SOURCE: "Sidney and His Queen," in The Historical Renaissance: New Essays on Tudor and Stuart Literature and Culture, edited by Heather Dubrow and Richard Strier, The University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 171-96.

In the following excerpt, Quilligan explores Sidney's ambitions, career, and concern with his image, in the context of the Elizabethan court.

… In pursuit of chivalric bravado, if not victory for the Dutch rebels, during a skirmish with Spanish troops, Sidney took off his thigh armor before charging the enemy and received the bullet that, entering at the knee and shattering the thigh bone, left the festering wound from which he soon died at the age of thirtyone.²⁰ Before narrating the story of Sidney's tragic end in 1586, two years before the defeat of the Armada, [Sir Fulke] Greville outlines a map of his hero's imperial imagination in two chapters that encompass a remarkable analysis of the possible...