Sir Philip Sidney (November 30, 1554 – October 17, 1586) became one of the Elizabethan Age's most prominent figures. Famous in his day in England as a poet, courtier and soldier, he remains known as the author of Astrophil and Stella (1581, pub. 1591), The Defence of Poesy (or An Apology for Poetry, 1581, pub. 1595), and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1580, pub. 1590).

Born at Penshurst, Kent, he was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. His mother was the daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and the sister of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. His younger sister, Mary Sidney, married Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Mary Sidney was important as a translator and as a patron of poetry; Sidney dedicated his longest work, the Arcadia, to her.

Philip was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church College, Oxford. He was much travelled and highly learned. In 1572, he traveled to France as part of the embassy to negotiate a marriage between Elizabeth I and the Duc D'Alencon. He spent the next several years in Europe, moving through Germany, Italy, Poland, and Austria. On these travels, he met a number of prominent European intellectuals and politicians.

Returning to England in 1575, Sidney met Penelope Devereux, the future Penelope Blount; though much younger, she would become the inspiration of his famous sonnet sequence of the 1580s, Astrophil and Stella. Her father the Earl of Essex, is said to have planned to marry his daughter to Sidney; however, he died in 1576. In England, Sidney occupied himself with politics and art. He defended his father's administration of Ireland in a lengthy document. More seriously, he quarreled with Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, probably because of Sidney's opposition to the French marriage, which de Vere championed. In the aftermath of this episode, Sidney challenged de Vere to a duel, which Elizabeth forbade; he then wrote the queen a lengthy letter detailing the foolishness of the French marriage. Characteristically, Elizabeth bristled at his presumption, and Sidney prudently retired from court.

His artistic contacts were more peaceful and more significant for his lasting fame. During his absence from the court, he wrote the Arcadia and, probably, The Defense of Poesy. Somewhat earlier, he had met Edmund Spenser, who dedicated the Shepheardes Calendar to him. Other literary contacts included membership in the (possibly fictitious) 'Areopagus', a humanist endeavor to classicize English verse, and his friendship with his sister, who after his death completed the verse translation of the Psalms that he had begun.

By the middle of 1581, Sidney had returned to court; that same year Penelope Devereux was married, apparently against her will, to Lord Rich. Sidney was knighted in 1583. An early arrangement to marry Anne Cecil, daughter of Sir William Cecil and eventual wife of de Vere, had fallen through in 1571; in 1583, he married Frances, teenage daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. The next year, he met Giordano Bruno, who subsequently dedicated two books to Sidney.

Both through his family heritage and his personal experience (he was in Walsingham's house in Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre), Sidney was a keenly militant Protestant. In the 1570s, he had persuaded John Casimir to consider proposals for a unified Protestant effort against the Catholic Church and Spain; in the early 1580s, he argued unsuccessfully for an assault on Spain itself. In 1585, his enthusiasm for Protestant struggle was allowed full expression when he was made governor of Flushing in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, he consistently urged boldness on his superior, the Earl of Leicester. He conducted a successful raid on Spanish forces near Axel in July, 1586; later that year, he joined Sir John Norris in the Battle of Zutphen. During the siege, he was shot in the thigh and died twenty-two days later.

Sidney's body was returned to London and interred in St. Paul's Cathedral on February 16, 1587. Already in life, but especially after his death, he had become for many English people the epitome of a courtier: learned and politic, but at the same time generous, brave, and impulsive. Never more than a marginal figure in the politics of his time, he was memorialized as the flower of English manhood in Edmund Spenser's Astrophel, one of the greatest of English Renaissance elegies.

The most famous story about Sir Philip (intended as an illustration of his noble character) is that, while dying, he gave his water-bottle to another wounded soldier, saying, "Thy need is greater than mine". An early biography of Sidney was written by his friend and schoolfellow, Fulke Greville.

The Rye House conspirator, Algernon Sydney, was Sir Philip's great-nephew.

                       

Courtesy of: http://www.wikipedia.org