one another?

Vocabulary
Glistering, pensiveness, melancholy, redress, folly, birthright, guise, allegory, brazen,
weltering, fellowship, idle, ransacked, stratagems, indifferent

9
Sonnets 41 - 60
Summary
The next group of sonnets begins by dwelling on Stella's eyes and the looks she gives
to Astrophel. "Stella looked on," he says at the end of Sonnet 41, "and from her
heavenly face / Sent forth the beams, which made so fair my race" (13-14). Once again,
the Beloved's eyes are configured as stars - specifically the sun - endowed with the
power to transform the world below. The speaker continues this metaphor in Sonnet 42,
addressing the Beloved's eyes directly: "O eyes, which do the spheres of beauty move,"
the sonnet begins, "Whose beams be joys, whose joys all virtues be" (1-2). This focus
on Stella's eyes allows the speaker to begin to dwell on other parts of her, namely the
"Fair eyes, sweet lips, dear heart" (1) that open Sonnet 43 and continue to be discussed
throughout the sequence.

As the speaker transitions into more close-up portraits of the Beloved, Astrophel starts
to describe the relationship between them that indicates they are not only familiar with
one another, but are in fact quite close. "Stella oft sees the very face of woe," he says at
the beginning of Sonnet 45, and goes on to question why she refuses to pity him when
she recognizes how in love with her he is. As he comes to realize his desperation in
Sonnet 46, he begins to berate himself for the continuation of his unrequited love that
he cannot help. Sonnet 47 details the speaker's psychological state of being torn and
confused, not knowing which path to take after he has realized he has been overtaken
by his affection for Stella and can no longer think clearly. "What, have I thus betrayed
my liberty?" (1) he questions in the first line of the poem, and spends the remainder of
the sonnet trying to discern whether he is freely loving or rather "born a slave / Whose
neck becomes such yoke of tyranny" (3-4). Astrophel continues this discussion of
freedom and servitude in Sonnet 49, which questions whether the relationship between
a man and his horse is one of commandment and obeying or one of equal coupling.
Sonnets 50-53 once again detail the futility of Astrophel's attempts to court Stella and
the subsequent shame he feels when he realizes he is a "slave to Cupid" (53.5).

Beginning in Sonnet 54, the speaker shifts gears slightly as he begins to discuss his
own reputation among his friends and close community. "Because I breathe not love to
every one," he says, "Nor do not use set colours for to wear, / Nor nourish special locks
of vowed hair, / ...The courtly nymphs acquainted with the moan / Of them, who in their
lips love's standards bear: / 'What, he?' say the of me, 'now I dare swear, / He cannot
love; no, no, let him alone'" (1-8). Astrophel, after describing his difficult relationship with
Stella, embodies the voices of those who surround him and criticize him for not loving
according to custom. Little do they know, he goes on to argue in the following sonnets,
his love is greater than all those examples with which people have grown familiar. To
illustrate this point, sonnets 55-58 take up the idea that the Beloved, Stella, can make
the state of being in pain enviable, sweet, and desirable.

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Sonnets 59 and 60 delineate yet another shift in the speaker's tone as he comes to
realize how distant Stella is from him. "Dear, why make you more of a dog than me?"
(59.1) he asks, comparing himself to an animal and questioning why Stella's affection
for that animal is greater than it is for the man who loves her. By Sonnet 60, the speaker
has started to pick up on why he feels so drawn to Stella in the first place, coming to the
realization that she only shows affection for him when he is not actually near her. "But
when the rugged'st step of fortune's race," he explains, "Makes me fall from her sight,
then sweetly she / With words, wherein the muses' treasures be, / Shows love and pity
to my absent case" (5-8). He concludes the sonnet with the oxymoronic couplet,
"Whose presence absence, absence presence is; / Blessed in my curse, and cursed in
my bliss" (13-14).

Analysis
The continuation of the focus on Stella's eyes becomes particularly significant in this
group of sonnets as it begins to denote not necessarily how Astrophel feels toward
Stella but how Stella feels toward Astrophel. Until this point, she has been relatively
"absent" from the text, in that her own role has been obscured by the speaker and she
has served primarily as an object of his affection rather than an agential body in her own
right. Now, with the repeated mentioning of Stella's "looks" the speaker starts to develop
Stella as an entity independent of his own emotion, and he registers how her eyes -
once an aspect on which he used to dwell - are now casting glances at him that he
interprets as pitiless or even scornful. In this way, "reading" becomes a significant theme
in this section of the sequence, as the speaker begins to read Stella's facial expressions
in an attempt to glean some understanding of how she may feel about him.

This "reading" is also indicative of a shift in proximity - whereas the earlier sonnets tend
to detail Stella from afar (usually in the tradition of the blazon), this group of sonnets
brings her slightly closer not only to the reader but to Astrophel himself. His ability to
read her face and her looks as indicators of her feelings means, literally, that he is
closer to her than he was at the beginning of the sequence. This is part and parcel of
Sidney's sequence that relies on a loose but noticeable narrative in which Astrophel
sees Stella and the two come together briefly before separating once more. This part of
the sequence represents the move closer to that companionship that the speaker
desires so much.

As such, this group of sonnets takes up many ideas about what love and affection look
like, physically, and how they manifest. As the speaker tries to tease out Stella's
emotions from her short glances, he is also keenly aware of what he himself looks like
in her presence and how he presents himself. Sonnet 54 details his growing reputation
among his circle of friends (most likely, in Sidney's case, other members of Elizabeth's
court), as someone who actually does not subscribe to the traditional role of the courtier
as the flatterer who "breathes love to everyone" (1). Here he argues that his reputation
as a rather miserable man is actually more indicative of his love for Stella than it is of his
disposition toward love in general. In this way, the speaker separates and elevates his

11
love for Stella over that more performative, less genuine, or fleeting love expressed
from courtiers to a number of ladies.

By the end of this group of sonnets, Sidney has introduced a new tension that is integral
to the Petrarchan tradition of love poetry, that is, the apathy and scorn of the Beloved or
"the cruelty of the fair." The cruelty of the fair is a common trope among early modern
sonneteers that denotes a preoccupation with the idea that the more beautiful (fair) a
woman is, the crueler she will be to any potential lovers. We begin to see this trope
cropping up in Sidney's sequence as he accuses Stella of favoring a dog to him and
only caring about him when he is not physically in her presence. Astrophel has thus
moved from acknowledging Stella's pitilessness to actually characterizing her actions
toward him as scornful and cruel.

Discussion Question 1
How does the speaker indicate a shifting proximity to the Beloved throughout the
sequence? Why is proximity important at all?

Discussion Question 2
What changes does the reader see in the characterization of Stella from the beginning
to the middle of the sequence?

Discussion Question 3
Consider how often the speaker weaves in and out of tones and states of mind,
sometimes even within single sonnets themselves. What might this constantly shifting
perspective suggest about the speaker or the sequence as a whole?

Vocabulary
zenith, chastity, beclouded, tyranny, beggary, confers, strife, cunning, livery, foraging,
incessantly, clog

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Sonnets 61 - 75, Songs 1 - 2
Summary
Sonnet 61 begins with a slight inversion of the martial metaphor Sidney has made use
of so far. Rather than compare the Beloved to a fortress, this sonnet asserts that the
speaker is now in the midst of "conquering" the Beloved in some capacity. "Oft with true
sighs, oft with uncalled tears," the speaker says, "Now with slow words, now with dumb
eloquence, / I Stella's eyes assail, invade her ears" (1-3). The speaker delineates
between the past (the previous 60 sonnets) and the present, in which his laments and
complaints - sighs and tears - have been converted to action in closer proximity to the
Beloved. In Sonnet 62, the two have moved even closer together as the speaker
asserts that the Beloved has actually confessed to loving him back: "I joyed, but straight
thus watered was my wine, / That love she did, but loved a love not blind, / Which would
not let me, whom she loved, decline / From nobler course, fit for my birth and mind" (5-
8). After finally receiving some form of affection from Stella, Astrophel is overcome with
grief to learn that this affection will not lead to sexual fulfillment.

