SOURCE: "Sidney's Official Indirection," in Dazzling Images: The Masks of Sir Philip Sidney, Associated University Presses, 1991, pp. 41-6.

In the following excerpt, Hager considers Sidney's choice of words in his famous letter to the Queen, and contends that the advice may not have met with her disapproval.

… Advice to the Queen (1579)

In Sidney's most serious political moment, when his uncle, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, apparently had him write a public letter to pressure the queen to terminate negotiations for marriage with the Duc d'Alençon—"A Letter to Queen Elizabeth Touching Her Marriage With Monsieur"—Sidney's witty and courtly—though pedantic—persona sets up distinctions and then undercuts them, most noticeably in his description of the French duke's personality. For example, his smooth "voice" juxtaposes d'Alençon's imagination as well as his personal education as prods to incite aspiration to power, but then undercuts the whole...