341

DOUBLE MEANINGS: II
Sexual Puns in Astrophil and Stella
ALAN S1NFIELD

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HOW far are Astrophil's feelings for Stella in Sidney's se-
quence sexual? The non-specialist reader at least tends to
be blinded by the radiance of the prevalent image of Sidney
as an urbane and elegant courtier throwing off Petrarchan
conceits, and is unprepared to perceive much sexual pas-
sion in Astrophil. Perhaps we have not entirely recovered
from romantic attitudes like the Reverend Alexander Gros-
arfs in his edition of the Complete Poems (3 vols., 1877).
Grosart insisted that the sonnets are not in their proper
order, observing 'It is of the last importance to remember
this; for upon the dates of these Sonnets and Poems is con-
tingent our verdict of shame or praise'—he wanted to place
the more obviously passionate sonnets before the marriage
of Penelope Devereux so that Sidney (whom he identified
with Astrophil) should not be seen making amorous ad-
vances to a married woman! (I, xlix). The decline of Vic-
torian inhibitions did not greatly affect our notion of Sidney
because it was off-set by the growing habit of contrasting
sonneteers with Metaphysical poets. This gave modern
critics almost as much incentive as their forbears for char-
acterizing Sidney as largely simple, idealistic and traditional
in both language and attitude. Even in recent critical studies
and annotated editions, most of which have a lot to offer,
commentators have been slow to appreciate, or to help the
reader appreciate, the sexual inferences in the poems. I sug-
gest that Astrophil's consciousness of the sexual nature of
his passion for Stella is more extensive and more important
than is usually implied.
It is generally assumed that Astrophil discovers a power-
ful sexual component in his love for Stella somewhere about
the middle of the sequence; certainly the issue becomes
relatively overt at that point Thus in sonnet 52 he wittily
proposes that the quarrel between virtue and love could
be resolved by granting virtue 'that Stella's selfe; yet thus, /
That Vertue but that body graunt to us' (quotations are
 342 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

from Ringler's Oxford edition). Then in sonnet 61 Stella at

last gives a clear response to Astrophil's persistent impor-
tunings: clearly she thinks his passion is unacceptably sen-
sual for she tells him that 'her chast mind hates this love
in me' and that he can best show his devotion through chas-
tity. But he pretends not to understand the point she is

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making:

O Doctor Cupid, thou for me reply,

Driv'n else to graunt by Angel's sophistrie,
That I love not, without I leave to love.

In fact the verbal dexterity is Astrophil's and he compounds

it by imputing 'sophistrie' to Stella, for in his riddling con-
cluding line he cleverly confuses her distinction between
chaste and unchaste love. Many critics consider crucial son-
net 71 where, it is often said, Astrophil openly recognizes
the sexual character of his passion. After appearing to
praise Stella's virtue and beauty for thirteen lines he
abruptly declares, ' "But ah," Desire still cries, "give me
some food"'.
Indeed, after sonnet 71 Astrophil's physical desire is very
plain, especially in the sonnets about Stella's kiss and in the
Fourth and Eighth Songs. We might notice particularly
Astrophil's remark that Stella's jealous husband is so devil-
ish that it is a pity he is without horns (i.e. has not been
cuckolded—78); the neatly suggestive image of the kiss as
'Breakfast of Love1—implying that more substantial meals
might follow in due course (79); Astrophil's apology for
kissing Stella too vigorously (82); and his warning to her
sparrow in 83 that it is taking advantage of the intimate
privileges it has been allowed—in this sonnet we see both
Astrophil's sensitivity (albeit humourously expressed) to
Stella's distribution of her sexual favours and his awareness
that such a warning could apply equally well to his own
defiance of her insistence on chaste love. After this, the
Fourth Song is a frank seduction piece where Stella resists
only by 'force of hands' and a threat to end the relation-
ship; the Eighth Song is apparently a more subtle attempt
at the same thing, but it provokes Stella's outright and
final refusal.
PUNS IN 'ASTROPML AND STELLA' 343
This much is now largely uncontroversial, though it has
perhaps been underplayed. I want to make two further
claims: that sexual double entendre is an important feature
of Sidney's verbal skill and, following this, that Astrophil's
love for Stella is sexual right from the beginning of the
sequence. If these propositions are accepted they will add