Sonnet 63 expands on the drama of 61 and 62 by invoking the metaphor of grammar

and its rules to twist Stella's words. "O grammar rules, O now your virtues show," (1) the
speaker asserts before explaining that he made a proposition to Stella and she, "Lest
once should not be heard, twice said, 'No, no'" (8). Unable to accept that Stella has
rejected his sexual advances, Astrophel reinterprets the double "no" of her refusal as a
double negative in grammar, arguing, "For grammar says (to grammar who says nay?) /
That in one speech two negatives affirm" (13-14), referring to the fact that,
grammatically, a double negative is actually an affirmative statement.

After Sonnet 63 comes the First Song, which is written in 9 quatrains of AABA rhyme
scheme and addressed directly to the Beloved. "Doubt you to whom my muse these
songs intendeth" (1), Astrophel asks before affirming that "To you, to you, all song of
praise is due; / Only in you my song begins and endeth" (3-4).The rest of the song
serves as a laudatory blazon of Stella continued in second person.

In Sonnets 64 and 65, the speaker continues to worry over whether his love will be
returned. Sonnet 66 provides the first glimmer of hope as Astrophel questions, "And do I
see some cause a hope to feed, / Or doth the tedious burden of long woe / In weakened
minds, quick apprehending breed, / Of every image, which may comfort show?" (1-4)
and begins to doubt whether this affection from Stella is real or imagined. Sonnet 67
continues this theme of questioning reality by further interrogating hope: "Hope, art thou
true, or dost thou flatter me?" (1). By Sonnet 69, the speaker's tone has shifted entirely
and he exuberantly opens the sonnet by asserting his newfound joy: "O joy too high for
my low style to show; / O bliss, fit for a nobler state than me" (1-2), suggesting that
Stella has finally acquiesced to his flattery. By the end of the sonnet we are told "For
Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine, / Of her high heart giv'n me the

13
monarchy" (9-10), confirming that Astrophel has earned some place in Stella's
affections.

The speaker continues to delight in his newfound requited love through Sonnet 72,
where he swears to replace sexual desire with virtue, an undertaking that proves difficult
as the sequence launches into the Second Song. This song, written in 7 quatrains with
rhyme scheme ABBA, depicts a scenario in which a lover catches his lady sleeping and
is stirred by sexual desire. He debates back and forth about whether he should kiss her,
but ultimately decides not to, asserting that "Louring beauty chastens me" (26).

Sonnets 74 and 75 continue to acknowledge the speaker's happiness and present the
argument that his poetry, now noticeably lighter and playful, has been "inspired with
Stella's kiss" (74.14).

Analysis
At this point in the sequence, the speaker has moved even closer to the Beloved and
his poetry reflects that proximity: the shift from describing the Beloved as an
unassailable fortress to describing her as being "invaded" by the speaker suggests that
the power dynamic delineated in the previous sonnets has switched. Rather than serve
as a hopeless courtier or slave to Stella, Astrophel now claims a type of victory that
indicates Stella has expressed some kind of affection for him. However, his emotional
turmoil renders him a relatively unreliable narrator, as just as he goes on to question
what is reality and what is imagined, so must the reader question to what extent he may
be embellishing his encounter with Stella.

The main problem for Astrophel in this group of sonnets is the problem of desire: while
he (allegedly) receives affection from Stella and even receives a promise of love, his
desire for her continues to overwhelm him in an extremely physical way. Suddenly all
the previous sonnets' work dwelling on Stella's face and body manifests as an
unrelenting desire in Astrophel to consummate their love. Stella, on the other hand,
seems less keen to engage in a sexual relationship with Astrophel (presumably because
she is already married), and this tension between love and desire underscores the
perpetually torn nature of the sonnet speaker. When Astrophel says, "That love she did,
but loved a love not blind" (62.6), he is referring to the two types of desire ushered forth
by the Greeks: earthly desire which is blind, and Neo-platonic heavenly desire, which
has sight. By acknowledging that Stella "loved a love not blind," Astrophel is implicitly
suggesting that his hopes have been let down by Stella's privileging of spiritual over
physical desire.

While Astrophel dances around requited love in this section of the sequence, Sonnet 66
represents the most noticeable shift in tone, moving from a state of self-reflection,
melancholy, and despair to one of hope, bliss, and joy. It is not yet clear to the reader
why this change has come about - presumably Stella has shown Astrophel some sign of
physical affection - but the speaker dwells at length the newfound joy he is
experiencing. Noticing that he has shifted gears, he announces that his sonnets from

14
this point on will be more upbeat, and promises that it is possible to write a sonnet (a
form usually associated with the torment of unrequited love) that actually revels in love
rather than laments its strength. In so doing, Sidney subtly carves out a space for
himself within the sonnet tradition, innovating the genre by asserting that it can
accommodate feelings of joy and fulfillment. However, readers should be cautious to
take Astrophel's bliss at face value: his constant mood swings and dramatic
interpretations of his encounters with Stella alert the reader to the fact that he is almost
entirely unreliable as a narrator. Therefore, the assertion that the sonnet form can
accommodate a tone of joy or elatedness is actually up for debate.

This is also the first moment in the sequence when Sidney includes his "songs," or other
lyric poems that do not subscribe to the sonnet form. The songs are noticeably more
simplistic in terms of subject matter and style: usually a song has one central
"argument" that does not get challenged or complicated, quite unlike the multiplicity of
paradoxes that underly the sonnet. The songs also provide some form of "outside"
commentary despite many of them presumably being sung by Astrophel as well. These
songs provide the reader with a chance to see the Lover and Beloved outside the
confines of the sonnet form, and thus outside the realm of the Petrarchan tradition. As
such, Sidney has more opportunity for creative exploration in these songs, which also
serve as commentary on the sequence itself. For example, when Astrophel swears to
abandon desire in favor of virtue, the Second Song depicts a scene in which a hopeful
Lover does just that, refraining from kissing his sleeping Beloved in favor of a more
moral path. In this way, the songs serve as a way for the reader to begin to judge the
style and subject matter of the sequence by interrupting the regularity of the sonnet
form.

Discussion Question 1
What indicators are there that the tone of the sequence has shifted? Are there any
indicators that it will shift again?

Discussion Question 2
What gets connoted by Sidney's use of the martial metaphors? How do those
connotations change from the earlier sonnets to the later ones?

Discussion Question 3
What role do the songs play within the sequence? How are the different from the
sonnets? How are they similar?

Vocabulary
apprehending, piteous, margin, forsworn, kindled, prentice, chide, layman

15
Sonnets 76 - 86, Songs 3 - 9
Summary
Sonnet 76 begins with the phrase, "She comes" (1), the first direct assertion the
speaker makes to alert the reader to how close he is to Stella. The sonnet describes the
speaker's excitement and growing desire as Stella walks toward him, an experience he
describes as "her flamy glistering lights increase with time and place; / My heart cries,
'Ah, it burns;' mine eyes now dazzled be" (10-11). Sonnet 77 continues this scene of the
exciting approach of the Beloved by describing Stella in even more hyperbolic terms
than the reader has seen before: "Those looks, whose beams be joy, whose motion is
delight; / That face, whose lecture shows what perfect beauty is; / That presence, which
doth give dark hearts a living light; / That grace, which Venus weeps that she herself
doth miss" (1-4). It is important to note that Sonnets 76 and 77 are written in iambic
hexameter rather than iambic pentameter like the rest of the sonnets in the sequence.

