SOURCE: "To the Angell Spirit… Mary Sidney's Entry into the World of Words," in The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, edited by Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990, pp. 263-75.

"To the Angell spirit …" is one of just four known original poems by Mary Sidney.¹ The bulk of her writing fell within the parameters of translation and religious paraphrase which were considered culturally acceptable literary activities for women during her time. However, her verse-paraphrases of Psalms 44-150, which completed a project initially conceived and begun by her brother Philip Sidney would be more rightly termed "imitations" in the classical sense, as they surpass the literalism of her translations of Robert Garnier's Antonie and Philippe de Mornay's Discourse of Life and Death. In Mary Sidney's verse-translations of the Psalms, she conflated the voice of the psalmist with her own by adding original comparisons and elaborations which reconstructed the matter of the Psalms in a style and context that would illuminate the issues of her contemporary society as well as have personal application to her own spiritual welfare. For her imagery she drew from her public experiences as a woman of responsibility, influence, and power (first as daughter to Henry Sidney, lord deputy of Ireland, and as a youthful lady-in-waiting at Elizabeth's court, and then as wife to the earl of Pembroke). She also drew upon her private perceptions as a woman and a mother to transform her paraphrases of the Psalms into individual exercises in meditation.²

Nevertheless, in these verse-translations of the Psalms, despite the inventiveness of portions of her writing, Mary Sidney was still working within the limits of literary ambition observed by such scholarly predecessors as Margaret Beaufort, Margaret Roper and Mary Bassett, Anna (Cooke) Bacon and Elizabeth (Cooke) Russell, and Queens Mary Tudor and Elizabeth, who undertook religious translations, as well as Queen Catherine Parr and Anne Wheathill, who wrote original prayers and meditations.³ Even the more liberal sixteenth-century humanist attitudes toward women's aspirations as scholars and writers (exemplified in Richard Hyrde's popular translation of Juan Luis Vives's conduct book, The Instruction of a Christian Woman) recommended private classical and religious instruction to keep women occupied and focused on the chaste and virtuous life, but cautioned women not to undertake any public displays of learning (including original writing) because their supposed innate moral instability might lead others astray. A woman was encouraged, rather, to copy the moral sentiments of male writers or perhaps to translate such passages from English to Latin, but not to add to or evaluate what she wrote.⁴ Such a plan of exercises would inevitably lead women to internalize these prescribed limits and restrict themselves to translation of male religious writing as the appropriate outlet for their learning. As Mary Ellen Lamb explains, to do otherwise "was to risk the charge, perhaps even by their own consciences, of being foolish, indiscreet, vain, and even irreligious, all attributes of loose women" (115).

To go beyond these tacit and internalized boundaries to write original verse on nonreligious subjects, to enter the lists of declared poets, had been attempted by few women previous to Mary Sidney.⁵ It is scarcely surprising, then, that her four known original poems were rooted in what Margaret Hannay calls "the usual feminine genres of dedications and epitaphs" (149), which emphasized her temporal subordination to Elizabeth and her creative and emotional obligation to the memory of her brother Philip. To dare to write poetry at all was an act of unprecedented boldness that could only be excused by the guise of humility necessitated by the conventions of her subject matter.

Of these four poems, her finest and most ambitious effort was "To the Angell spirit of the most excellent Sir Phillip Sidney," an elegiac lament dedicated to her brother's memory, which was appended to a scribal manuscript of their verse-translations of the Psalms. As Margaret Hannay suggests, the conjunction of this poem with the admonitory dedication, "To the Thrice Sacred Queen Elizabeth," contained a strong partisan religious and political statement concealed under the conventional humility topos, both poems contributing to an ongoing campaign, the canonization of Philip Sidney as a type of martyred Protestant saint. In this way, Mary Sidney covertly reminded the queen (without directly challenging or criticizing her) of the central role she should play in the establishment of Protestantism in Europe as well as in England (149-65). Yet this poem also simultaneously reveals and conceals Mary Sidney's intense personal ambitions as a poet as well as these public aspirations as a political mediator. That such ambition is not shown directly but rather is deflected by the conventional stances of apology and humility is a reflection of her internalization of cultural strictures against women speaking and writing in public modes, which were assumed to be, morally, exclusively masculine domains. As such, "To the Angell spirit …" is quietly subversive on a private as well as a public level.

