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In 1586, Sidney was wounded when he and a small group of men, again against orders, attacked a much larger Spanish force. The expedition was a thorough disaster, largely because Leicester ignored the queen’s orders.
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In 1585, he accompanied his uncle, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to the Netherlands, where they were supposed to help the Protestant Dutch in their struggle with the Catholic Spanish who were trying to dominate their land. In fact, it was during some of those periods of exile and enforced idleness that Sidney wrote several of his works. Philip Sidney was born in 1554, received an excellent renaissance education, which means that he was fluent in the classics, travelled extensively on the European continent, and spent time at the court of Queen Elizabeth, where his headstrong ways often got him into trouble and forced him on occasion to be exiled from the court. It was his writing that made him into a Renaissance man, that immortalized him, and that made him such a fascinating figure. Like those who honored him, he thought of himself as a courtier, a statesman, and a warrior, but had he not written some of the most important works of the English Renaissance, he would be little more than a footnote to history, known only to Renaissance scholars. Nevertheless, he was one of the most important writers of his time, which is especially surprising when we realize that even he did not consider himself primarily a writer. When he died, at a young age in 1586, he was honored as a statesman and a warrior, but only a small group of family and friends knew him as a prolific and accomplished writer. Sir Philip Sidney is not well known by today’s reading public, but he is actually better known as an author today than he was in his own time.
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Chapter 4: Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella