Speaker

In most cases, the best practice in poetry is to assume that the speaker and the poet are not the same person. However, in early modern poetry, this is sometimes clearly not the case, as this idea significantly post-dates the era. This poem makes it very clear that, even if the character of the speaker is not the same as Sidney in personality (something that is essentially unknowable so many years after her death), she occupies an identical social position. She is a writer with a deceased famous brother, trying to pick up his legacy, working in the court of Elizabeth I. That describes Sidney's situation at the time of the poem's authorship perfectly. The speaker is further characterized as a clever, direct person, and as a brilliant writer, through the character of the work itself.

Elizabeth I

The poem is dedicated "to the thrice-sacred Queen Elizabeth," and...