Sidney's Astrophil and Stella: analysis and themes

Sidney's Astrophil And Stella

The series of sonnets that are gathered together under the name of Astrophil and Stella are representative for the understanding of the way love was conceived of, during the Elizabethan England. The paramount fact in understanding the way in which love was constructed during the Renaissance, is the conflict between virtue and love, or chastity and sin which is made apparent by Philip Sidney in his sonnets.

As Baldassare Castiglione formulated it in The Courtier, ideal love should never be separated from virtue, and physical or bodily desires should be repressed so as to allow only spiritual love to be manifest. First of all, love is defined as " a certain coveting to enjoy beauty," but although this may seem at first sight, an argument in favor of love as sensual desire, Castiglione makes it clear that beauty itself was considered as a form of spiritual manifestation, which had nothing to do with the human body as such, it being only like a spiritual inhabitant of this body:

But speaking of the beauty that we mean, which is only it that appeareth in bodies, and especially in the face of man, and moveth this fervent coveting which we call Love, we will term it an influence of the heavenly bountifulness, the which for all it stretcheth over all things that be created (like the light of the sun) yet when it findeth out a face well proportioned [...] therinto it distilleth itself and appeareth most well favoured, and decketh out and lighteneth the subject where it shines with a marvellous grace and glistering [glistening] (like the sun beams that strike against beautiful plate of fine gold wrought and set with precious jewels); so that it draweth unto it men's eyes with pleasure, and piercing through them, imprinteth himself [i.e. Love] in the soul, and with an unwonted sweetness all to stirreth her [the soul] and delighteth and setting her on fire maketh her to covet him."

It becomes thus clear from the passage quoted above, that beauty was seen as a spiritual manifestation that only invaded and radiated from the human body like the rays of the sun and thus inspired love in the man who contemplated it. Therefore it is plain that the body which was made of flesh, and consequently, and the senses that were part of it, like that of touch or taste were not held in favor with the Elizabethans, and could not be a part of ideal love. Love was to be the delight of reason, not of the senses, and as Castiglione says, it can be enjoyed trough the sense of seeing, therefore as mere contemplation.

The same coordinates for love are given in Sidney's sonnets, with the difference that these pieces of poetry speak repeatedly of the conflict that is established between these virtue and love, which are clearly seen as opposites. This conflict which is resumed over and over all through the sonnets, intimates that the author, although he seems to hold as true the same ideas about love as Castiglione, questions the rightfulness of this total separation of love from desire. The conflict he expresses in his sonnets is that between the inner world and desire and the conventions of society, and also the cultural constructs, and as Richard Lanham observes in his study entitled Astrophil and Stella: Pure and Impure Persuasion, the long poem is not a meditation, as it has been many times considered, but rather a long persuasive argument in favor of the construct of love as desire:

If love is largely desire, the personality in which it wreaks such havoc is very largely a conventional one. The dramatic power of the sequence, in fact, seems to come from precisely this simplified confrontation between desire and convention. Astrophil's personality comes to be resonant, symbolic, largely because it depicts so clearly, with such powerful drama, the impact of desire on a convention manifestly inadequate to cope with it." (Kinney, 100)

As Lanham observes, all the sonnets included in Astrophil and Stella have a rhetorical and persuasive purpose, and Sidney's or Astrophil's aim is to convince Stella to accept his sexual bidding. Therefore, the conflict between virtue and love, is paralleled by that between Stella, as representing virtue, and Astrophil, who is the advocate of desire and love, and who is trying to convince Stella to accept him. This becomes obvious in both Sonnet 52 and Sonnet 72, where Stella is depicted as a "virtuous soul" who opposes Astrophil's desires:

But Virtue thus that title doth disprove:

That Stella (oh dear name) that Stella is That virtuous soul, sure heir of heav'nly bliss,

Not this fair outside, which our hearts doth move." (Sidney)

In Sonnet 52, the conflict between virtue and love is stated very poignantly, as a dispute in which both virtue and love fight over the possession of Stella. The poet associates the body of his mistress with love, while Stella's self belongs to virtue. This dissociation is part of the way in which love was constructed by convention in the Elizabethan society: Stella's body inspires Astrophil with sensual desire, while Stella's self is the correspondent of virtue. This division between the body and the spirit of the mistress as it is apparent in the sonnet is the token of the inner division of Astrophil, who hesitates between convention and the accepted ideas of the time, according to which desire was something impure, and his own states of mind which compel him to advocate desire. In spite of this division, Astrophil remains clearly on the side of desire, as it becomes evident from the way in which he chooses to resolve the dispute between love and virtue: he grant Stella's self to virtue, and hopes this virtue will grant Stella's body to him, that is he ironically concedes Stella's soul to virtue, but still covets her body.

The irony and the rhetorical power of this conclusion consists of the fact that Astrophil claims Stella's body using the very weapons that were used in the epoch to withhold and rebuke desire: the body was considered as being a part of the sensual and not the spiritual world, therefore it cannot not belong to virtue, as Sidney concludes. If the seat of virtue in the human frame is the soul, then his desire is free to claim the body:

Well, Love, since this demur our suit will stay,

Let Virtue have that Stella's self; yet thus That Virtue but that body grant to us." (Sidney)

It is also obvious from his conclusion that Astrophil relinquishes the possession of Stella's self with very much easiness, and wants only her body instead, which clearly hints at the fact that the poet is very fixed on the purpose he has, and which is Stella's persuasion, to the point that love and desire become one and the same thing for him.

As Sidney concludes in Sonnet 61, in the context of the Elizabethan world, love becomes an almost paradoxical pursuit for the lover, who is actually forced to give up on loving to love truthfully and with sincerity. Here again, we have a token of the fact that desire is primary to Astrophil, who cannot conceive love without sexual involvement:

Now since her chaste mind hates this love in me,