#sidneys

It has been suggested that literary genres can be associated with basic bodily processes: tragedy—death comedy—sex satire—defecation And pastoral romance? surely—napping.

Lord, crack their teeth; Lord, crush these lions’ jaws; So let them sink as water in the sand: When deadly bow their aiming fury draws, Shiver the shaft ere past the shooter’s hand. So make them melt as the dishousèd snail Or as the embryo, whose vital band Breaks ere it holds, and formless eyes do fail To see the sun, though brought to lightful land.

“Lady,” quoth I, “your words most sweetly kind Have easy made whatever erst I bare, But what is left of you to live behind. Therefore to know this [is] my only care, If slow or swift shall come our meeting-day.” She parting said, “As my conjectures are, Thou without me long time on earth shalt stay.”

As an example of the kind of historical background to which I devote attention, consider the international array of diplomats and courtiers that came together for the marriage of Queen Mary Tudor and Prince Philip of Spain in July of 1554. This group includes the henchman of the late King Edward VI, Henry Sidney (1529-86), who named two of his children, Philip and Mary, in honor of the marriage; the second Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca and son of the conqueror of Mexico, Martín Cortés (1532-89); the future ambassador to France and England, Bernardino de Mendoza (1541?-1604), who would report Philip Sidney’s doings to King Philip II thirty years later; and the prince’s confidant, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, the fifth Count of Feria, who was the third cousin once removed of the adolescent mestizo in Cuzco later to rename himself the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and who would become Philip Sidney’s cousin by marriage. We tend to think insensibly of these historical figures as occupying discrete worlds, and certainly scholarship has colluded in keeping them apart, but I will argue that they personify the emergence of a transatlantic European society behind many works and events in this period.

When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.