As Mary Ellen Lamb describes them, epitaphs generally "provided non-threatening outlets for their author's learning and poetic skills" (120) because they reinforced the writer's central womanly functions of devotion and dependence as defined by her culture. In The Triumph of Death Gary Waller has described "To the Angell spirit …" as an intensely personal expression of grief, in particular focusing on Mary Sidney's exaggerated Neoplatonic terms of praise, agitated syntax, and the use of the cryptic phrase "strange passions" as indications of her neurotic attachment to her brother's memory (50-53). Indeed, all of Mary Sidney's literary endeavor centered on her brother's example, whether it was editing his work, translating a play in the classical tradition he approved, penning a translation of a work by de Mornay, his personal friend (perhaps as a companion piece to his own incomplete translation, Of the Trewnes of the Christian Religion), finishing his verse-translations of the Psalms, or composing poetry in his memory.⁶ Since Mary Sidney's writing was a daunting act of courage for a woman of her time, however, it is readily understandable why she would anchor her efforts in her brother's example; as Waller himself points out, she had available in the successive stages of her brother's work a literary model from which she could teach herself how to write. By first editing Philip's works and translating those of others and by then revising the final irregular stanzas of some of Philip's psalms, Mary Sidney taught herself the art of composition and the discipline of revision (as is apparent in her own heavily emended manuscripts), which eventually enabled her to develop the skill to experiment with an astonishing variety of stanzaic and metrical forms as well as the self-confidence to create a poetic voice distinct from that of her brother. Perhaps, in part, the fervent devotion voiced in "To the Angell spirit …" is a reaction to the combination of gratitude and discomfort she felt at having used his example to find her own means of expression. It is not surprising that in this ambitious poem, which resembles the best passages of her Psalmes, Mary Sidney found it necessary to camouflage the assertiveness of her style with the self-abnegation of her subject matter. That her theme of humility and dedication to her brother's memory seems overstated is a measure, perhaps, of the giddiness she felt at the height of her own aspiration, the shame at her own "presumption too too bold," and her sincere and intense gratitude for her brother's model of excellence that enabled her to write as herself.⁷ Although this bold and elaborately constructed tribute focused on her artistic and emotional dependence on her brother, in the act of writing it she most completely realized her independence from his influence. In "To the Angell spirit …" the disjunction between Mary Sidney's internalized definitions of her role as a woman and her burgeoning ambitions as a writer is most apparent.

This disjunction between the assertiveness of her form and the humility of her tone is most evident in Mary Sidney's audacious breach in stanzaic integrity between stanzas 5 and 6:

This stanzaic rupture reenacts the bold leap of her imagination in an attempt to fuse her efforts with her brother's divine inspiration to complete his work and thereby honor his memory. However, this break in stanza only serves to underscore her central theme of humility as it records her failure to scale the wall of "Infinits." She is left mourning in the mutable world of debts and burdens, unable to either achieve or adequately express even a dim reflection of her brother's worth, "sole borne perfection's kinde." Piling superlative upon superlative does not adequately convey her wonder, as the subsequent defensive insistence that these epithets are not exaggerated indicates:

Her separation from her brother is absolute and irrevocable and she is left groping in the darkness of her own grief and failure: "Where thou art fixt among thy fellow lights: / my day put out, my life in darkenes cast" (ll. 57-58).

This daring breach of stanzaic integrity as well as the use of stellar imagery in this poem prefigured Ben Jonson's Pindaric ode to Cary and Morison, in which he separated his name between two stanzas to demonstrate his own attempt to re-create "that full joy" known by Morison, who "leap'd the present age, / Possest with holy rage, / To see that bright eternall Day."⁸

Jonson also used astronomical metaphors to describe the division between the two friends:

In this bright Asterisme:
Where it were friendships schisme,
(Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry)
To separate these twi-
Lights, the Dioscuri; And keepe the one halfe from his Harry
But fate doth so alternate the designe,
Whilst that in heav'n, this light on earth must shine.
(Ll. 89-96)

The brief separation of "twi- / Lights" repeats the major break between "Ben / Jonson" (ll. 84-85), reinforcing the theme of "friendships schisme." Stellar imagery in elegiac verse was not uncommon during Mary Sidney's time. In fact, those who eulogized her also included this strain of imagery, perhaps in emulation of her tribute to her brother, as is seen in this example from the "Extra Sonnets of Henry Lok":

