Continuing Thoughts on Astrophil and Stella

I found lecture today to be as fun as it was useful. The unraveling of the Sonnets piece by piece in sequence answered a lot of previously unanswered questions I had left bouncing around my brain, and kept my intellect racing around ideas in a voluntary frenzy. One in particular came about because I had done a bit of research one day in the library (Yes, I know what you are thinking, huge ubernerd!) and picked up two books on Sidney written by the critics Janet H. MacArthur, and J.G. Nichols who wrote on Astrophil and Stella. MacArthur in particular referred to the two sonnets left out, which at that moment in time was news to me. The ever questioned sonnets 109, and 110 were described as ‘indeterminable’ and MacArthur felt this was fitting for Sidney because he leaves them there to hang high and dry for onlookers to gaze at. I find it peculiar that Sidney does not incorporate them into the sequence. He leaves them out of the sequence, but left them still, for people to see (or more accurately for editors to add, and then for us to see) to allow the reader to piece them as one chooses into the sonnet sequence, if one so desires. Maybe this was done because Sidney himself was ambivalent towards their appearance, yet initially felt they were written with intention to be in the piece, so for the sake of authenticity he felt like leaving them on paper somewhere amongst the final draft. Regardless, I do like sonnet 109, for me it fits well in the sequence because it shows Astrophil’s passion, and his yearning desire to articulate more about what his thoughts and feelings are towards Stella. Astrophil (I doubt is Sidney ALL the time) comes across, as mentioned in class, as a babbling idiot sometimes, and sonnet 109 is a great display of such character. I especially like lines 3, and 6 “ Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care,…With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware; ”. These lines are fun to say out loud, you should try it sometime! Ok, ciao.