Astrophel and Stella Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Sally Minogue

Critical Essay by Sally Minogue

SOURCE: “A Woman's Touch: Astrophil, Stella, and ‘Queen Vertue's Court,’” in ELH: A Journal of English Literary History, Vol. 63, No. 3, 1996, pp. 555–70.

In the following essay, Minogue looks at sonnets 9 and 83 from Astrophel and Stella and suggests a reading of them that dramatizes the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and Sidney in which there are elements of playful and not-so-playful sexual subjection.

When Sidney, in 1581, presented to his Queen the New Year's gift of a jewel in the shape of a diamond-bedecked whip, how did she take it? Not, we presume, lying down, since in this relationship it had already been made clear to Sidney who had the whip-hand. To be in a position to exchange New Year's gifts with the Queen was itself a mark of favor (one used by Steven May as a means of confirming who was an actual courtier to Elizabeth...
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