By Sonnet 79, it is clear that Astrophel and Stella have shared an intimate moment, and
this sonnet introduces a small sequence of sonnets that delight in the excitement of a
single kiss. Sonnets 79 and 81 are addressed to the "sweet kiss" directly (1), while
Sonnet 80 is addressed to Stella's lip, and Sonnet 82 is addressed to the "nymph of the
garden where all beauties be" (1) as a figure of protection that has allowed the speaker
entrance to the Beloved. Sonnet 83 is addressed to "brother Philip" (1), Stella's sparrow,
whom the speaker accuses of vying for Stella's attention and threatens the bird with the
final line, "Leave that, sir Phip, lest off your neck be wrung" (14).

The sequence then opens its Third Song, which is an exuberant ode to Stella's voice
written in 6-line stanzas in iambic hexameter. The speaker frames the song through a
series of "If...then" statements about what has the power to transform men and beasts
alike, finally asserting at the end of each stanza that Stella's voice is capable of making
trees hear, birds love, and charming all living things in general. Sonnets 84 and 85
describe various aspects of the speaker's journey to the Beloved, presumably after they
have already shared a kiss. Sonnet 84 is an ode to the road that carries the speaker to
Stella while Sonnet 85 begins with the description of a house only to morph into a
description of Stella's body by the end of the poem.

Following these two sonnets is the Fourth Song in which the bliss the speaker has
experienced thus far starts to break down. The song stages a conversation between
Astrophel and Stella in which Astrophel asks Stella to come closer to him, to which she
replies again and again, "No, no, no, no, my dear, let be" (6). This "chorus" closes each
stanza, including the final one, and Sonnet 86 opens with a befuddled speaker asking
the Beloved, "Alas, whence came this change of looks?" (1), suggesting that she has
rejected his advances. Immediately following Sonnet 86 is the Fifth Song, longer than
any of the songs preceding it and written in iambic hexameter. The 15-stanza song
announces that "Now that hope is lost" (13) before launching into an elaborate critique
of the Beloved's flaws as the speaker refers to her as a thief, tyrant, rebel, lord, witch,

16
and devil respectively. The song closes with the assertion that despite this grotesque
portrait the speaker has painted of his Beloved, he is still very much enamored of her.

The Sixth Song is written in short iambic trimeter and meditates on the relationship
betweens love and beauty, beauty and reason. The Seventh Song, written in iambic
heptameter, expresses pity for those "fools" (6) who do not have access to hearing
Stella's voice. The Eighth Song is a third-person dramatic portrait of the two lovers
meeting in a shady grove, exchanging thoughts of love until Stella implores Astrophel to
"this no more move" (97) before leaving him alone and "passion-rent" (102). Song Nine
affirms that Stella has rejected him once again, as the speaker asserts at the beginning
of two stanzas, "Stella hath refused me" (21) and ends on a melancholy image of a
"poor slave's unjust decaying" (50).

Analysis
This is arguably the section of the sequence in which the largest number of tonal,
structural, and thematic changes occur. One of the ways Sidney creates these shifts is
to use a variety of forms that the reader has not yet seen in the relatively regular
sequence. Starting with Sonnets 76 and 77, which are written in iambic hexameter
rather than pentameter (12 iambic feet rather than 10, Sidney creates the illusion
through meter that the speaker is waiting, anxiously and somewhat breathlessly, for the
Beloved to arrive - so anxiously, in fact, that he cannot maintain the regularity of the
sequence and begins smuggling extra syllables into the lines. The following sonnets,
while metrically regular, are addressed to a number of different subjects and thus
indicate the speaker's somewhat chaotic and frantic experience of the joy he has taken
in sharing a kiss with Stella. These seven sonnets suggest that the speaker is
overwhelmed by his emotions and does not necessarily know where to look, what to
say, or to whom to address it. The Third Song further solidifies this blissful chaos by
addressing both birds and beasts alike.

Sonnets 84 and 85, which detail the speaker's experience traveling to the Beloved after
they've shared a kiss, help cultivate an anticipatory and suspenseful tone that awaits
satisfaction with another exuberant sonnet. Instead, the speaker receives the Fourth
Song, a dramatic retelling of their encounter with one another in which the speaker's
advances are ultimately rejected by Stella, who says no over 32 times in the song. This
is the first indication that something has gone awry, and the speaker uses Sonnet 86 as
a way to confirm it. When the speaker asks, "Alas, whence came this change of
looks"?" (1) he is expressing his surprise and confusion over Stella's trepidation, noting
that her expression has changed from one of adoration to one of hesitance or
discomfort. When the Fifth Song arrives, then, the speaker is somewhat prepared for a
tonal shift, but arguably not prepared enough for the complete 180 the speaker seems
to do between the fourth and fifth songs. Song Five is thus an abrupt pivot from
questioning the Beloved to outrightly condemning her, likening her to evil forces like
witches and devils. The speaker's insults grow increasingly grave as the song
progresses, a stylistic aspect of the song that suggests the speaker is working himself
up more and more with each thought about having been rejected.

17
The Sixth Song is a somewhat vague meditation on beauty, love, and reason written in
iambic trimeter. The shorter lines and generic subject matter suggest that the speaker
has slowed down slightly after his bout of anger and is beginning to reflect and think
more contemplatively about his relationship to the Beloved while avoiding the specifics
of their romantic dynamic. By the Seventh Song, Astrophel has reinstated his love for
Stella and expresses hope over hearing her voice again, a hope that is quickly
squelched by the Eighth Song in which the two lovers meet once again. Stella repeats
the word "still" throughout the song, suggesting not only that she wants to remain
somewhat distant from Astrophel but also that she wants him to slow down his
advances and ultimately revoke the romantic relationship entirely. There is an element
of secrecy to the entirety of Song Eight as the lovers speak in quickened verse and
monosyllabic words, a detail that highlights the illicitness of their affair and perhaps
points even more strongly toward the autobiographical reading of Stella as the (married)
Penelope Rich. Appropriately, the Ninth Song details the speaker's loss of hope and
acknowledgment that Stella has rejected him. He opens the song by urging his "flock" to
"get you hence" (1), a trope of pastoral poetry in which the poet is figured as a shepherd
and his poetry as his flock. This forsaking of pastoral bliss suggests that the sequence
is entering yet another stage of melancholy lovesickness and despair.

Discussion Question 1
How does Sidney use form to create different tones and moods in the sonnets?

Discussion Question 2
What is the relationship between the songs and the sonnets in this section? Are they
doing similar or different work for the sequence as a whole?

Discussion Question 3
Recapitulate the loose narrative Sidney has told thus far about Astrophel and Stella.
How would you describe their story if it were written as a play? A novel?

Vocabulary
benighted, staid, scourge, succor, ditties, sauciness, abed, ermine, felicity, adieu

18
Sonnets 87 - 108, Songs 10 - 11
Summary
Sonnet 87 thrusts the sequence into past tense as the speaker begins, "When I was
forced from Stella, ever dear.../ I found that she with me did smart" (1-5). The poem
details the speaker's reactions to having been rejected again by the Beloved, and ends
on a hopeless note as the speaker declares that he is "vexed" (14). The following four
sonnets return to the angst and anxiety that had been articulated toward the beginning
of the sequence, as the speaker writes a meditation on the absence of the Beloved
(Sonnet 88), absence of the Beloved at night (Sonnet 89), his failure and shortcomings
as a poet (Sonnet 90), and his experience of eternal night without the Beloved (Sonnet
91).

