Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester

Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, 1563–1626 (portrait in the National Gallery )

Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester KG (born November 19, 1563 in Penshurst , Kent ; † July 13, 1626 ibid) was a noble statesman and art patron of the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages in England .

Life

Robert Sidney was born on November 19, 1563 at the family seat in Penshurst , Kent. He was the third child of Sir Henry Sidney , 1529–1586, appointed by Queen Elizabeth I to the governor of Ireland ( Lord Deputy of Ireland ) , nephew of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester , and brother of the early famous poet Philip Sidney and his Sister Mary Sidney , 1561-1621. All siblings came from an artistic family, Robert wrote poetry, Philip became one of the most famous poets at the Elizabethan court and Mary, later Countess of Pembroke , became an independent author.

Sidney studied at Christ Church (Oxford) from 1575 to 1579 and toured the continent, mostly Germany, between 1579 and 1581. In 1584 he married the wealthy heiress Barbara Gamage , cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh . The marriage had eleven children. The most famous descendant was the writer Mary, Lady Wroth. Ben Jonson dedicated the play The Alchemist and the sonnet The Underwood and two epigrams to her in 1612 . In 1625 he married Sarah Blount, widow of Sir Thomas Smythe and daughter of William Blount.

For the county of Glamorgan he was elected a member of the House of Commons in 1585 . Under his uncle Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester , he served with his older brother Philip in the war against Spain in the Netherlands. In 1585 Dudley was given command of the campaign against the Spanish Netherlands under Alexander Farnese . The support of the Dutch Republic was perceived by Spain's King Philip II as a declaration of war, which led to the creation of the Armada , and culminated in the Battle of Zutphen in 1586, in which he fought with his brother Philip and he was mortally wounded. Robert Sidney was then head of the family, owner of Penshurst Place and beaten to the Knight Bachelor in the same year .

From 1589 to 1616, when Flushing was returned to the Dutch, he was governor of this city, which he visited less and less after the death of Queen Elizabeth. He showered the English ministers with letters in support of Flushing's finances. After diplomatic missions in Scotland in 1588 and France in 1594, he returned to Holland for a longer period in 1606. 1603 King raised him James I to Baron Sydney , of Penshurst; at the same time he became Lord Chamberlain for his wife Anna of Denmark . In 1605 he was made Viscount L'Isle and finally in 1618 Earl of Leicester . This title, which Queen Elizabeth I had newly created for her favorite Robert Dudley, expired with his death in 1588, since he died without an heir, and was only awarded again to Robert Sidney. The Sidneys carried the title until the death of the seventh earl, with whose death the line in the male line became extinct.

Sidney died on July 3, 1626 at his estate in Penshurst.

Effect - music and poetry

Although he was the brother of one of the most famous poets in Elizabethan England, he was not seen as an independent poet until the 1960s; his poems had remained unpublished during his lifetime. It was only when the library at Warwick Castle was opened that his autograph workbook (bound in the 19th century) with his own corrections and changes was rediscovered and his poetic skills became aware. They contain songs, sonnets and pastorals in the style of his famous brother Philip. It can be regarded as one of the largest, fully preserved verse documents by a poet of that time.

Ben Jonson identified him as a man of taste and a patron of literature in his poem To Penshurst in The Forest , and wrote his cultured lifestyle in his seat in Penshurst.

Robert Sidney was also a patron of musicians. It has been proven that he was appropriated Robert Jones' First Book of Songs and Ayres (1600), as well as A Musicall Banquet (1610), compiled by Robert Dowland, the son of the composer John Dowland . Sidney was the godfather of John Dowland's son. A Musicall Banquet opens with a dance (Galliarde) by John Dowland, entitled: Syr Robert Sidney his Galliard . It apparently dates from the late 1690s, when Robert Sidney was Governor of Flushing. The collection contains 66 sonnets, songs, pastorals, elegies and lighter pieces, apparently structured as a kind of response to Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella . They suggest that Robert Sidney was a fan of Neoplatonic love ideas and appreciated a large number of different forms of verse.

Robert Sidney is not counted among the leading poets of the Elizabethan age and was overshadowed by his brother for a lifetime. Nevertheless, his poems give an idea of ​​the ideas and working methods of the time.

Works

• Katherine Duncan-Jones: "Rosis and Lysa". Selections from the Poems of Sir Robert Sidney. In: English Literary Review 9 (1979), pp. 240-263.
• Pauline J. Croft (Ed.): The Poems of Robert Sidney. Clarendon, Oxford 1984.
• Margaret P. Hannay (Ed.): Domestic Politics and Family Absence. The Correspondence (1588-1621) of Robert Sidney, First Earl of Leicester, and Barbara Gamage Sidney, Countess of Leicester. ( Preview on Google Books). Ashgate, Aldershot 2005, ISBN 0-7546-0600-7 .

literature

Gavin Alexander has compiled a comprehensive bibliography (as of 2001).

• Gavin Alexander: Writing after Sidney. The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney 1586-1640. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-928547-1 , Chapter 5: Finding and Making: Robert Sidney , pp. 149-192 ( preview on Google Books).
• Michael G. Brennan: The Sidneys of Penshurst and the Monarchy, 1500-1700. Ashgate, Aldershot 2006, ISBN 0-7546-5060-X ( preview on Google Books).
• Millicent V. Hay: The Life of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester (1563-1626). Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC / Associated University Presses, London 1984, ISBN 0-91801670-3 .
• Hilton Kelliher, Katherine Duncan-Jones: A Manuscript of Poems by Robert Sidney. Some early impressions. In: British Library Journal 1 (1975), pp. 107-144 ( digitized version of the British Library).
• Roy Strong: The Leicester House Miniatures. Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester and His Circle. In: The Burlington Magazine 127 (1985), No. 991 pp. 694-703.
• Germaine Warkentin: Robert Sidney's "Darcke Offrings". The Making of a Late Tudor Manuscript Canzoniere. In: Spenser Studies 12 (1992), pp. 37-73.

Web links

• Anniina Jokinen: Sir Robert Sidney. In: Luminarium.org , August 20, 2009.
• Robert Sidney. (1st E. Leicester). In: Tudorplace.com.ar .

supporting documents

1. ↑ About this picture Emma Marshall Denkinger: The Impresa Portrait of Sir Philip Sidney in the National Portrait Gallery. In: PMLA 47 (1932), No. 1, pp. 17-45. On this essay and on the fact that Robert Sidney was represented here, Gavin Alexander: Writing after Sidney. The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney 1586-1640. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-928547-1 , p. 158, fn. 40 : “an excellent piece of research only spoiled by the belief that the portrait was of Philip Sidney”.
2. ↑ Beth Wynne Fisken: The Art of Sacred Parody in Mary Sidney's Psalmes. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 1989.
3. ↑ One of her songs, Love's Victory, is about different forms of love.
4. ^ Robert Sidney: Poems of Robert Sidney. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1984, ISBN 0-19-812726-X .
5. ↑ Poetry text at Luminarium.org.
6. ^ Walter G. Friedrich: The Stella of Astrophel. In: ELH 1936.
7. ↑ Gavin Alexander: Sir Robert Sidney. A Bibliography. In: The Sidney Homepage (Cambridge University), last updated September 9, 2001.

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Earl of Leicester 1618-1626	Robert Sidney