Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: The Shadow War (Part 5)

**Tom Holland** (0:12)
Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance guided so well that I obtained the prize, both by the judgment of the English eyes and of some sent from that sweet enemy, France. Horseman, my skill in horsemanship advanced. Houndfolks, my strength. A daintier judge applies his praise to skill, which from good use doth rise. Some lucky wits impute it, but to chance. Others, because of both sides, I do take my blood from them who did excel in this, think nature me a man of arms did make. How far they shot a wry, the true causes Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face sent forth the beams, which made so fair my race.
So that is a lovely sonnet that was written in May 1581 by Philip Sidney, who was the golden boy of the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Now, in 1581, the skies are dark. Beyond the limits of England, blood is flowing. The Civil War in France, there are cities on fire in the low countries in modern day Belgium and Holland. There are bodies drifting down the Dutch canals.
And in Spain, the sinister figure of Philip II is brooding on the exploits, the piratical exploits, he would call them, of Francis Drake and his plotting his revenge on England. But in Whitehall that day in May 1581, the court of Elizabeth I has never glittered more brightly because they're holding a tournament.
Elizabeth is there, the great nobles are there, emissaries from France are there, and the big star of the show is this guy, Philip Sidney, the man who wrote those words. He has won the prize. He has cut a dash and captured the hearts and minds of the watching spectators.
The match report of the tournament then proceeded Master Philip Sidney in very sumptuous manner, with armour part blue and the rest guilt and engraven, with four spare horses having comparisons and furniture very rich and costly. So Tom Philip Sidney, he's a tremendous man, isn't he?

**Dominic Sandbrook** (2:21)
Yeah, he's the embodiment, I think, of everything that a renaissance courtier dreams of being, and that's why he's such a superstar. So he is insanely well-connected. He's the nephew in the heir of the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, Elizabeth I, great favourite, and he is the brother-in-law of the Earl of Pembroke, who builds this tremendous house outside Wilton in Wiltshire and the Salisbury area.

**Tom Holland** (2:50)
Lovely to have Wiltshire and the Salisbury area back on the show.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (2:53)
It has these beautiful Tudor gardens in Blackadder. When Blackadder falls in love with Bob and they go walking to the tune of Green Sleeves, it's the Gardens of Wilton House that you see. So that's very much Sydney's house in the country. He has a European reputation as well as an English one. He's famous across the continent for his intellect, for his eloquence, for his courtesy. He's kind of the model of Sprezatura, this kind of Italian ideal of nonchalant style, and he is one of the great geniuses of this golden age of English literature that flourishes in the reign of Elizabeth I. So that sonnet that you read is part of a sequence that, in the opinion of most critics, ranks second only to the sonnet sequence written by Shakespeare himself. The sonnet sequence is called Astrophil and Stella, and Stella is a star and Astrophil is star lover. But of course, Phil is a play on Philip Sidney's own name.
What can I say? The Elizabethans love these kind of puns and word plays.
He's also the author of a very famous defense of poetry, which again has a kind of Europe-wide reputation.
And he's written a poem called Arcadia, which is a pastoral romance. He wrote it at Wilton House and he dedicated it to his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. And the most famous line from that poem, They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts. Very stirring and inspiring. And Sidney can get away with writing this kind of stuff because everyone takes for granted that this is exactly what he is about. He is, I think, for Tudor Courtier fanboys, I mean, he's the embodiment of that. He is the quintessence of Elizabethan nobility.

**Tom Holland** (4:44)
And yet, there is a sense of ambitions unfulfilled, isn't there? Because although he likes winning tournaments and he likes writing sonnets and all of these kinds of things and cutting a dash, his ambitions go much further. What he actually wants to do is to make his imprint on history and indeed on the map of Europe, because we started with that background, the sense of conflict on the continent. And that's a really, really important part of understanding what happens to Philip Sidney.