Sonnet 92 resurrects the character of the friend as Astrophel says, "Be your words
made, good sir, of Indian ware, / That you allow me them by so small rate? (1-2). The
speaker thus calls on the friend to tell him about what Stella is doing in his absence, and
expresses frustration over how little information has been conveyed to him. The sonnet
is composed of a number of questions about Stella that are presumably never
answered.

The Tenth Song, which follows Sonnet 92, explores the tension between thinking and
action. The speaker attempts to cope with his rejection by sending his thought "To take
up the place for me" (14) and "enter bravely everywhere" (21), essentially attempting to
fantasize his way back to Stella. However, by the end of the song, the speaker implores
his thought to leave him in favor of action and real physical intimacy: "O my thought, my
thoughts surcease; / Thy delights my woes increase, / My life melts with too much
thinking. / Think no more, but die in me, / Till thou shalt revived be / At her lips my nectar
drinking" (45-50).

Sonnets 93-100 return to the tropes and themes of the earlier sonnets as the speaker
grieves the loss of his love. Punctuating all of these sonnets are the recurring mentions
of night, darkness, and solitude. In Sonnet 94, the speaker asserts that he can "scarce
discern the shape of my own pain" (4), and this rhetoric of self-alienation gets threaded
throughout Sonnets 93-100. These sonnets also return to the tropes of the Petrarchan
lover, who regularly "sighs" (95.1) over his lost love.

Sonnet 101 begins with the jarring assertion that "Stella is sick, and in that sick-bed lies"
(1), an abrupt turn of events that becomes even more abrupt in Sonnet 102 when
Astrophel depicts the alleged "death" of his Beloved. He configures the passing of the
Beloved as a loss of "those roses gone, which sweetened so our eyes" (1), referring to
her blushing cheeks. Sonnet 103 depicts the speaker standing outside his window
watching the Thames River, which "didst my Stella bear!" (1) and acknowledging that
the river was made more "happy" (1) by Stella's presence. Sonnet 104 is addressed to
"envious wits" (104) of whom the speaker asks "what hath been mine offence?" (1),

19
presumably suggesting that the speaker has been criticized in some way related to the
Beloved. The poem ends with the dramatic provocation that these critics "Your moral
notes straight my hid meaning tear / From out my ribs, and puffing prove that I / Do
Stella love" (12-14).

Following Sonnet 104 comes the Eleventh Song, in which the speaker is visited by a
mysterious entity in the night, and it not clear to whom he speaks throughout the song.
In Sonnet 105, the reader learns that the entity was actually an apparition of Stella
herself, who has disappeared and left the speaker in agony once again. In Sonnet 106,
the speaker tries to rationalize and understand how "Stella, I say my Stella, should
appear" (4) after her death. Sonnet 107 is a plea to Stella to once again occupy the
speaker's mind so that he is able to write good poetry. Finally, the last poem in the
sequence, Sonnet 108, returns to the pain and sorrow the speaker experienced at the
beginning of the sequence, as well as the paradoxical relationship between pleasure
and pain: "So strangely, alas, thy works in me prevail, / That in my woes for thee thou
art my joy, / And in my joys for thee my only annoy" (12-14).

Analysis
The shift in this last group of sonnets is palpable from the beginning of Sonnet 87, in
which the speaker announces that his interactions with Stella have occurred in the past
and will not occur again. As the speaker follows up this declaration of past love with a
number of sonnets dwelling in the emotions of sadness and solitude, the reader is able
to see the speaker slowly return to the same psychological state he occupied at the
beginning of the sequence. There is thus a sense of circularity and perpetuity to the
sequence and to the theme of unrequited love more generally, as the speaker cannot
help grappling with the events of the past as if they may have some effect on the future.

The Tenth Song is significant in the way that it articulates subtly the coping mechanisms
the speaker - and the scorned Lover more generally - choose to deploy once he has
been rejected. The speaker asserts that, rather than long for the physical interaction
with Stella he knows is no longer possible, he will instead "think" his way back into her
arms; in other words, he will fantasize about sexual gratification with the Beloved in
place of actually experiencing. It is important to note that this plan proves fruitless very
quickly, as the speaker is unable to combat his pain and desire for the Beloved and
ends up imploring a greater power for another moment of physical intimacy with Stella.

Stella's "sickness" and subsequent "death" in Sonnets 101 and 102 is a somewhat
perplexing inclusion, and it is not clear to the reader whether the "character" of Stella
has actually died or if the speaker is using her death as a metaphor for her absence
from his life. Regardless, the two sonnets announce an unprecedented shift in the
events of the sequence. Once Stella "dies," the speaker's psychology becomes more
and more precarious, and the Eleventh Song introduces an obscure, odd, and new
element of the supernatural into the sequence. Such toying with the idea of an
apparition reflects the speaker's inability to organize his thoughts coherently and

20
logically after he has lost his love and further suggests that some element of the
speaker's own mental health has begun to break down.

The last four sonnets of the sequence signify a return to the same emotions the speaker
was detailing in the beginning of the sequence, which suggest a sense of circularity to
this mental process of receiving and giving love to another. The repetitive nature of the
last four sonnets hint toward a continued relationship among love, solitude, and poetry.
Despite Stella's "death," the speaker still manages to return to a state of idealizing the
Beloved and longing for her return.

Discussion Question 1
The final sonnets of Astrophel and Stella have been described as chaotic. What
evidence from the text suggests an element of chaos?

Discussion Question 2
Which tropes and motifs from the earlier sonnets get repeated toward the end? What
effect does this have on the text as a whole?

Discussion Question 3
What might Sidney be suggesting by declaring that Stella is dead? What are the
different ways one could read this conclusion?

Vocabulary
tempest, plumes, forsooth, caitiff, Phoebus, wretch, armory, hackney, disheveled,
Thames, lieutenancy, avail

21
Characters
Astrophel
Astrophel (or Astrophil) is the primary speaker in the sequence. His name comes from
two Greek words, "aster" meaning "star" and "phil" meaning "lover," meaning his name
translates to "Lover of Stars." Many critics believe that Astrophel is a persona meant to
represent Philip Sidney himself, and poets who continued to mourn Sidney after his
untimely death frequently referred to the poet as "Astrophel" in their own writing.

The Astrophel of the sonnet sequence is plagued by his unrequited love for Stella,
whom he admires from afar before getting closer to her and even sharing a kiss with
her. His "character" has been described as the same type of voice cultivated by
Petrarch in his Italian sonnets to Laura. The two speakers share many qualities and
Sidney did indeed turn to Petrarch for inspiration. Common tropes attached to the
Petrarchan lover are the articulation of pleasure derived from one's own pain, the
crippling effects of desire on the mind, the figuration of the Beloved as a master the
Lover will serve, and a general sense of self-alienation or estrangement. All of these
tropes are embodied by Sidney's Astrophel, though Sidney innovates many aspects of
Petrarch's sonnets as well.

SIdney's Astrophel is more than just a Lover; he is a poet, like Sidney, and he frequently
dwells on how his unrequited love both inspires and hinders his ability to write good
poetry. As such, many of the sonnets ascribed to Stella or Astrophel's feelings for Stella
can also be applied to his (or Sidney's) own struggles to make a name for himself as a
respectable poet. Astrophel makes it a point throughout the sequence to make
metapoetic moves in which he judges the caliber of his own poetry.

