Project MUSE®: Sidney Journal - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/907
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Sidney Journal.daily12026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 44 (2026) through current issueLatest Articles: Sidney JournalTWOProject MUSE®Sidney Journal3070-09141480-0926Latest articles in Sidney Journal. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Philip Sidney's Betrothal and William Cecil (Lord Burghley), 1569–1571
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984849
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The Sidney family's political ambition involved marriage prospects for Philip, the eldest son, from a young age. The first of those constituted a legal contract of betrothal established in 1569 and maintained until 1571. Philip, then a young student at Oxford, was to marry the even younger Anne Cecil, eldest daughter of Sir William Cecil. In the period of betrothal, Cecil served as Elizabeth I's principal secretary of state. He became Baron Burghley in 1571, then Lord Treasurer in 1572. It was then in 1571-2 that Cecil (newly Burghley) began securing his position as the most powerful man in England. Scholarly biographies of both Cecil and Sidney have interpreted the betrothal as an unbalanced negotiation that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/907/image/coversmallPhilip Sidney's Betrothal and William Cecil (Lord Burghley), 1569–15712026-03-18text/htmlen-USPhilip Sidney's Betrothal and William Cecil (Lord Burghley), 1569–15712026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®929732026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Cosmopolitan Islanders and Paths Not Crossed: Philip Sidney and Robert Beale (with Hubert Languet in the Middle)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984850
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The title of this article has been borrowed from two very different works that, when combined, are appropriate here.1 The phrase "cosmopolitan islanders" is taken from the book of the same name published in 2009 and written by Richard J. Evans regarding historians of British nationality who study the European mainland rather than their own island. These historians, contends Evans, are cosmopolitan by way of their linguistic abilities, intellectual interests, and research impact.2 "Paths not crossed" is a slight modification of Alec Ryrie's "Paths not taken," which formed the basis for his article of the same year regarding often unseen tendencies in Reformation England and Scotland. One of Ryrie's points is that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/907/image/coversmallCosmopolitan Islanders and Paths Not Crossed: Philip Sidney and Robert Beale (with Hubert Languet in the Middle)2026-03-18text/htmlen-USCosmopolitan Islanders and Paths Not Crossed: Philip Sidney and Robert Beale (with Hubert Languet in the Middle)2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®915332026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18William Walker and the Provenance of the "Best" Old Arcadia Manuscript
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984851
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In a recent article in this journal, "Silvanus Scory and the Provenance of the 'Best' Old Arcadia Manuscript," Steven W. May traces the Old Arcadia manuscript now in St. John's College, Cambridge (MS I.7) from Sir Philip Sidney, perhaps through members of his family, to Silvanus Scory (d. 1617), to Silvanus's son Sir Edmund Scory (d. 1632), to Sir Edmund's servant Hugh Busby, and thence to William Walker, vicar of Chiswick.2 In the essay below I attempt to provide even more detail on the manuscript's various owners, including Silvanus and Sir Edmund Scory, but especially William Walker, who twice inscribed the manuscript with his own name.Silvanus Scory, presumably the first private owner of the Old Arcadia
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/907/image/coversmallWilliam Walker and the Provenance of the "Best" Old Arcadia Manuscript2026-03-18text/htmlen-USWilliam Walker and the Provenance of the "Best" Old Arcadia Manuscript2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®686082026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Prone to Madness and Poor Reviews: Antissia as Early Modern Diva
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984852
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Lady Mary Wroth's character Antissia, who appears in both the First and Second Parts of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania (1621, 1999), has been the subject of much keen commentary over the past three decades. Clare Kinney and Mary Ellen Lamb have observed that her disordered mental state, unruly behavior, and deranged poetry mark her as a foil to Pamphilia, whose carefully concealed emotional turmoil, vaunted sense of decorum, and more polished poetry shine in contrast.1 Recently, Jonathan Shelley has argued that Pamphilia and Antissia's perfidious path to friendship signals a nontraditional "social ethic" that "challenges the primacy of heterosexual romantic desire."2 Also regarding paradigm changes, in her
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/907/image/coversmallProne to Madness and Poor Reviews: Antissia as Early Modern Diva2026-03-18text/htmlen-USProne to Madness and Poor Reviews: Antissia as Early Modern Diva2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®1534102026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Edward Herbert as Early Reader of Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie of Mariam
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984853
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Among the papers of Edward Herbert (1583-1648) at the National Library of Wales (NLW) is a packet of about a dozen unbound sheets, of various sizes and in various states of preservation, that contain copies of poems and miscellaneous verse extracts. Although these poems and verse extracts have been previously described, cataloged, and even transcribed, no one has recognized that they include nearly ninety lines in Herbert's hand from The Tragedie of Mariam (1613) by Elizabeth Cary (1585-1637). Herbert's extracts from Mariam, the first original play published by an Englishwoman, shed new light on the contemporary circulation and reception of Cary's verse drama among the Sidney-Herbert literary circle, of which
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/907/image/coversmallEdward Herbert as Early Reader of Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie of Mariam2026-03-18text/htmlen-USEdward Herbert as Early Reader of Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie of Mariam2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®654952026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984854
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Shakespeare's Sisters is not primarily a scholarly book, although it contains some valuable scholarship. It is instead an eloquent introduction to the field of early women writers, through a presentation of the lives and writings of four Renaissance women writers – Mary Sidney Herbert, Elizabeth Cary, Aemilia Lanyer, and Anne Clifford. Targoff's book is eminently readable by specialists and nonspecialists alike.Instead of four long narratives (one for each woman), Targoff interleaves her discussions in fourteen short chapters arranged in chronological order, each beginning with a full range of details about a specific event occurring at the place and time designated in its title; these details convey to the reader
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/907/image/coversmallShakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff (review)2026-03-18text/htmlen-USShakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff (review)2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®224572026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18From the Editor
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985796
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This issue of Sidney Journal is the first to be published wholly online, in association with Project Muse and its parent, Johns Hopkins University Press. The new format extends the Journal’s legacy of original scholarship on the Sidneys and their circles – scholarship that began with the Sidney Newsletter in 1980, continued in 1990 as the Sidney Newsletter and Journal and then as
the print Sidney Journal beginning in 1998.In addition to offering immediate access to the Journal’s content, the digital format allows for new features, such as color images within articles and publication in both html and pdf. In addition, digital publication allows for inclusion of audio or video clips, additional special issues, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/907/image/coversmallFrom the Editor2026-03-18text/htmlen-USFrom the Editor2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®43542026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18