Poetry in the Vernacular Theme Analysis

Philip Sidney’s “An Apology for Poetry” was written around 1580 and published in 1595, some nine years after Sidney’s death. Sidney therefore wrote one of the most important treatises on poetry in English before many of England’s greatest Elizabethan poets came on the scene. He writes of Chaucer, Gower, and his contemporary Spenser, but never would read Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, and the other great poets of the day. It is perhaps not entirely surprising, then, that throughout “An Apology for Poetry,” and particularly in its concluding “digression” on literature in vernacular tongues (i.e., modern European rather than ancient languages), Sidney elevates ancient above modern literature. Indeed, while Sidney defends imaginative literature in its ideal forms, he offers a bracing technical critique of the way modern poetry is (mis)written. But in fitting with the emergence of nationalism in the early modern era, he elevates English above other European languages for its expressive potential.

Sidney argues that, in general, ancient poetry has an originality and scope that is lacking from modern literature, and that England in particular suffers from a drought of good poetry. Sidney admires the poetry of Chaucer, Gower, Sackville, and others, but sees his own time as distinctly lacking in English poetry. While England is “mother of excellent minds,” the country, Sidney claims, is a “hard step-mother of poets.” England has not produced anything to rival the 16th-century literature of Scotland, France, or Italy. This is the result of a vicious cycle: the very disregard for poetry means that less good poetry is being written. Poetry “find[s] in our time a hard welcome in England,” and therefore the very earth “decks our soil with fewer laurels than it was accustomed.” England can only really boast lyric poetry and drama, and according to Sidney, neither is particularly well-written.

Sidney offers concrete criticisms of contemporary English poetry, showing that “An Apology for Poetry” isn’t just about praising literature. Indeed, since Sidney has articulated a poetic ideal, he prepares the reader to appreciate the ways in which contemporary vernacular poetry fails to meet it. Though Sidney approves of the tragedies of Buchanan and the pastoral verse of Spenser, few books of poetry “have poetical sinews in them,” and dramatists create “gross absurdities” by mixing genres and ignoring the classical unities of time and place. Comic playwrights, furthermore, play into the hand of poetry’s critics by “stir[ring] laughter in sinful things” and thereby leading their audiences into immorality. The result is that, “like an unmannerly daughter, showing a bad education,” this mediocre and even bad poetry “causeth her mother Poesy’s honesty to be called in question.” In other words, mediocre modern literature gives poetry in general a bad name.

But, Sidney adds, modern literature does not have to be bad. Modern poets can learn through the creative imitation of ancient poetry: that is, by adapting ancient forms to modern needs, and doing so not in Latin, the language of humanist learning, but rather in the languages they actually speak. In general, poets can be educated to write better. “As the fertilest ground must be manured, so must the highest flying with have a Daedalus to guide him,” Sidney writes, alluding to the ancient Greek inventor. Poets should practice imitating ancient authors, and borrow techniques from ancient literature in order to improve their work. Playwrights, for example, should respect classical guidelines for maintaining unity of time and space, and instead of trying to compress large amounts of action into a play, playwrights should consider employing ancient techniques, such as the messenger speech, to summarize action. Similarly, lyric poets lack the energia (“vividness”) of ancient love poetry. There is no reason that modern authors who have been trained to write well can’t write poetry as well as the ancients. Sidney asserts that English, “equally with any other tongue in the world,” is capable of “uttering sweetly and properly the conceit of the mind.” Even though Renaissance literature was multilingual, and Sidney himself drew much inspiration from poetry written in foreign languages (especially Italian), he argues that English, more than other European languages, is a particularly expressive language, particularly well-suited to imaginative writing. Perhaps English could be the Latin of the modern world.

The problem of English poetry, Sidney suggests, points to the problem of English eloquence. Sidney’s critique of English poetry therefore feeds into a wider critique of court culture. English poets have a predilection for fancy words. Scholars share this problem, as they “cast sugar and spice upon every dish that is served at the table.” Humanist authors, educated to imitate apishly, try hard to sound like Demosthenes and Cicero and end up sounding like “sophisters.” Courtiers also speak in ridiculous ways. Hence Sidney prefers the talk of a poorly educated nobleman who speaks in the manner “fittest to nature, therein (though he know it not) […] according to art, though not by art.” Just as slavish imitation does not lead to good poetry, so does it not lead to good rhetoric. Poetry and oratory are clearly linked, not only because “both have such affinity in the wordish considerations” but also because Sidney’s essay is itself an instance in which the two work hand in hand. Sidney, functioning as both a poet and an orator, uses vivid imagery and metaphor to persuade the reader of the value poetry.

“An Apology for Poetry” is not only the defense of an abstract ideal of poetry, but also the critique of the contemporary poetry of Sidney’s own time. Just as the Elizabethan critics must learn to think of poetry differently, so too must playwrights and lyric poets learn to write differently. Both groups belong to a court culture plagued by sophistic eloquence. Proper respect for, and practice of, writing, will therefore lead to a renovation of a broader intellectual culture.