Stella
Stella is the primary object of Astrophel's affection, and her name comes from the Latin
word for "star." Despite almost all of the sonnets being exclusively about Stella herself,
the reader receives relatively little information about her as a character: other than the
hyperbolic detail that her eyes are "black," the speaker tends to dwell more on how he
feels about his Beloved than on the Beloved as a character in her own right.

This begins to change in the latter half of the sequence, especially in the songs, when
Stella's voice begins to seep into the speaker's narration. She is granted agency in the
second half of the sequence after she has (once again) rejected Astrophel and must
continue to remind him that she will not be with him. She therefore becomes more of an
identifiable "character" rather than an object of the speaker's desire as the sequence
progresses, though her portrait is always filtered through the perspective of the speaker.

Stella is an interesting choice for a Petrarchan beloved, and in many ways she
embodies the Petrarchan ideal that inspired Sidney. However, she also deviates from

22
the Petrarchan "norm" in one major way: Astrophel's emphasis on her "black eyes" is
particularly disruptive of the Petrarchan ideal, whose beloved is almost always
described as fair-skinned with blonde hair and blue or lightly-colored eyes. By contrast,
Stella's "black" eyes (which, in the Renaissance, was often a synonym for brown)
challenge the ideal of the fair lady and instead add an element of aesthetic tension to
the sequence. Why, Astrophel frequently wonders, is he so enamored with a woman
who has dark colored eyes? He ultimately decides that Stella is so beautiful that even a
dark hue seems fair when on her face. This notion of the dark-eyed Beloved gets
expanded (and arguably, parodied) in Shakespeare's sonnets when he asserts, "My
mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun" (Sonnet 127).

Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney was a soldier, counselor, poet, theorist, and diplomat during the
Elizabethan era of the English Renaissance. He is credited with making the sonnet
sequence in English the "vogue" of his day, and many later sonneteers would pay
homage to Sidney in their own work. While he is perhaps best known for Astrophel and
Stella, he is equally celebrated as a literary theorist for having written "The Defense of
Poesy," an early modern "apology" that attempts to explain why poetry is important and
necessary to the human experience. His largest but least known work, The Countess of
Pembroke's Arcadia, is a long pastoral romance that is now read primarily as political
commentary on English monarchy.

Sidney and his family were close to Elizabeth's court, and Sidney often served as a
counselor to Queen Elizabeth herself. However, he fell out of favor with the queen when
he penned an unsolicited letter urging her not to marry France's Duke of Anjou (it was
then, after being barred from court, that Sidney began writing the Arcadia).
Nevertheless, Sidney was seen by many of his contemporaries as an emblem of
chivalry and courtly behavior, skilled not only in humanist discourse but also in the
virtues and decorum of knighthood. He died a premature death in 1586 after sustaining
a wound to the thigh during combat in the Netherlands.

Penelope Devereux Rich

Penelope Rich was an English noblewoman and close friend of the Sidney circle.
Betrothed to Philip Sidney early in life, she eventually married Robert Rich, a coupling
that many argue upset Philip Sidney. Thus, the "Stella" of Astrophel and Stella is often
speculated to be a stand-in for Penelope Rich, while Astrophel is perceived to represent
Sidney himself.

The Friend
The unnamed friend is mentioned in only a few sonnets in the sequence, but he serves
the purpose of foiling the speaker and providing outside commentary on the speaker's
obsessive affection for Stella. The "friend" in many ways can be said to stand in for the

23
reader him/herself, who questions the extent to which Astrophel is deluding himself into
thinking he could be with Stella.

Philip the Sparrow

Philip is Stella's pet sparrow whom Astrophel becomes jealous of when Stella finally
starts showing him affection. Worried that the sparrow will end up being closer to Stella
than himself, Astrophel threatens to kill the sparrow to demonstrate his dedication to
winning over his Beloved.

Cupid
Cupid, the love god, appears frequently throughout the sequence. He is configured in a
number of different ways, including a cruel martial predator who spears lovers with his
"dart," a friend to the speaker who sympathizes with the pain of love, and a mischievous
little boy who delights in torturing young lovers. In the sequence, Cupid serves as both
the "little god" of love, as well as a synecdoche for love itself.

The Muse
Astophel's muse appears a few times throughout the sequence, but is most notable in
the first sonnet when she instructs him to "look in thy heart, and write" (1). His
relationship with his muse (gendered female) is usually an indication of how easy or
difficult it is for him to write poetry at a certain point. He calls on his muse both when he
is feeling too overwhelmed to write and when he is feeling too joyful to write the same
kind of poetry he had been writing earlier.

Phoebus
Also known as Apollo, Phoebus is the Greek and Roman entity for the god of music,
poetry, and the sun, among other things. SIdney makes frequent reference to Phoebus
when he talks about the sky, noting the difference between night and day when the sun
rises and sets.

Robert Rich
Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick, was the first husband of Penelope Rich, the presumed
"Stella" of the sonnets. He later divorced Penelope Rich on the grounds of her adultery
in 1605, but at the time Sidney was writing they were newly married. He appears only
subtly in the sonnets, particularly in Sonnet 37, when Sidney uses the word "rich" to
redefine the qualities Stella possesses that make her attractive but unattainable.

24
Symbols and Symbolism
The Sun
The sun symbolizes Stella's eyes, which the speaker pays close attention to as he
attempts to "read" her facial expressions for signs of affection. Her eyes are also, the
speaker argues, the thing that bring light into his dark day.

Stars
Like the sun, stars also symbolize Stella ("Stella" in Latin means "star") and the
brightness that she brings into the speaker's otherwise melancholy life. He makes
frequent reference to how "rare" a star she is, suggesting that he finds her different from
all other stars - and therefore all other women - with which he is familiar.

Kings
Kings symbolize figures of power in the sequence, and are used to demonstrate the
power dynamics between men and women and lovers more generally. A secondary
reading may also suggest that Sidney's use of kings and kingship in the sequence is
related to his political agenda of critiquing monarchy that he laid out in the Arcadia.

Sleep
Sleep symbolizes the speaker's psychological state at the time he is writing. Typically
unable to sleep, the speaker's insomnia is both what keeps him longing for Stella's
affection and what keeps him writing poetry.

Cupid
Cupid symbolizes love more generally, and the agony of unrequited love that Astrophel
experiences in the sequence. He often configures Cupid as a "blind-hitting boy" (46.2)
who maliciously seeks lovers to destroy by penetrating them with his dart.

Courtly Nymphs
Courtly nymphs, who appear in Sonnet 54, symbolize other women that may be more
conventionally attractive than Stella. Astrophel asserts that these "nymphs" do not
interest him in the least, and thereby suggests that he is attracted to a rare quality that
Stella seems to possess.

25
Sugar
Sugar symbolizes Stella's beauty and Astrophel's love for her, in that he attributes her
with the power to make sour or bitter foods taste sweet. He frequently refers to the
words Stella utters as "sugared" and her speech as "sweet-breathed" (Sonnet 61).

Reading
Reading symbolizes the act of studying the Beloved's face for signs of mutual affection.
Astrophel frequently has to "read" Stella's eyes and facial expressions in order to
convince himself that she really loves him despite what she says. In this way, reading
can be seen as an alternative to speech.

Forbidden Fruit
Forbidden fruit symbolizes Stella's body and the speaker's desire to sexually
consummate the relationship he imagines between them. It appears in Sonnet 82 when
the speaker asserts that he will only "kiss, I never more will bite" (14) acknowledging
that he will refrain from being as sexually greedy as he has been in the past.

