The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia : the new Arcadia

Sir Philip Sidney stands beside Shakespeare and Spenser as one of the great writers of the English Renaissance. His masterpiece, the "New Arcadia", continues to delight with its tales of love, political intrigue, kidnap, and torture, which revolve around the courtship of two Arcadian princesses by their heroic suitors. Skilful dialogue and descriptive narrative combine with a sophisticated poetic style to unify the many episodes of the complex epic form, and with a comic irony which runs throughout. This is the first scholarly edition of the "New Arcadia". Discussions of the date of composition, sources, form, style and diction, reception, and influences precede the text, while a commentary, glossary, and indexes follow. Early texts and their relationships are fully described, and spelling and pronunciation are modernized, so that the edition forms a companion to Jean Robertson's standard edition of the "Old Arcadia" (1973).