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to the vigour and subtlety of the early sonnets especially
(which have often been thought relatively artificial and
empty) and increase our respect for Sidney's linguistic and
emotional range. Astrophil's sexual desire is not something
which develops rather surprisingly after sixty or so con-
ventional Petrarchan exercises, but an important disruptive
force in a relationship which is presented in a coherent,
comprehensive and sustained way.
Despite the twentieth century rehabilitation of the sexual
pun, it must be approached with caution. Because it in-
volves language operating at the margins of the ordinary
rules of comprehensibility this, even more than most, is a
matter of interpretative tact and sensitivity. I would like
to suggest five criteria which the thoughtful reader might
keep in mind. First, the interpretations proposed should use
senses demonstrably current in the language; second, in their
immediate context they should be consistent with each
other and with other levels of meaning; third, (in other
than short poems) they should be appropriate to the theme
and its treatment in the work as a whole; fourth, they
should make the poetry appear better—more subtle, dense
and interesting; and fifth, they should be compatible with
the known practice of the poet and his contemporaries in
that kind of poem.
A couple of blatant sexual puns are usually recognized in
Astrophil and Stella. One is at the end of 68 where Astro-
phil, observing Stella's goodness and her wish to make him
similarly virtuous, remarks, 'O thinke I then, what paradise
of joy / It is, so faire a Vertue to enjoy'. The pun on 'enjoy*
actually affords three meanings: 'how splendid it must be
to be so good'; 'how splendid it would be to have sexual
intercourse with such a virtuous person'; and, with an
ironic touch of the frustration and resentment that we also
see, for instance, in 59 and 60, 'how gratifying it must be
for you to be able to gain satisfaction by insisting on your
344 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

honour (while I am suffering'). The other is in the sestet of

76 (a sonnet that one critic has rather surprisingly advanced
as evidence that Astrophil is a romantic lover). Stella's
approach is like a beautiful dawn, but this amiable senti-
ment is roughly undercut in the sestet by a clear allusion
to male sexual arousal:

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But lo, while I do speake, it groweth noone with me,
Her flamie glistring lights increase with time and place;
My heart cries 'ah', it burnes, mine eyes now dazled be:
No wind, no shade can coole, what helpe then in my case,
But with short breath, long lookes, staid feet and
walking hed,
Pray that my sunne go downe with meeker beames to
bed.

Astrophil is speaking about sexual excitement and fulfil-

ment, as Barnaby Barnes knew when he imitated the sonnet:
initially 'The moonlight of her Chastity reproved me' but
then dawn and 'Her Morning's blush' followed, and now it
is practically mid-day. In the last line he asks her eyes to
continue to approve his aroused state, 'Still smiling at my
dial, next eleven!' (the image is of a sun-dial; Parthenophil
and Parthenophe, XXITI, Sidney Lee, Elizabeth Sonnets, I,
182; cf. Romeo and Juliet, II. iv. 108).
In the first twenty-five sonnets of the sequence the leading
motif is the mental debate between Astrophil's virtue or
reason on the one hand and love, sense or will on the other.
But the issue must be a very fine one unless Astrophil's
passion is supposed to be physical. The obvious implication
is that he has a sexual relationship in mind when, for in-
stance, he tells reason to 'Leave sense, and those which
sense's objects be: / Deale thou with powers of thoughts,
leave love to will' (10). It seems that the main reason why
critics do not perceive Astrophil's love as sexual from the
first is the self-justification he attempts, particularly in
sonnet 14:

If that be sinne which in fixt hearts doth breed

A loathing of all loose unchastitie,
Then Love is sinne, and let me sinfull be.
PUNS IN 'ASTROPHIL AND STELLA' 345

But it is very doubtful whether Astrophil means here that

he regards the notion of a sexual consummation with Stella
with horror; his argument, I think, is rather more equivocal.
He more probably means that his love is chaste in the same
way that Shakespeare's Lucrece, though married, was
chaste: she had reserved herself for one man and her rape

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was thus 'The story of sweet chastity's decay, / The impious
breach of holy wedlock vow' (11. 808-9). Astrophil's love
makes him reject the idea of sexual experience with anyone
other than Stella—it is 'loose unchastitie' that he loathes.
Hero advances the same argument, in similar words and
from the same kind of motive, in Chapman's continuation
of Hero and Leander: 'We break chaste vows when we live
loosely ever, / But bound as we are, we live loosely never'
(III, 362-3).
This interpretation fits best the tendency of the surround-
ing sonnets, but in case it should seem an improbable asser-
tion in the face of Astrophil's vehemence, we should notice
that he has in effect already in this sonnet admitted the
sensual basis of his passion.