Whereby you equall honor do attain,
To that extinguisht lamp of heavenly light,
Who now no doubt doth shine midst angels bright,
While your faire starre makes clear our darkened sky.⁹

Although this type of imagery was not original, Ben Jonson and Mary Sidney were allied in their sophisticated development of variations on the conventions. Mary Sidney tested one vocabulary against another; she was alternately awkward and eloquent, simple and ornate, in an attempt to bridge earth and heaven, much as Jonson's style was, at turns, joking and poignant, proverbial and obscure. That Jonson was familiar with Mary Sidney's verse-paraphrases of the Psalms is demonstrated by the fact that he reminded Drummond of Hawthornden that some of them were written by Philip. Whether he knew or was influenced by "To the Angell spirit …" remains an intriguing but unanswered question.

If during the early portion of her career Mary Sidney used her brother's writing as a model for her revisions, it is clear from a comparison of an earlier version of "To the Angell spirit …" with the final one that she used the example of her own Psalmes to help her improve that piece. Gradually during the process of writing her Psalmes, she developed a distinctive style that mirrored the internal conflicts of the psalmist, the fits and starts of anxiety, despair, and renewed hope, the successive stages of doubt and reaffirmation. In order to capture the intensity of the speaker's dilemma, she used a complicated conversational syntax, studded with questions, interruptions, parenthetical interjections and exclamations. (Psalm 51, 34-35; Psalm 62, 19-20; Psalm 85, 212-13; and Psalm 102, 34-36 are just a few striking examples of this characteristic syntax.) To generate a similar illusion of spontaneity in "To the Angell spirit …" she added parenthetical interjections to stanzas 4 and 8 when she revised. In stanza 4 the change from "Behold! O that thou were now to behold, / This finisht long perfections part begun" (ll. 36-37)¹⁰ to "Yet here behold (oh wert thou to behold!) / this finish't now, thy matchlesse Muse begunne" (ll. 22-23) strengthens the overall rhetorical strategy of the poem which is conceived as a direct address to her dead brother, both as a commemoration of his genius and as an apology for her contributions. She seems to be thinking out loud, visualizing her brother standing before her, and as a result the poem seems less formal, more sincerely personal and immediate. In stanza 8, with the addition of "Truth I invoke (who scorne else where to move / or here in ought my blood should partialize)" (ll. 50-51), the illusion created is that of the speaker correcting herself, anxious to speak the truth as well as invoke it. She changed stanza 11 which originally read:

Had divers so spar'd that life (but life) to frame
The rest: alas such losse the world hath nought
Can equall it, nor O more grievance brought
Yet what remaines must ever crowne thy name
(Ll. 67-70)

to:

Her alteration of syntax to the exclamatory and interrogative modes recreates her agitation at the memory of her brother's death. The return to the declarative mode in the last line serves as a reconfirmation of her faith in the immortality of his fame, enabling her to regain self-possession.

In addition to these changes in syntax, Mary Sidney's other revisions demonstrate an increased self-confidence as a poet, a new willingness to take risks with more elaborate imagery, as is seen in her extension of the comparison of Philip's works with "goodly buildings" that become "Immortall Monuments" of his fame (ll. 64-75) and the baroque comparison of the ink in which her psalms are written with the "bleeding veines of never dying love," the lines of verse becoming "wounding lynes of smart / sadd Characters indeed of simple love" (ll. 80-82). Her experience with patterns of alliteration in her Psalmes enabled her to conceive the felicitous phrase: "Nor can enough in world of words unfold" (l. 28).

Although this "world of words" is a fallen one, inadequate to express the "strange passions" of her heart, her "sences striken dumbe" (ll. 45-46), still it has seized her imagination. It was her brother who first gave her the key to unlock that masculine world:

And it is her gratitude for the possibility of the poem itself that joins with her grief to fuel the intensity of her praise, a praise that will foster his fame, just as his example nurtured her as the maker of that praise.