Tyrants
Tyrants, like kings, symbolize familiar power structures operative between sovereign
and subject, Lover and Beloved. The Beloved is often characterized as a tyrant to
emphasize the cruelty she inflicts upon the Lover, who serves her like a subject without
receiving respect in return.

26
Settings
Astrophel's Bed
Because so many of the sonnets are written about sleep (or lack thereof), readers can
assume that Astrophel is presumably penning this sequence largely from his bedroom
or his bed itself. While this setting is not made explicit, it does serve an important
function in the sonnets as it represents Astrophel's feelings of alienation and gives him a
foundation upon which he can ruminate about the night sky and the notion of darkness
more generally.

Shady Grove
The "grove much rich of shade" (Song 8.1) is the place where Astrophel and Stella meet
in secret after they have shared an illicit kiss. It is also the place where Stella ultimately
rejects Astrophel and encourages him to give up on their affair. The shady grove is
indicative of the clandestine nature of their relationship and their desire to keep it hidden
from plain sight. The grove, described as "Where birds wanton music made" and "New
perfumed with flowers fresh growing" (2-4), is originally portrayed as a blissful place full
of life and possibility, but quickly becomes the location where Astrophel's affair with
Stella dies and the two part.

The Sky
While not technically a setting for any of the sonnets themselves, Sidney pays particular
attention to the night sky and often has Astrophel narrate the experience of staring at
the stars and moon during bouts of insomnia. The night sky provides Astrophel with an
image he can contemplate and ultimately relate back to his love for Stella as he argues
that her eyes are like stars that stare down at him from above (Sonnet 26).

The Pastoral Countryside

Sidney invokes the trope of the pastoral scenery later in the sonnet sequence to dwell
on the relationship between poetry and its usefulness. Framing the poet as a shepherd
and his poetic work as his flock, the pastoral setting is often employed to hint at more
serious matters under the veil of simple folk. When he wishes his flock "seek a better
place of feeding" (Song 9.2), for example, he is essentially casting off his former poetic
dedication to Stella and instead searching for a different source of inspiration for his
creative work.

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Elizabethan England
Sidney wrote Astrophel and Stella in England in the late 1500's, which at the time was
governed by the "Virgin Queen" Elizabeth I. Under Elizabeth, countless poets (known as
"courtiers) attempted to gain patronage (a type of early modern English "sponsor") from
well-to-do members of court, including Elizabeth herself. In Sidney's case, however, he
often used his poetic skill (and relatively high-ranking social status) as an avenue by
which he may critique the English monarchy and the relationship between sovereigns
and subjects more generally. This political critique was certainly operative in his large
prose work, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, and is recognizable even in
Astrophel and Stella when he often compares the relationship between Lover and
Beloved to that of subjects and their king (or tyrant).

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Themes and Motifs
The Cruelty of the Fair
The cruelty of the fair is a common theme in early modern English sonnets, and was
one of the major themes that was carried over from the sonnet's Italian predecessor,
Petrarch. Before Petrarch, however, there were the troubadours: in Medieval Europe,
troubadours were young (usually male) musicians skilled in both song-writing and song-
playing alike. They are credited with inventing the notion of "courtly love," in that that
there role was to perform for ladies at court in hopes of receiving favor or patronage.
Their songs were typically, though not always, about the difficult power dynamic of a
well-to-do (and often unavailable) woman to whom they felt bound to serve. As such,
many of the troubadour songs from the period engage with the idea that the woman is
granted full power over them and can manipulate their feelings however she sees fit,
eliminating agency from the troubadours themselves.

Fast-forward to Petrarch and again to early modern England and this tradition
continues, this time manifesting as the fair lady who either explicitly treats her lover with
scorn or simply will not grant him the time of day. In English sonnets, the relationship
between the lady and the Lover often hinges on how beautiful, or fair, the lady is.
Consider, for example, Edmund Spenser's Amoretti, a sonnet sequence in which he
frequently describes the pale white skin and long golden locks of his Beloved only to
end on a note of melancholy as she refuses to acknowledge his existence.

Sidney complicates this theme a little more, retaining the notion of the cruel or scornful
Beloved but refusing to hyperbolize her fairness. In fact, Sidney makes frequent
reference to Stella's "black eyes," which in the context of early modern England most
likely meant brown, or dark eyes. This is a far cry from the sonnet tradition's typical
blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned mistress, and begins to raise questions not only
about the standards of beauty but also the tension between the poet and his
surroundings. Sidney may be working with a brown-eyed lady, but she is nonetheless
still beautiful: it is not until Shakespeare's sonnets that we receive a portrait of a
mistress who is, by all accounts - including the speaker himself - physically ugly. As
such, many credit Sidney with making the first strides to undermine this centuries-old
poetic tradition of the fair yet cruel Beloved.

Love as a Series of Paradoxes

Furthering the Petrarchan tradition, Sidney also draws upon the common notion of
paradox throughout his sequence. The role of paradox in the English sonnet is
essentially targeted toward fostering psychological realism within in a text, presenting
the reader with two opposite sensations and prompting them to imagine a world or an
emotion that would make one feel both at the same time.

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For Sidney, and for many other English sonneteers, the emotion that fosters such
paradox is love: obsessed with the Beloved, Astrophel experiences sensations of both
hot and cold at the same time, as well as pleasure and pain, sickness and health, dark
and light, bliss and melancholy, etc. These common paradoxes are tailor-made for the
sonnet, a form in which being torn and conflicted reigns supreme. By dwelling on the
notion of paradox or the concurrent experience of two opposite feelings, Sidney is able
to paint a portrait of love as not only an emotion expressed toward someone else, but
also one that can wreak havoc on an individual. On a fundamental level, the entire
concept of a sonnet 'sequence' revolves around the idea that a speaker is somewhat
trapped in his own desire, much like he is confined to writing in a single, repetitive form.

The point of Sidney's sonnet sequence, therefore, is not to solve Astrophel's problem. It
is not, even, primarily to relate the narrative of Astrophel and Stella's love affair. Instead,
the sequence is much more invested in examining the larger paradox of confinement
and freedom within love, but also within the form of the sonnet. As the speaker
struggles, often fruitlessly, to write himself out of the pain he feels, Sidney makes a
conscious effort to explore the limits of the sonnet as a fixed form. Innovating the
seemingly unshakeable 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter, Sidney not only
confronts the fundamental paradox of desire - wanting the thing that gives you the most
pain - but also that of poetic form, in which one is simultaneously bound to formal rules
and presented with endless opportunity to innovate the genre altogether.

Self-Alienation
The theme of self-alienation or self-estrangement is prominent throughout Sidney's
sequence and part and parcel of the sonnet tradition that both preceded and followed
him. The speaker of a sequence will establish another (in secular sonnets, the Beloved
and in spiritual sonnets, God) and begin to question to what extent that person or entity
constitutes the speaker's own life. In secular sonnet sequences (such as Astrophel and
Stella), the Lover is often figured as a mirror for and of the Beloved. Take, for example,
Edmund Spenser's "Sonnet 45" in the Amoretti, when he says, "Leave lady in your glass
of crystal clean, / Your goodly self forever more to view: / And in my self, my inward self
I mean, / Most lively like behold your semblance true" (1-4).