Alas have I not paine enough my friend,

Upon whose breast a fiercer Gripe doth tire
Then did on him who first stale downe the fire,
While Love on me doth all his quiver spend,
But with your Rubarb words yow must contend
To grieve me worse, in saying that Desire
Doth plunge my wel-form'd soule even in the mire
Of sinfull thoughts, which do in mine end?

The way this accusation is reported undermines the answer

offered at the end of the sonnet The 'Gripe', as well as be-
ing a 'grip' and a 'pain', is a vulture since Astrophil alludes
to the punishment of Prometheus. (Actually, Prometheus
was preyed upon by an eagle whereas Tityus for the at-
tempted rape of Leto was similarly assaulted by a vulture.
One is tempted to find the substitution significant but it
was quite a common error.) Astrophil's comparison of his
sufferings to those of the Greek demi-god would seem to
confer heroic stature upon him, but we should remember
that he has not done anything to benefit mankind, that it
346 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

was Prometheus's liver that the eagle or vulture attacked

and that the liver was thought the seat of sexual desire
(thus Shakespeare's Tarquin visits Lucrece 'To quench the
coal which in his liver glows', 1. 47). If it does occur to us
that Astrophil is therefore really confessing to sexual lust
and that his plight is something less than god-like, this is

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confirmed by his own term 'Rubarb words', for rhubarb
was a purgative which would cleanse the liver—no doubt
the friend's intention. Thus the imagery sinks from the
titanic to the emetic and the passionately sexual nature of
Astrophil's condition is established.
This implicit confession gives Astrophil's loathing of
'loose unchastitie' a disingenuous appearance and makes it
likely that he has in mind merely the restriction of his atten-
tions to Stella alone. Of course, this does not counter the
friend's objection; as in sonnet 61, Astrophil plays with the
terms of the accusation and only pretends to answer it The
notion that he is already dominated ('gripped') by sexual
desire is not challenged in sonnet 14, therefore; indeed, it
is strengthened by the deceptively self-righteous tone with
which he parades a reply that is partial in both senses of the
word.
If we are not misled by sonnet 14 we may be more ready
to see a sexual element in the most complicated pun in the
sequence, that at the end of sonnet 9. 'Of touch they are
that without touch doth touch': Stella's eyes are made of
glossy black stone (touch) and they affect (touch) Astrophil
without physical contact (touch). But this could mean that
he is affected sexually—several senses of 'touch', including
'stirring the sexual parts', are evident in this speech from
Jonson's Every Man in his Humour:

Indeed, beauty stands a woman in no stead, unless it

procure her touching. But, sister, whether it touch you
or no, it touches your beauties; and, I am sure, they will
abide the touch; an' they do not, a plague of all ceruse,
say I: and it touches me too in part, though not in the —
[sc. (w)hole].

(TV. vi. 100-5, ed. J. W. Lever, London, 1972). Astrophil too

is touched 'in parf, even though Stella by no means en-
PUNS IN 'ASTROPHIL AND STELLA' 347

courages such sensations or the contact that might enhance

them. In the same phrases we have his consciousness of her
beauty, the emotional and sexual response this arouses in
him and her aloof reserve. This combination, which will
prove ruinous for Astrophil, is there from the start.