The interlocking rhyme scheme employed within the stanzas composed of seven iambic pentameter lines seems admirably suited to the subject matter of the poem. Each stanza has only two end rhymes, one of which forms double couplets in lines 2 and 3 and lines 5 and 6, mirroring the joint undertaking of Mary and Philip in their verse-translations of the psalms:

this coupled worke, by double int'rest thine:
First rais'de by thy blest hand, and what is mine
(Ll. 2-3)

and Mary's avowal of absolute devotion to her brother:

if love and zeale such error ill-become
'tis zealous love, Love which hath never done.
(Ll. 26-27)

The other rhyme is delayed and separated by these couplets, however, occupying lines 1, 4, and 7 of the stanza, reflecting the ultimate separation of the two:

The return to the exact rhyme "leave" after the couplet resembles the tolling of a bell, recalling Mary from her futile attempt at spiritual reunion with her brother. There is a pivotal irony to the word "leave," as it represents both her farewell to Philip and her anticipated death that will enable her to rejoin him eventually.

In combination with her interlocking rhyme, Mary Sidney constructed a latticework of interlacing allegiances throughout the poem. Her acknowledgment of her brother's inspiration is expressed in words traditionally reserved for God:

Just as her brother was both a creation and a reflection of God's perfect will, so her brother's poetry was analogous to divine creation: "Thee in thy workes where all the Graces bee." Therefore, in paying tribute to her brother she was also paying tribute to her God because Philip embodied his "Maker's praise" (stanzas 5, 9). Likewise, the ambition that fired the two of them to write their Psalmes was not arrogant, but worshipful, sanctioned by God:

The uneasy defensiveness of these lines has a double origin. First, Mary Sidney must clear herself from the charge of blasphemy for daring to undertake this sacred task of paraphrasing the Psalms, despite Paul's injunction: "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."¹² Not only did Mary Sidney choose not to be silent (although she limited her public voice to passing her manuscript around among a select audience rather than publishing it to reach a larger one), but she also chose to speak on a level with her brother. Therefore, second, she must defend herself not only from being thought presumptuous for translating the Psalms, but also for finishing her brother's work:

To escape such criticism she fashioned an elaborate Chinese box of obligations, placing herself as the last, the smallest, and the least significant in the series. Mary Sidney was inspired by her brother, who emulated David, "thy Kinglie Prophet," in re-creating the "high Tons … which Angells sing in their caelestiall Quire" in praise of "heaven's King" (11. 14, 11, 8). The traditional religious hierarchy in which the woman takes the lowest seat is invoked in this poem to recreate a lineage of poetic inspiration with Mary Sidney the apologetic inheritor. Her confirmation of subordination and inferiority, however, is also a statement of affirmation and poetic purpose. As a woman she must sit at the end of the footstool when worshipping her God, but still she is claiming her place in this "world of words."

Two disparate vocabularies jostle each other in this poem, the mundane terminology of business and the ornate manner of the miraculous. The contrast between these two levels of diction measures the distance between Mary Sidney imprisoned on an imperfect earth and her brother enshrined in heaven. What was hers was loaned, "imprest" by him and by "double int'rest" his (11. 2, 4). She owed him "due tribute's grateful fee," a "debt of Infinits," and she was left bereft and counting " … this cast upp Summe, / This Reckoning made, this Audit of my woe" (11. 33, 35, 43-44). Underscoring this language of calculation are constant reminders of incompletion that refer to her contributions: "this half maim'd peece," "the rest but peec't," "in ought my blood should partialize," "passing peece," and "meanest part" (11. 18, 24, 51, 73, 84). By contrast, her brother was a "Phoenix," a "wonder" beyond "Nature's store" (1. 36), and upon weeping for him, "not eie but hart teares fall" (1. 20), a baroque religious metaphor that emphasizes once again the conjunction of her "zealous love" for both Philip and her God—her mentor on earth and her Master in heaven. This contrast between worldly incompletion and spiritual perfection is deepened by an oscillation in the poem between awkward, convoluted questions and qualifications (as previously noted in stanzas 4, 7, 8, and 11) and simple, eloquent grief: "sadd characters indeed of simple love." This contrast in tone reflects Mary Sidney's insecurity, yearning to be worthy of Philip's "perfection," yet impeded by her own "mortall stuffe," her inadequacy before the "secrett power" of the universe (11. 4-6), terms that apply equally to her spiritual condition and her poetic aspirations.

