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Summary
Arcadia is the prose romance writen by Philip Sidney. It is an important prose work of the Elizabethan age. Sidney Wrote it in 1580 to beguile a momentary exile from the court and to please his sister. It is a romance in which he gives a full play to his fantastic invention. It is a pastoral romance, its action being held in the ideal Arcadia, where King Basileus has retired and where he brings up his daughters as shepherdesses.
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is the background to the story of love and chivalry. Musidorus and Pyrocles make their court to the most virtuous Pamela and to radiant Philoclea. They are disguised respectively as a peasant and a woman. The king is smitten with love for Pyrocles whose woman's guise deceives him and the queen who discovers the fraud is also smitten with guilty love for the same prince. Amphialus is fond of Philoclea, and with the help of his mother, he keeps the maidens captive. Love and virtue save the persecuted women. When Amphialus has been defeated and slain, the love of Musidorus and Pamela and of Pyrocles and Philoclea end in a double marriage. This is the principal plot, but is crossed by many episodes.
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| The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia |
Critical Analysis
Arcadia marks a well-defined stage in the history of the novel. Sidney here invented a new style and for a while Arcadianism displaced Euphuism. In essence the book is a romance with a pastoral flavour. There is more characterisation and more movement though less humour, and there is a finer vein of poetry. The style in spite of artificialities rises to a level of high beauty. Arcadia is in some sort a half-way house between the older romances of chivalry and the heroic romances of the seventeenth century. In it, Sidney writes the most poetic prose imaginable and therefore it is more remote from prose.