The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
INTRODUCTION and CRITICISM
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The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia, is a pastoral romance written by Sir Philip Sidney towards the end of the 16th century. It has an important place in the history of English literature as it is the first pastoral romance in English just as Spenser's The Shepherd's Calendar is the first verse pastoral romance. Arcadia includes a number of lyrics and eclogues after the classical style though it is written mainly in prose.
ARCADIA is the name of a mountainous district in the Peloponese, the domain of Pan, the god of shepherds. The poem was written solely for the amusement of Sydney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke. There was no intention of making money or literary fame from this creation. Sydney started writing ARCADIA in 1580. Not only did he not publish it but he also expressed his wish to destroy it while on his deathbed. However it was published in 1586 posthumously, and it brought him great fame.
Everything in ARCADIA is on the ideal plane. Both the story and setting are far removed from reality. David Daiches remarks, "Ideal love, ideal friendship, and the ideal ruler are, directly and indirectly, discussed, suggested and embodied." According to Daiches the style of Arcadia is "highly conceited, full of elaborate analogies, balanced parenthetical asides, pathetic fallacies, symmetrically answering clauses, and other devices of an immature prose entering suddenly into the world of conscious literary device." One of Sidney's constant devices is to take a word and toss it till its meaning is fully extracted with all its aesthetic beauty. Sidney's reference to the cool wine which seems "to laugh for joy" as it nears a lady's lips is an example of the pathetic fallacy. There are other examples like the water drops that slip down the bodies of dainty seem to weep for sorrow. When the princesses put on their clothes, the clothes are described as 'gold'.