Although Mary Sidney ended "To the Angell spirit …" with a confession of her failure to achieve union with her brother in either spirit or creative endeavor, the achievement of the poem itself belies the humble and discouraged tone of its final stanzas. Through her writing Mary Sidney forged a bond with her brother that his death could not sever, and through that writing she gave meaning and purpose to her life after his death, dedicating herself to continuing his political Protestantism as well as his poetic idealism by finishing his verse-translations of the Psalms. Yet, the crowning result of her labor was the formation of a style uniquely her own, first seen in her paraphrases of the Psalms and most evident in this tribute to her brother's memory. If the theme of "To the Angell spirit …" is her unworthiness, the style in which that unworthiness is expressed is an affirmation of both her ambition and her talent. She paid to her brother "the debt of Infinits I owe," but by following him, learned to find her own way. The legacy he left her was not only his memory and his work, but the inspiration that impelled her to work as well, and the justification for her to do so; in honoring him she created herself. The irreconcilable separation between her spirit and his, bemoaned at the end of "To the Angell spirit …," made possible the achievement of that poem.

Notes

¹ "To the Angell spirit of the most excellent Sir Philip Sidney" is appended to J, a copy of A, the Penshurst manuscript of the Sidney Psalmes, which was transcribed by John Davies of Hereford. J is in the possession of Dr. B. E. Juel-Jensen and is dated 1599. The other poems are "The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda," c. 1588, first published in Colin Clouts Come Home Again (1595); "A Dialogue between two shepheards, Thenot and Piers, in praise of Astrea," c. 1599, published in Francis Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 1602; and "Even now that Care," dated 1599, also appended to this copy of the Penshurst manuscript. See Gary F. Waller, The Triumph of Death, 10, 44-64. Although I disagree with Coburn Freer's assessment of Mary Sidney's poetic ability, I am indebted for the title of my essay to his "Countess of Pembroke in a World of Words."

² Mary Ellen Lamb, in "The Art of Dying," makes a case for the "intellectual self-assertion" of Mary Sidney's translations of Mornay's Discours, Garnier's Antonie, and Petrarch's Triumph of Death, contrasting Sidney's ambitious scholarship with these works' underlying theme of passive womanly heroism expressed through stoical "self-effacement."

See also my essay, "Mary Sidney's Psalmes: Education and Wisdom," which discusses Sidney's formation of an original poetic style through her verse-translations of the Psalms.

³ See Travitsky for a history of women writers before Mary Sidney.

⁴ See Wayne; see also Lamb, "The Cooke Sisters," and Kelso for further discussion of the education of women in the sixteenth century.

⁵ Anne, Jane, and Margaret Seymour had written Latin distichs commemorating the death of Margaret of Navarre, pub. 1550. Isabella Whitney had published The Copy of a Letter … to her unconstant Lover (1567) and A Sweet Nosegay (1573). Elizabeth Cooke Hoby had written several epitaphs in Latin, Greek, and English for both of her husbands, as well as for her brother, sister, son, and daughter. Katherine Cooke Killegrew wrote a Latin epitaph in preparation for her own death. Mildred Cooke Cecil's daughter, Anne, published four epitaphs on the death of her son in 1584.

⁶ Mary Sidney edited both his Arcadia and Astrophil and Stella after her brother's death. Her dual translation of Antonie, a faithful rendition of Robert Garnier's Marc Antoine, and of A Discourse of Life and Death, taken from the original by Philippe de Mornay, was published in 1592. She wrote and revised her versetranslations of the Psalms from the time of her brother's death in 1586 until 1599, when the presentation copy was readied for a projected visit from Queen Elizabeth.

⁷ Line 25. All references from the final version of "To the Angell spirit …" will come from J. C. A. Rathmell, ed., The Psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, xxxv-xxxviii.

⁸ Ben Jonson, "To the Immortall Memorie, and Friendship of That Noble Paire, Sir Lucius Cary, and Sir H. Morison," in The Complete Poetry of Ben Jonson, ed. William B. Hunter, Jr. (New York: Norton, 1963), 226 (11. 87, 79-81). All other references will come from this edition.

⁹ Quoted in Young 193.

¹⁰ These lines come from stanza 6 in the early version of "To the Angell spirit …" that was mistakenly published in the collected works of Samuel Daniel in 1623 and is reproduced in Waller's Triumph of Death, 190-92. All references to the earlier version of this poem will come from this source.