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Sonnet 18 has been justly admired for the coherence of
its imagery and the subtlety of its analysis of Astrophil's
predicament In the first quatrain he exclaims that when he
goes into 'Reason's audite' he receives 'sharpe checkes' and
knows himself by just account to be bankrupt 'Of all those
goods, which heav'n to me hath lenf. He has wasted his
talents; but what, then, does the second quatrain mean? Is
it merely repetitious?
Unable quite to pay even Nature's rent,
Which unto it by birthright I do ow:
And which is worse, no good excuse can show,
But that my wealth I have most idly spent.
Above all, what is 'Nature's rent* ? I believe it is the getting
of children, firstly because of a passage in the Arcadia:
Nature above all things requireth this,
That we our kind doo labour to maintaine;
Which drawne-out line both hold all humane blisse.
Thy father justly may of thee complaine,
If thou doo not repay his deeds for thee,
In granting unto him a grandsire's gaine.
Thy common-wealth may rightly grieved be,
Which must by this immortall be preserved,
If thus thou murther thy posteritie.
His very being he hath not deserved,
Who for a selfe-conceipt will that forbeare,
Whereby that being aye must be conserved.
(Ringler, pp. 105-6). Here Geron, whose whole theme is the
desirability of marriage, insists that for all kinds of noble
reason we hold from nature the responsibility to procreate.
Secondly, Shakespeare's fourth sonnet, the only one which
shows considerable detailed borrowings from Sidney, uses
just the same theme and imagery, and in a clearly sexual
sense.
348 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And, being frank, she lends to those are free.

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'Spend' means to expend sexually, to discharge seminally;
the beautiful youth chooses not to engender children in
response to Nature's generosity, but this will bring him no
profit—
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

In Eric Partridge's Shakespeare's Bawdy we find sexual

meanings for all the terms in this image cluster, including
'renf, which is copulation or, more probably, semen-expen-
diture paid as rent by a man to the woman legally his.
Nature's rent, then, must be the rearing of children to re-
place oneself and one's partner: Astrophil is saying that he
is debarring himself from the possibility of sexual inter-
course in wedlock and the generation of offspring by his
devotion to Stella who is unavailable for these purposes,
like Shakespeare's Antony, he has 'Forborne the getting of
a lawful race' (III. xiii. 107). His (semen) wealth is 'idly
spent*, perhaps in nocturnal emissions. This area of mean-
ing is taken up in the last lines of the sonnet, and, I think,
confirms this interpretation:

I see my course to lose my selfe doth bend:

I see and yet no greater sorow take,
Then that I lose no more for Stella's sake.

The loss is not only the general sacrifice Astrophil is mak-

ing; it is also the loss of semen (Partridge again) and the
last two lines therefore mean that Astrophil would be happy
if he could make his sexual expenditure on Stella's behalf
even greater—that is, if he could achieve a complete union
with her! This vigorous and witty implication adds an im-
portant dimension to the simple emotion of the more ob-
PUNS IN 'ASTROPHIL AND STELLA' 349
vious meaning, and shows how sophisticated is Astrophil's
appreciation in sonnet 18 of the cost of his commitment to
Stella. The issue is greater than a failure to develop his
general talents: he is also depriving himself of the oppor-
tunity to continue his line, and is not even obtaining the

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consolation of sexual fulfilment Without these implications
the sonnet is very competent but not very interesting; with
them it is an acutely personal assessment of Astrophil's
situation and a telling prediction of the frustration he is to
suffer. He already sees Stella as a physical attraction suffic-
iently serious to inhibit him from more legitimate modes of
sexual expression and has even envisaged the long-term con-
sequences of such a passion.
One place where we might expect Astrophil to think of
sex is in relation to Stella's husband. In sonnet 24 he pun-
ningly compares Lord Rich to a miser; the sestet at first
sight simply shows Astrophil's high estimation of Stella, but
it is composed almost entirely of terms which feature in
Shakespeare's Bawdy:

But that rich foole, who by blind Fortune's lot

The richest gemme of Love and life enjoyes,
And can with foule abuse such beauties blot;
Let him, deprived of sweet but unfelt joyes,
(Exil'd for ay from those high treasures, which
He knowes not) grow in only follie rich.

