SOURCE: "Astrophil and Stella: A Radical Reading," in Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual III, University of Pittsburg Press Vol. III, 1982, pp. 139-91.

In the following excerpt, Roche contends that Sidney meant Astrophil to represent a negative example, someone who "must end in despair because he never learns from his experience."

Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, although the third English sequence in order of publication, holds pride of place as the most influential of the English sequences. Its author was a young nobleman who died a hero's death in 1586; its heroine a beautiful lady of the court. The story of Astrophil's love for Stella, as told in the poem, was well known through circulated manuscripts before it appeared posthumously in 1591 in a pirated edition by Thomas Newman and in 1598 in an edition authorized by Sidney's sister, the countess of Pem-broke, which contained 108 sonnets among which were interspersed eleven songs...