FREE ESSAY ON SIR PHILLIP SIDNEY'S SONNET # 47 FROM ASTROPHIL AND STELLA

SIR PHILLIP SIDNEY'S SONNET # 47 FROM ASTROPHIL AND STELLA

Sir Phillip Sidney's Sonnet # 47 from Astrophil and Stella
The sonnet is a short concise form of writing and it takes a great mind to master it. By
mastering it, I mean to be able to say so much in what seems like so little space. Sir
Phillip Sidney comes as close to mastering it as anyone else in his time or any other
does.
As the opening line says, this is about a betrayal. Strangely enough, the last line of
the sonnet ends with a word that is the very essence of betrayal. The sonnet ends with
the word, lie. This would cause one to expect to get an explanation of the betrayal
between the first and last lines.
This appears to be a story of both love and betrayal. In the sonnet, it is love that
betrays. The narrator opens the sonnet with a question to himself. He wants to know if he
has betrayed his own liberty or his freedom. The next three lines of this quatrain use
imagery of slavery. The narrator is struggling in knowing if he were born free or if he
were born a slave to this love. He raises a question in the closing line of the quatrain,
if anyone can handle the confines of love and the boundaries it seems to place on a
person. 
The first quatrain uses such dark imagery that for Americans today brings up thoughts of
the Civil War. The fact is, slavery as Americans today think of it was not around in
Sidney's time. He wrote Astrophil and Stella around three hundred years before the Civil
War. Also, the way Sidney lays out the first quatrain is peculiar. A single line that is
not indented is placed, followed by a couplet that Sidney indents, which is then followed
by the last line that is not indented. 
The same format is used in the next quatrain as well. In this quatrain, the imagery is
still dark but shifts from slavery to more of personal feelings. The narrator is
questioning whether he wants to have sense enough to feel the misery that he is in. In
the second, line is questions whether he wants the spirit to show that he despises his
love. He has wanted her for a long time and he is in misery without her, he is in this
deep misery and the only thing he has is his despise for begging.
The third quatrain is different from the first two in its format. The first line is
indented and the other three are not. This would cause one to think that this line is set
apart for a reason. The first two words say why, it is an exclamation to wake up. It is
meant to stand out much like a mother coming into a child's room and yelling wake up very
early in the morning. Here, the narrator is telling Virtue within himself to awake. He
wants to do the right thing. He realizes that although this girl is beautiful, he does
not love her and he must let her go. It is not fair to hold on to someone in a
relationship or in the words of the first quatrain, keep someone a slave to you, if you
do not love them. This is a commentary from over four hundred years ago that is still
true in relationships today. Today, people will date or stay together in an unhealthy
relationship for stupid reasons or superficial reasons and either one or both of the
people do not love the other. 
The last couplet, the closing lines of the sonnet, also tell the story of relationships
today. In the beginning of the relationship he thought that he may have been in love with
her. He lied by telling her that he did love her and now, after all of the struggle, his
heart is starting to see the fact that he is indeed not in love with her, that it has
just been tricked or has been following his tongue, which has been lying to her.
This whole sonnet, although written hundreds of years ago, could not be anymore true
today. A relationship that tears at the very soul of one if not both of the people
involved. In life, everyone must go through some type of relationship like this whether
it is with another individual or something as simple as a family pet. A person must have
loved or been loved by someone else in order to know what love is not. The narrator of
this sonnet is saying that he knows what love is not but by saying that, he is saying
that he knows what it is. Once a person goes through a close relationship where they
discover love for the very first time, they are more prepared to find love in life
because they know what feeling it is that they are looking for. The sad thing is it
usually takes the breaking of a heart in order for one to know the meaning or feeling of
true love but through this they become better prepared for the road ahead of them.
This sonnet holds true to the fact that a lot can be said in so little space. What
exactly is said is always determined by the reader and what he or she gets out of it.
Fourteen short lines can that can raise so many questions, feelings and emotions can
surely be considered a great piece of literature.