SOURCE: "Sir Philip Sidney: The Shepherd Knight," in The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry, University of California Press, 1989, pp. 55-78.

In the following excerpt, McCoy examines the courtly politics of The Four Foster Children of Desire, an "entertainment" staged by Sidney for Queen Elizabeth.

Sir Philip Sidney was the son of Robert Dudley's sister, and the Earl of Leicester was a powerful influence on his nephew's brief career. Philip's father, Sir Henry Sidney, saw the Dudley connection as the family's greatest distinction, urging him, "Remember, my son, the noble blood you are descended of by your mother's side."¹ When drawing up their own pedigree, the Sidneys employed their distinguished relative's herald, Robert Cooke, who obliged them with characteristic creativity. Cooke began by preparing a bogus genealogical roll tracing the descent of a fictive William de Sydney down to the fourteenth century, which he...