SOURCE: “Sidney's Astrophel and Stella as a Sonnet Sequence,” in ELH: A Journal of English Literary History, Vol. 36, No. 1, March 1969, pp. 59–87.

In the following essay, Hamilton seeks to show that the 108 sonnets in Astrophel and Stella may be read as a single, long poem on the theme “loving in truth.”

I

My purpose in this article is to show how Sidney's Astrophel and Stella may be read as a single, long poem rather than as a miscellany of 108 separate sonnets. Some awareness of the structure of the work, which accounts for our sense of its wholeness and its total impact upon the reader, has persisted ever since Nashe spoke of it, in the preface to the first quarto edition, as “the tragicommody of love … performed by starlight. … The argument cruell chastitie, the Prologue hope, the Epilogue dispaire.” Though efforts to read the poem in terms of narrative, whether...