The following version of the poem was used to create this guide: Sidney, Philip. "The Nightingale." The Book of Elizabethan Verse, ed. William Stanley Braithwaite. https://www.bartleby.com/331/79.html

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

Sir Philip Sidney was born to Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley on the 30th of November, 1554. His mother was the daughter of a Duke and his father the Lord Deputy of Ireland, making them an extraordinarily wealthy and influential family. As the eldest son of a noble family, he was educated at Oxford and became a member of Parliament at age 18. His work at court sent him to travel across the European continent.

Sidney had several failed marriage arrangements, including to Penelope Devereux, with whom he was passionately in love. However, he was eventually wed to the then-16-year-old Frances Walsingham. They had one daughter, Elizabeth. Sidney died in 1586 after being injured in the battle of Zutphen, anecodatlly in a great act of heroism. None of his poetry was published during his lifetime, but after his death his sister, Mary Sidney, Countess Pembroke, advocated tirelessly for his literary legacy (as well as completing and rewriting some of his unfinished work). Sidney's legacy is thus as one of the greatest writers of the Elizabethan era.

This poem, one of many shorter poems Sidney authored along with his longer epics, is based on the very popular myth of the Nightingale, taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses.