Sidney’s Philoclea and Shakespeare’s Juliet
Sixteen-year old Philoclea’s confusion about whether she loves a man or woman prefigures Juliet’s uncertainty about whether her lover’s is a charmer named Romeo or a Montague, her deadly enemy.
Other things Shakespeare borrowed from Sidney
These include the idea of writing sonnets, the abundant use of tear-drop imagery, the Gloucester subplot in King Lear, based on the good son and evil son of the Patagonian King (Book 2, Chapter 10); and Andromana, the lying prototype for Iago (Book 2, Chapter 20), and much more.
Hollywood
In a scene from Elizabeth (1998), the earl of Leicester (Ralph Fiennes) recites an unattributed poem to Queen Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett). The actual poem is by Sidney, said by William Ringler to be the most beautiful Sidney wrote. It is beautiful, but also highly ironic in the Arcadia, where Musidorus, a gifted poet, tells Miso he overheard Chariclea sing it to Miso’s husband, but he is lying, to make Miso jealous (as part of his plot to elope with Pamela).