Lord Rich will presumably grow in folly primarily by be-

coming a cuckold (as in 78); it therefore appears that he
'enjoyes' (sexually) the 'richest gemme' and 'those high
treasures', that is Stella's most intimate parts; the 'joyes'
which he fails to appreciate are those of love-making. This
imagery recurs in similar senses in Song Ten, which I dis-
cuss below; in the Old Arcadia Pamela is saved only by
intruders from the loss of her virginity, 'her dearest jewel'
(ed. yean Robertson, Oxford, 1973, p. 306). And the 'foule
abuse', somewhat ironically surely, is infidelity.
The sonnet works, then, on two levels. In part it is an
attack on the crudeness of Lord Rich, against which is set
Astrophil's more refined appreciation of Stella as very
precious. But at the same time, in the sexual puns and the
350 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

joke of the last line, Astrophil also emerges as coarse and

materialistic. His valuation is physically based and differs
from Rich's mainly in that Astrophil, if he had the good
fortune to possess such a delectable object, would keep it
safe. Jealousy of Stella's husband's marital rights does not

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bring out the best in Astrophil; the punning language draws
attention to the simultaneous presence of idealistic and
physical elements in his passion. The result is that more
vigour and astringency than are usually acknowledged ap-
pear in his love, in the earlier sonnets as much as later on.
At first sight sonnet 22 simply offers a witty account of
a journey in hot sun during which only Stella's complexion
was unaffected by the heat:
In highest way of heav'n the Sunne did ride,
Progressing then from faire twinnes' gold'n place:
Having no scarfe of clowds before his face,
But shining forth of heate in his chiefe pride.
Riding is and was a very common image for the sexual act
and the sun has traditionally sexual connotations—for in-
stance in The Faerie Queene: 'Phoebus fresh, as bridegrome
to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie haire'
(I, v, 2; the idea derives from Psalm XIX—T. W. Baldwin,
On the Literary Genetics of Shakspere's Poems and Son-
nets, 1950, pp. 5-6). Nevertheless, we probably notice noth-
ing special until we come to the fourth line quoted. There
the sun is in the full heat of sexual ardour and ready to
assault any passing female. Partridge quotes Othello: 'As
salt as wolves in pride' (in, iii, 408) and we may also think
of Lucrece:
While Lust is in his pride, no exclamation
Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire,
Till, like a jade, Self-will himself doth tire.
(11. 705-7). The sun has an assignation:

When some faire Ladies, by hard promise tied,

On horsebacke met him in his furious race,
Yet each prepar'd, with fanne's wel-shading grace,
From that foe's wounds their tender skinnes to hide.
PUNS IN 'ASTROPHIL AND STELLA' 351
Compare sonnet 64 where Astrophil pleads, ' 0 give my
passions leave to run their race'. The ladies are on horse-
back and by implication ready for sexual advances, but ap-
parently they wish (coyly perhaps) to preserve themselves
from the 'wounds' of sexual penetration.

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Stella, however, doesn't need to be wary, for she is in-
herently inviolable (perhaps that is why she alone is un-
mounted) :

Stella alone with face unarmed marcht,

Either to do like him, which open shone,
Or carelesse of the wealth because her owne.

Stella is unperturbed by the sun's audacious behaviour—

'open' is surely used in a way that is similar to Donne's in
Holy Sonnet XVIII, where it means 'ready for sexual
experience':

And let myne amorous soule court thy mild Dove,

Who is most trew, and pleasing to thee, then
When she' is embrac'd and open to most men.

(ed. Grierson). Astrophil concludes by suggesting that the

sun had more respect for Stella than for the other ladies:
Yet were the hid and meaner beauties parcht,
Her daintiest bare went free; the cause was this,
The Sunne which others burn'd, did her but kisse.

The burning and parching suffered by the others may mean

either that they experienced full sexual intercourse or that
they contracted venereal disease (Partridge).
What makes sonnet 22 so witty is the fact that the sexual
level of meaning depends entirely on metaphorical puns un-
til the last phrase, for whereas the rest of the sonnet is often
literally about going for a ride in the sun but only figura-
tively about sexual activity, the last phrase is the reverse,
for the sun kisses only figuratively—the literal meaning of
the verb is sexual. Thus the strategy of the sonnet is to
provoke in the reader a growing suspicion that a sexual
implication is present and then suddenly confirm it in the
352 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

very last word so that we are thrown back to reconsider

the whole poem at a different level.
The puns in the sonnets previously considered arise di-
rectly out of Astrophil's predicament as lover of Stella, but
sonnet 22 is notable because the sexual hints in it are un-

