The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (Sir Philip Sidney)

Background

Out of all the artistic works surrounding melancholy in the Early Modern period, the works of Sir Philip Sidney offer some of the best introduction to the way such a disorder was handled outside the scholarly realm. Unlike the physicians and religious orators of the day, who competed for command over the topic because it would allow them to determine the scope and breadth of its treatment, artists had greater flexibility in playing with the concept.

As Paster suggests, “In the late Elizabethan years, an ‘affective vogue’” developed around the disorder among aristocratic elites."[1] Melancholy became a part of aesthetic expression, and as such became a ‘mark of status’ distinguishing nobles from common people. In Arcadia and the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, Sidney adopted and experimented with the notion of the melancholic, “exploit[ing] both heroics and melancholy for self-fashioning.”[2] In his characterizations, melancholy is therefore largely a self-induced ailment. In Astrophel and Stella, the lovesick protagonist is the despondent victim of his own affections, with Astrophel uniting love with sorrow in his reflection: “Love gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed.”[3]

Ultimately, Sidney may be seen to gratify popular conceptions of the melancholy and humours - a move that may have incited his contemporaries' more sardonic approaches.

Arcadia has a marbled cover and a title page with a decorative surrounding compartment. 

Since Arcadia features multiple works within one central volume, it has multiple title pages signifying the start of each new book. Above is an image of one of Arcadia's secondary title pages. The ink stains speak to the book's thorough use!

This copy of Arcadia provides a wonderful example of the interplay between writer and reader. Most notably, there are several sections throughout the text wherein the reader actively filled in, or completed, the missing print with his own handwriting. The finished pages act as a visual representation of a type of print conversation. 

To the right are pages near the end of the book, wherein a reader filled in the missing text in ink. These pages offer some of the most extensive notemaking, but other pages (particularly at the front of the book) also have this print/ink divide.

To the left are two images. The leftmost one is a closer image of the print and handwritten text. There is a clear change from foolscap to wove paper, and the detail the writer exercised in connecting his letters to the printed ones (e.g. the finished "y" of "ready").  

To the right of this image is a closer image of the title page, specifically showcasing the 'marginalia' - in this case, faint squiggles and loops of ink.