Sonnet 1

Sidney’s “Sonnet 1” is an ars poetica—a poem about writing poetry—in sonnet form. The speaker is Sidney himself; he includes biographical clues throughout Astrophil and Stella—“Sonnet 1” is the first poem in that work. Sidney did not submit his sonnets to be publicly printed and distributed, and they were only published after his death. His intended audience was his close circle of friends in the late 1500s—that is, those familiar with how he failed to marry his real-life Stella (Penelope Rich [nee Devereux]). In that light, a modern audience eavesdrops on the private affairs and jokes of Sidney’s coterie.

“Sonnet 1” has 14 lines, which can be broken into three or four sections. In terms of rhyme scheme, Sidney’s sonnet can be broken into an octave (eight lines) with the rhyme scheme ABABABAB, another quatrain (four lines) with the rhyme scheme CDCD, and a concluding couplet (two lines) with the rhyme scheme EE. Ideologically, the sonnet can be broken up into two quatrains (two sets of four lines) and two tercets (two sets of three lines).

The first quatrain is about pleasure and pain in writing and reading. The speaker’s truthful love, “[l]oving in truth” (Line 1), is a pleasure to put into verse. Sidney uses the diction “fain in verse my love to show” (Line 1). “Fain” means “pleasureful,” and it is an internal rhyme with the terminal rhyme words of Lines 2, 4, 6, and 8; they all end with the “-ain” syllable. This diction connects, through rhyme, the concepts of pleasure (“fain”; Line 1) and “pain” (Line 2). The word “pleasure” repeats in Lines 2 and 3. This repetition emphasizes how pleasure is not only central to Sidney’s writing process but also an inspiration for his beloved’s reading habits. Pleasure underlies both consumption and production of the written word.

In Lines 3 and 4, Sidney narrows his focus to the effects of reading poetry. This process of narrowing involves repetition, but the word slightly changes: “read, reading” (Line 3) and “know, / Knowledge” (Lines 3-4). In the first instance, the root word comes first, and then it is followed by an inflected form of that word (“read” is the root, and “reading” is the inflected form [Line 3]). In the second instance, a derivative comes after the root word (“know” is the root word [Line 3], and “knowledge” [Line 4] is the derived form). In other words, to move from “read” to “reading” is to change tenses, but to move from “know” to “knowledge” is to change parts of speech (“know” is a verb, and “knowledge” is a noun). This wordplay outlines the chain of causality from reading to knowledge.

When the speaker begins to discuss how knowledge can affect his beloved’s emotional state, the same form of the same word is repeated again: “pity” (Line 4). Pity is created by knowledge and is what leads to her extending grace. This extension of grace puts her in a higher position, which draws on religious imagery where the beloved is divine and the speaker is human. The image of a woman being on a pedestal above her suitor draws on concepts of courtly love seen in the didactic text The Art of Courtly Love and medieval poetry. The speaker aims to obtain grace through poetry, which is one of the thematic functions of art.

The second quatrain describes the speaker’s act of reading, which is also compared with the beloved’s act of reading. Sidney hopes that his beloved reading his poems will result in her granting him the grace of love. In order to elicit this response, he reads other poems. He doesn’t simply consume them but is “[s]tudying inventions fine” (Line 6). In other words, the speaker analyzes the poetry he reads, looking for inspiration.

The act of being inspired is described using a metaphor of leaves and rain. Sidney writes, “[T]urning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow / Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain” (Lines 7-8). Leaves are both the pages of a manuscript and the ends of tree branches. As the former, they are turned when reading, and as the latter, they can be turned over to release rain that has collected in them. Inspiration is a cooling rain, and his brain is sunburned both by love and by his search for inspiration. The effects of inspiration are alliterative; “flow” (Line 7), “fresh” (Line 8), and “fruitful” (Line 8) all begin with “f.” Artistic flow, dependent on newness (freshness), can bear fruit. The word choice of “fruitful” (Line 8) can also be connected to the imagery of pregnancy that is later developed in Line 12. Fruit can refer to what plants and humans produce and lends to the poem’s theme of Producing Poetry as Bearing Children.

Sidney also develops the idea of pain in the second quatrain. Building on the “pain” of love introduced in Line 2, the speaker seeks to find “fit words to paint the blackest face of woe” (Line 5). He is concerned with diction, needing each word to fit perfectly in his poem, in terms of syntax, rhyme, and meaning(s). Poetry is metaphorically described as painting in this quote. Painting is deeply connected to both poetry and love for Sidney. In his prose work The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Sidney’s characters fall in love with a woman after only seeing a painting of her. Painting, and poetry, can portray the deepest feelings of sorrow, which speaks to The Functions of Art.

The volta, or turn, of the poem occurs between Lines 8 and 9, or at the end of the octave. The change in direction is indicated by the conjunction “[b]ut” (Line 9) and develops a central tension in the poem: Studying Versus Personal Invention. The leaves, or pages, that the speaker is consuming do not inspire him in the way that he hopes, and he struggles with writer’s block. Sidney describes why this block is occurring: “Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows” (Line 10). Here, invention is metaphorically described as a child of nature, and invention’s abusive stepmother is academic study. This comparison argues that inventiveness should be natural and spontaneous, whereas studying poetry can be an unnatural, forced practice. The use of “child” (Line 10) also develops the theme of producing poetry as bearing children.

Near the end of the poem, Sidney includes a pun about meter: “[O]thers’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way” (Line 11). At first glance, this seems like the speaker is being tripped by a stranger’s foot. However, Sidney is punning on the two meanings of feet—the appendages and the metrical units in a line of poetry. Sonnets in English typically have pentameter lines, which are lines with five metrical feet and 10 syllables total per line. Sidney, in Line 11, acknowledges that he goes over 10 syllables in all his lines; he uses 12-syllable lines, which are often called alexandrine meter. In other words, he adds additional metrical feet and explicitly points out this decision, explaining that the formal constraint of 10 syllables tripped him up, or got in his way.

In the final tercet, Sidney concludes the theme of producing poetry as bearing children. He describes himself as “great with child to speak” (Line 12), or pregnant with ideas. His mind has expanded like a womb in this metaphor. He also experiences “throes” (Line 12), which would metaphorically be labor pains. The poem not being born is a result of a deficiency of his “truant pen” (Line 13)—the materials necessary to create are “truant,” or don’t appear regularly. This causes the speaker to indulge in self-flagellation until his muse appears.

The poem closes with the voice of the speaker’s muse as the muse finally speaks to Sidney. The muse argues that Sidney is a “fool” (Line 14) for thinking that inspiration can be found exclusively in research and analysis. Instead, he should “look in [his] heart and write” (Line 14). The muse is on the side of writing from the heart, or emotions, rather than from the logical, analytical mind.