“Most of us don't think of singing shepherds as a source of political understanding. But statesmanship is exactly what we find in Sidney's Arcadia. It is one reason, along with Sidney's use of humor and suspense, that this compelling story was the most popular work of English narrative prose for over two hundred years. Modern-day public servants might benefit as Shakespeare did in borrowing widely from Arcadia’s lessons on virtue, popular rebellion and the perils of misrule.” —Mitch Daniels, President of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana
Law and Ethics
Sidney’s Arcadia ends with the first great trial scene in English literature. King Euarchus, called to judge Musidorus and Pyrcles for rape, finds them guilty, despite their passionate and reasonable arguments for their innocence.
A profound ethical dilemma then arises when Euarchus learns one of princes is his own son in disguise. In the name of justice he refuses to alter their death sentences … [spoiler alert]
“There is everything in it: prose and verse, both alike exquisite, pastoral and romance, stories, some of them sensational, ethical discussion and moral guidance. … Other poets rifled it, notably Shakespeare.” –A. L. Rowse, The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Cultural Achievement, 1972
Arcadia
For 200 years the Arcadia was the most popular piece of original prose fiction written in English. Sidney invented the name PAMELA for his heroine. ("Pan" means "all" in Greek; "melos" means "sweetness.") Two of the first original women authors in English wrote continuations to the Arcadia: Anna Weamys, A Continuation of Sidney’s Arcadia, and the Countess of Montgomery, Urania.
“A much richer, more complicated, more satisfying reading experience than the simpler version (known as the Old Arcadia). … To the old version is added a much sharper sense of menace, especially in the character of wicked Cecropia. … The multifaceted and variegated prose is interrupted at regular intervals with verse of dazzling proficiency.” –A. N. Wilson, The Elizabethans, 2011.
Like The Lord of the Rings, Sidney's Arcadia is patterned on an oracle. As we learn from premonitions, feelings of fate, and curses that come true in literature (as they always do in Shakespeare), the point of oracles is the assurance that some power of goodness is at work. King Charles I is said to have recited Pamela’s prayer as he went to the scaffold in 1648.
“In the Arcadia, as in some luminous globe, all the seeds of English fiction lie latent.” –Virginia Woolf. The Second Common Reader, 1932.
Moral Philosophy
Sidney was a fearsome debater at Oxford, and like Queen Elizabeth’s chancellor William Cecil, Lord Burghley, prized Aristotle’s Ethics and Cicero’s Offices. The Arcadia is notable for its many debates where characters weigh their moral obligations against expediency. Above all, Sidney was a students of Aristotle’s Politics and its assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of governments controlled by a strong ruler, a dominant nobility, or the people. These issues are marbled through the texture of the story but also come together in some notable passages:
The claims of friendship against romantic love, and the dangers, and defense of, cross-dressing (Book 1, Chapter 12).
The duty of kings to their subjects and subjects to kings (Book 2, Chapter 6, and the poem “As I my little flock on Ister Bank,” a beast fable on the need for a courageous nobility to counter despotism, p. 483, in the Eclogues following Book 3).
Pamela’s refutation of atheism (Book 3, Chapter 10)
The value of marriage (Book 3, Eclogues, p. 488)
The debate over suicide (Book 4, Chapter 4)
Gynecia’s bad dreams and guilt (Book 5, Chapter 2)
The possibility of memory in the afterlife (Book 5, Chapter 3)