By assuming the position of the Beloved's "mirror," the lover adopts the notion that
lovers are capable of seeing themselves in one another. As such, Sidney's sequence,
which focuses heavily on unrequited love and the growing distance between Astrophel
and Stella, takes up both the metaphor of the mirror and consequently the motif of self-
estrangement. Possessed by love but having no Beloved to reflect it back at him, the
speaker comes to inhabit a version of himself that even he cannot recognize. For
example, when Astrophel bewails the final rejection by Stella, he laments in Sonnet 94,
"Grief, find the words; for thou hast made my brain / So dark with misty vapours, which
arise / From out thy heavy mould, that inbent eyes / can scarce discern the shape of
mine own pain" (1-4). Looking inward, the speaker can no longer recognize himself or
the pain that plagues him.

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Astrophel and Stella quite frequently relies on different levels of estrangement, and as
the sequence progresses the speaker grows more and more alien to the world around
him. By the end of the sequence, his friend has disappeared and writes from his bed
alone in the dark night. In this way, the sequence posits a progressive alienation in
which the speaker is estranged from the Beloved, and therefore the rest of the world,
and therefore, ultimately, himself.

Abrupt Shifts in Tone

Throughout Astrophel and Stella, Sidney experiments with a variety of tones and often
shifts abruptly from one to the other and back again. These shifts are crucial to
understanding the element of psychological realism inherent to the sequence and are
especially particular to Sidney's sequence. While most secular sonnet sequences
maintain a relatively steady tone throughout (the tone of desperation, loneliness, and
hopelessness), Sidney's twist in the narrative in which Stella eventually, to some extent,
returns Astrophel's favor breeds a surprising though short-lived tone of hope,
excitement, and bliss.

Usually, shifts in tone are paired with shifts in sonnet structure, and the reader can
usually infer that something about a sonnet is "different" when it deviates from the
regular 14-line, iambic pentameter form. Of course, the most explicit version of this
formal shift is evident not in the sonnets but in the songs, which range in meter and
structure and almost always "conclude" the set of sonnets preceding them with a
heightened emotional lyric not confined by sonnet structure. The most obvious example
of this would be in Song 5, which follows Sonnet 86 ("Alas, whence came this change in
looks?") and proceeds over 90 iambic hexameter lines to accuse the Beloved of being a
thief, tyrant, rebel, lord, witch, and devil. This comes only shortly after Sonnet 85, in
which the speaker giddily approaches the house in which he presumes Stella will return
his love.

The frequent and abrupt shifts in tone illuminate the extent to which Astrophel's
emotions and psychological state are precarious and dependent on the mood of Stella
herself. In this way, the abrupt shifts also relate to the theme of self-alienation as they
indicate how little control the speaker has over his own emotions and his own writing.
Rather, both the speaker's psychological state and choice to turn to poetry are dictated
by the Beloved and whether or not she is near, far, friendly, or cold to the speaker.

Stella's Eyes
Throughout the sequence, but especially in the first half, Stella's eyes are a prominent
motif for Sidney as they allow him to explore other themes of reading the face like a
book, reflecting love back to the Lover, and comparing facial features to larger natural
phenomena. While there was a precedent for dwelling on the eyes of the Beloved in
other sonnet sequences, Sidney was the first to change the color of his Beloved's eyes
from light to dark (likely blue to brown). He frequently refers to Stella's "black eyes" in

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order to acknowledge the extent of Stella's rare beauty, setting her apart from other
"courtly nymphs" and attempting to reframe notions of beauty altogether.

This, of course, has its repercussions, notably the presence of the intervening friend
who questions Astrophel's devotion to Stella and urges him to throw off his love. But this
choice to darken the Beloved's eyes also has consequences for the tradition of the
sonnet sequence to follow Sidney, notably in Shakespeare's sonnets when he paints a
portrait of not only a dark-eyed and dark-haired "mistress," but goes to far as to
acknowledge her as physically repulsive and sexually promiscuous. While the two
sonneteers clearly have different agendas for their sequences, the choice of a
nontraditional Beloved represents a challenge to the poet to represent accurately one's
desire despite the Beloved's nontraditional physical appearance.

Stella's eyes also give Sidney the opportunity to incorporate extended metaphors into
the sequence, usually having something to do with the night sky or astronomical
phenomena. He compares her eyes to the sun, stars, and rising orbs in the sky that,
despite their darkness, light up the darkness that surrounds him. As such, Sidney is
then able to incorporate astrological allusions into his sonnets that connect his work to
the classical tradition of Greek and Roman mythology.

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Styles
Point of View
The majority of the sonnets in the sequence are told from the first-person point-of-view
of Astrophel, the speaker. As such, the reader receives a relatively skewed portrait of
the vague narrative that gets threaded throughout the sequence, as events are often
marred or reframed by Astrophel's own perceptions about what happened and how it
makes him feel. The essential "plot" of the sequence is that Astrophel sees Stella, falls
in love, pursues her, briefly wins her affection, and is ultimately rejected by her.
However, by framing the sequence through Astrophel's perspective, the narrative
becomes much less straightforward and able to follow, rendering the sequence more
about Astrophel's psychological state than anything else.

The songs, however, tend to offer a third-person perspective of the events, which gives
the reader an outside point-of-view by which they can judge Astrophel's reflections in
the sonnets. The songs - some of which are also written from Astrophel's perspective -
nonetheless represent a shift in form, and they provide the sequence with a kind of
"bird's eye view" of the events. This perspective helps the reader keep Astrophel's
status as an unreliable narrator in mind.

Language and Meaning

The sequence is written in typical early modern English with frequent allusion to the
Greek and Latin languages. Sidney often employs the poetic technique of inversion -
reversing the traditional syntax of a clause or sentence - so that many of his lines end
on verbs. These verb endings give the sonnets a sense of forward movement until the
final closing couplet that (usually) ends with a noun. In this way, each individual sonnet
gets propelled forward by the ends of Sidney's lines and virtually cannot make sense
until a reader has completed the entire poem.

One of Sidney's most notable uses of language in the sonnets comes in the form of the
repetition of the words "sweet" and "rhubarb." Maintaining that Stella's love can make
even the most sour food taste sweet, Astrophel frequently uses the metaphor of dessert
foods to describe sad situations and words themselves. In Sidney's "The Defense of
Poesy," he argues that poetry is capable of making ideas and stories more palatable,
noting that it can "sweeten" certain words in ways that other forms of communication
cannot. This notion of poetry's ability to sweeten gets transfused into the sonnets as
Sidney subtly compares poetry's ability to sweeten words to the Beloved's ability to
sweeten situations that are otherwise hard to swallow.

Often, an individual sonnet will contain a word that gets repeated in nearly every line.
"Truth," for example, appears seven times in Sonnet 5 and "rich" appears eight times in
Sonnet 37. The seemingly overwrought repetition of one word within a fourteen-line

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poem serves to call that very word into question and to destabilize its traditional
meaning. As such, Sidney is able to raise questions like, what is truth and how do we
know it? Or, what does it mean to be rich in different aspects of one's life?

Structure
The sonnet sequence is composed of 108 sonnets and 11 songs and is structured
around a loose narrative in which Astrophel meets Stella, falls in love, briefly receives
affection in return, but is ultimately rejected. The first half of the sonnet sequence
progresses along the theme of unrequited love and sees very few moments of shifting
tone or mood. The second half of the sequence however, once Stella begins to take
interest in Astrophel and eventually reject him, is punctuated by interruptive "songs" that
are written in a variety of forms about a variety of themes. The songs in the second half
of the sequence most often serve as insights into the action of the narrative that
Astrophel cannot express or articulate within the confines of the sonnet form.