¹¹ The metaphor of Sidney as an angel in a "caelestiall Quire" is, of course, borrowed from her own, earlier, "Dolefull Lay of Clorinda," 11. 61-64.

¹² I Timothy 2:11-12 (King James version).

Works Consulted

Bornstein, Diane. "The Style of the Countess of Pembroke's Translation of Philippe de Mornay's Discours de la Vie et de la Mort." In Hannay, Silent But for the Word, 126-34. Discusses the graceful concision and metaphorical additions of Mary Sidney's translation.

Fisken, Beth Wynne. "Mary Sidney's Psalmes: Education and Wisdom." In Hannay, Silent But for the Word, 166-83. Discusses the verse-paraphrases of the Psalms as meditative exercises in self-education, poetic and spiritual, for which Mary Sidney drew upon her own experiences in her expanded metaphors and applications.

Freer, Coburn. "The Countess of Pembroke in a World of Words." Style 5, no. 1 (1971): 37-56. Some valuable commentary on Mary Sidney's characteristic style in her verse-translations of the Psalms, although Freer's general characterization of her poetic voice as "narrow" seems unwarranted.

Hannay, Margaret P. '"Doo What Men May Sing': Mary Sidney and the Tradition of Admonitory Dedication." In Hannay, Silent But for the Word, 151-65. A convincing argument demonstrating that "Even now that Care" and "To the Angell spirit…," the two dedicatory poems appended to the 1599 Juel-Jensen manuscript of the Sidnean Psalter, couple a lament for Philip Sidney with a disguised political recommendation to Queen Elizabeth that she further his dedication to the Protestant cause in Europe.

——. ed. Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1985. This collection of essays explores the contributions of Renaissance women to the dissemination of partisan religious works, as well as the ways in which these women subtly changed their texts to reflect personal and political perspectives.

Kelso, Ruth. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. 1956. Reprint. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. Discusses Renaissance ideals and recommendations for the proper education and conduct defining the role of the "lady."

Lamb, Mary Ellen. "The Art of Dying." In Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by Mary Beth Rose, 207-26. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Hypothesizes that Mary Sidney's choice of works to translate presents a model of stoic self-denial consistent with patriarchal values but at odds with Sidney's own aggressive scholarship.

——. "The Cooke Sisters: Attitudes toward Learned Women in the Renaissance." In Hannay, Silent But for the Word, 107-25. Discusses how the Cooke sisters' internalization of patriarchal strictures led them to limit their work to religious translations, personal letters, and epitaphs.

Rathmell, J. C. A., ed. The Psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke. New York: New York University Press, 1963. The standard text of the final versions of the Sidneian psalter, which is introduced by a ground-breaking essay on the style of Mary Sidney's verse-translations of Psalms 44 through 150.

Travitsky, Betty, ed. The Paradise of Women: Writings by Englishwomen of the Renaissance. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. An anthology of Renaissance women's writing with biographical and critical introductions to individual writers.

Waller, G. F. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke: A Critical Study of Her Writings and Milieu. Salzburg: Salzburg University Press, 1979. The first full-length biographical-critical study of Mary Sidney since Frances Young's.

——. "The Text and Ms. Variants of the Countess of Pembroke's Psalms." Review of English Studies 26 (1975):6-18. A valuable reconstruction of Mary Sidney's process of self-education as a poet through analysis of her revisions.

——. "'This Matching of Contraries': Calvinism and Courtly Philosophy in the Sidney Psalms." English Studies 55, no. 1 (1974): 22-31. Contrasts two themes, Calvinism and courtly Neoplatonism, in the style of the Sidney psalter.

——, ed. The Triumph of Death and Other Unpublished and Uncollected Poems by Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621). Salzburg: Salzburg University Press, 1977. Includes previously unpublished variant versions of some of the psalms, as well as an earlier version of "To the Angell spirit. … "

Wayne, Valerie. "Some Sad Sentence: Vives' Instruction of a Christian Woman." In Hannay, Silent But for the Word, 15-29. Discusses the restrictive influence of Juan Luis Vives' popular conduct book on Renaissance women's intellectual lives.

Young, Frances Campbell. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. London: David Nutt, 1912. The first biographical study of Mary Sidney's life, works and influence as a patron. Includes several of Sidney's letters as well as The Triumph of Death as an appendix.