Astrophel (Edmund Spenser)

Astrophel “A Pastorall Elegy upon the Death of the Most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney” is Spenser's tribute to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney, who had died in 1586 and was dedicated “To the most beautifull and vertuous Ladie, the Countesse of Essex,” Frances Walsingham, Sidney’s widow.

“Astrophel” was published in 1595 by William Ponsonby in a volume called Colin Clouts Come Home Againe. It includes other poems besides Spenser's: two elegies, 'The Mourning Muse of Thestylis' and 'A Pastorall Aeglogue Vpon the Death of Sir Philip Sidney Knight', which are attributed to 'L. B.', generally assumed to be Lodowick Bryskett, and which show him to be a more than competent poet; one by Mathew Roydon; an epitaph by Walter Raleigh; the volume concluding with another epitaph by Fulke Greville or Edward Dyer.

The date of when “Astrophel” was written is unknown. It is assumed to be one of the latest formal elegies on Sidney, composed some time between 1591 (Complaints) and late 1595 (Colin Clout), but nothing in Spenser’s Astrophel indicates where it was written. However, given the close links between Spenser’s elegies and Bryskett’s, a third elegy in the volume, it seems likely that Astrophel, was written in Ireland, some time between 1591 and Spenser’s return to London in the winter of 1595 — 56.

The exact reason why Spenser delayed in publishing an elegy for Sidney is unknown. However, in his letter to the Countess of Pembroke which prefaces Ruines of Time in Complaints, he speaks of the deaths of Sidney and his two uncles, saying that since his arrival in England his friends have upbraided him “for that I have not shewed any thankful remembrance towards him or any of them; but suffer their names to sleep in silence and forgetfulness.”

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