Each individual sonnet varies in terms of its rhyme scheme, but Sidney writes in the
Petrarchan form - that is, a unit of eight lines (octave) followed by a unit of six lines
(sestet). These units are delineated by their rhyme scheme, the most common of which
is ABBA/ABBA/CDE/CDE or ABAB/ABAB/CDCD/EE. When a sonnet ends on the rhyme
scheme EE (the majority of the sonnets), it closes with a rhymed "couplet," a poetic
technique often attached to the sonnet as a means of wrapping up or concluding
whatever was expressed in the preceding 12 lines.

The majority of the sonnets are 14 lines long and written in iambic pentameter (five feet
of unstressed/stressed syllables). Occasionally Sidney will shorten or lengthen a sonnet
by a line, but more often he toys with the meter and dips into iambic hexameter (also
known as an alexandrine) in which there are six instead of five feet. This use of
hexameter gives these sonnets a breathless or urgent feel, as iambic pentameter was
allegedly the meter that was most akin to regular English speech.

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Quotes
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay; / Invention, nature's child, fled
step-dame study's blows; / Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes. /
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, / 'Fool,' said my muse to me; look in thy
heart, and write.
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 1 paragraph Lines 9-14)

Importance: This quote serves as the closing couplet to the first sonnet of the
sequence and introduces the reader to the speaker's anxiety about his ability to craft
poetry at the same time that he is possessed by love for the Beloved. His muse's
response, in which she refers to him as "fool," indicates that the creative process is
much more simple than the speaker assumes, and Sidney therefore opens the
sequence under the assumption that his speaker will be speaking from the heart.

Or would she her miraculous power show, / That, whereas black seems beauty's
contrary, / She even in black doth make all beauties flow?
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 7 paragraph Lines 9-11)

Importance: This quote appears in a sonnet that is primarily about Stella's eyes and the
way Nature made her. The speaker wonders here whether Nature was showing off her
power by making Stella beautiful even with her dark eyes. As such, this quote draws on
the ongoing paradox of black beauty present in the sonnets and exemplifies the extent
to which the speaker is enamored of the Beloved.

Like some weak lords, neighboured by mighty kings, / To keep themselves and their
chief cities free, / Do easily yield, that all their coasts may be / Ready to store their
camps of needful things: / So Stella's heart, finding what power love brings, / To keep
itself in life and liberty, / Doth willing grant, that in the frontiers he / Use all to help his
other conquerings.
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 29 paragraph Lines 1-8)

Importance: This quote acknowledges the speaker's somewhat fruitless attempts to

gain the affection of the Beloved. By comparing Stella's heart to a "weak lord" that
surrounds itself with "mighty kings" to prevent being overtaken. Here, Sidney draws on
his frequent martial metaphor in order to posit Stella's heart as a fortress that he, the
conquerer is unable to assail.

Who though most rich in these, and every part / Which make the patents of true worldly
bliss, / Hath no misfortune, but that Rich she is.
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 37 paragraph Lines 12-14)

Importance: This quote appears at the end of a sonnet in which the word "rich" is used
eight times, and as such many scholars assume this is Sidney's nod to Penelope
Devereux (later Penelope Rich) as the Stella of the sonnets. This point is supported by
the fact that the last "rich" is capitalized as it would be in a last name. Here, Astrophel

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makes the argument that while she has been given earthly wealth, she is unfortunate in
being "rich," i.e. married to Robert Rich.

Virtue, awake: beauty but beauty is; / I may, I must, I can, I will, I do / Leave following
that, which it is gain to miss.
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 47 paragraph Lines 9-11)

Importance: This quote is an example of how Sidney uses form to communicate the
psychological realism of anxiety and duress. The repetition of "I" followed by a verb in
line 10 and the many modifications the speaker makes indicates that he is unsure of
what to do, feeling torn, and constantly has to be interrupting himself. Compare this
sonnet to other sonnets that seem to "flow" better and where the speaker consequently
exhibits more control over his craft.

The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan / Of them, who in their lips love's
standard bear: / 'What, he?' say they of me, 'now I dare swear, / He cannot love; no, no,
let him alone.
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 54 paragraph Lines 5-8)

Importance: Here, Astrophel refers to "courtly nymphs" as representatives of other

ladies at court and how they respond to the men who try to woo them (courtiers).
Astrophel makes the argument that because he does not act like all the other courtiers,
the ladies assume he is incapable of love when in reality he is just entirely devoted to
Stella. This quote draws on the themes of alienation and solitude that appear
throughout the sequence, usually referring to the outside world as uncomprehending of
the speaker's situation.

For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine, / Of her high heart giv'n me the
monarchy
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 69 paragraph Lines 9-10)

Importance: These lines indicate the moment when Astrophel's fortune begins to turn
(or so he thinks) and Stella returns his affection in some capacity (likely a stolen kiss).
Sidney uses the political metaphor of the monarchy to demonstrate that Astrophel is
harnessing power and sovereignty over Stella's heart that he never had before.

Sweet kiss, thy sweets I fain would sweetly endite, / which even of sweetness sweetest
sweetener art
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 79 paragraph Lines 1-2)

Importance: These two lines open Sonnet 79, after Astrophel and Stella have shared a
clandestine kiss and Astrophel presumes his fortune has shifted. He addresses the
poem to the kiss itself, repeating variations of the word "sweet" five times in the first two
lines. This repetition signifies the extent to which he feels transformed by the kiss, so
overwhelmed by its effects that he can only rely on one word to describe it.

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Alas, whence came this change of looks? If I / Have changed desert, let mine own
conscience be / A still felt plague, to self condemning me: / Let woe gripe on my heart,
shame load mine eye.
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 86 paragraph Lines 1-4)

Importance: The opening lines of Sonnet 86 are the first explicit acknowledgement
from the speaker that the Beloved has started to reject him. The language of woe and
melancholy returns to his speech, and this sonnet is immediately followed by songs 5-9
in which the speaker attempts to grapple with the emotional turmoil of unrequited love
(once again).

Be your words made, good sir, of Indian ware, / That you allow me them by so small
rate?
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 92 paragraph Lines 1-2)

Importance: Sonnet 92, in which the speaker asks for information about Stella,
represents the speaker's coming to grips with the fact that she has rejected him. As
such, the figure of the "friend" returns - who was present in the earlier sonnets - as
someone meant to foil the speaker with his outside perspective. Furthermore, the return
of the friend signifies a circularity operative in the sequence, in which the speaker
himself returns to the state of melancholy he experienced in the earlier poems.

Grief, find the words; for thou hast made my brain / So dark with misty vapours, which
arise / From out thy heavy mould, that inbent eyes / Can scarce discern the shape of
mine own pain.
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 94 paragraph Lines 1-4)

Importance: This sonnet, which is largely about the speaker's grief as he laments the
absence of his Beloved, establishes the metaphysical state of grief as one of confusion
and, most notably, self-estrangement. The further the Beloved moves from the speaker,
therefore, the less the speaker is able to make sense of the world and the more difficult
it becomes to recognize one's own self amidst the pain.

O tears, no tears, but rain from beauty's skies, / Making those lilies and those roses
grow / Which aye most fair, now more than most fair show, / While graceful pity beauty
beautifies
-- Speaker (Astrophel) (Sonnet 100 paragraph 1-4)

Importance: This sonnet hints at another meeting between the Lover and Beloved, as
the the speaker compares Stella's tears to nourishing rain and refers to her panting as
"honeyed sighs" (5). These comparisons suggest that the speaker is once again
incapable of thinking on the tangible level of reality and must instead translate the
Beloved into a natural phenomenon to cope with his love. Also, the first words of the
sonnet ("O tears, no tears") are reminiscent of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy
(1587), when the protagonist, Hieronimo, begins his famous monologue by asserting,
"O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears."

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