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provoked. Since there is no special or intrinsic reason why
Stella walking in the sun should make Astrophil think of
sex, we must conclude that he does so simply because his
mind is preoccupied with it at the time. The sonnet reveals
the extent to which his thoughts are running on Stella as
a sexual object. We might think of the assault imputed to
the sun as some kind of projection of his own frustration.
He is very aware of Stella's attractions but also (as we see
in the reticence he attributes to the sun) of the fact that
she is not to be wooed.
The use of the double entendre in these sonnets at the
start of the sequence to indicate Astrophil's strong aware-
ness of Stella's sexual attractions is significant in three re-
lated ways. First, it contains in one group of words complex
ideas and feelings that are simultaneous in his mind—they
are aroused by a single experience (such as seeing Stella
walking in the sun) and receive a single expression. Second,
the tensions between meanings that are sometimes quite
contrary (often chaste and unchaste love) reflect the central
ambiguity in Astrophil's attitude and the principal dilemma
that increasingly confronts him: the divergent meanings,
held precariously together, enact the split in his response
between his desires and his conscience. And third, the
double entendre conveys his shame-faced alarm at the sen-
sations and emotions he is experiencing: he is as yet re-
luctant to face his condition without the protective shield
of an alternative innocent meaning. This last point is sup-
ported by the contexts in which the puns occur—his at-
tempt at self-defence in sonnet 14, his recognition of the
proper channels for his sexuality in 18, the violence of his
attack on Lord Rich in 24 and the unprovoked associations
he reveals in 22. Also, it is notable that as Astrophil is in-
creasingly open about his desires, moving towards the crisis
of the sequence in the Eighth Song, the double entendre is
used far less and is reserved for blatantly direct meanings
like those already mentioned in 68 and 76. His sexual im-
PUNS IN 'ASTROPHIL AND STELLA' 353
portunity is acknowledged and only his most uncomprom-
ising sexual intentions need the safety-valve of an inoffen-
sive alternative meaning.
This last point can be illustrated and the most glaring
remaining instance of sexual punning will be illuminated

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if we consider the Tenth Song, where the rejected Astro-
phil asks when he will next see Stella. He wonders whether
he may then be not 'debard from beautie's treasure', and
he can't just mean looking at her because he would be
doing that already. In the meantime he sends his Thought
to visit her, telling it to treat her with the highest degree
of intimacy—a degree which in person he has never been
allowed:
There unseene thou maist be bold,
Those faire wonders to behold,
Which in them my hopes do cary.
Thought see thou no place forbeare,
Enter bravely every where,
Seaze on all to her belonging.
This is not the language of a respectful admirer of beauty;
Astrophil is more or less undressing Stella in his mind. His
approach is directly sensual—the nearest he ever comes to
To his Coy Mistress':
Thinke of my most Princely power,
When I blessed shall devower,
With my greedy licorous sences,
Beauty, musicke, sweetnesse, love
While she doth against me prove
Her strong darts, but weake defences.
Thinke, thinke of those dalyings,
When with Dovelike murmurings,
With glad moning passed anguish,
We change eyes, and hart for hart,
Each to other do imparte,
Joying till joy make us languish.
Perhaps this partly means that they would have great plea-
sure in each other's company, but the 'glad moning' and
354 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM
the joy which is followed by languishing are surely meant
to suggest sexual intercourse. It is all too much for
Astrophil:
O my thought my thoughts surcease,

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Thy delights my woes increase,
My life melts with too much thinking;
Thinke no more but die in me,
Till thou shalt revived be,
At her lips my Nectar drinking.

Though at one level this final stanza means that Astrophil

is made unbearably unhappy, it is also describing the ec-
stasy of sexual release. To 'melf is to experience an or-
gasm—this is what it means in the Old Arcadia when
Basilius spends the night enthusiastically with his wife,
Gynecia, thinking her to be Cleophila, a fiction Gynecia is
obliged to maintain: he 'did melt in as much gladness as
she was oppressed with divers ungrateful burdens' (p. 227).
To 'die' is of course the same thing. Astrophil's thought
has been so successful in its visit to Stella that he is unable
to contain himself: 'die in me' denotes a solitary orgasm.
Max Putzel in his edition (Anchor, 1967) attributes 'obvi-
ously bawdy intention' to a doubtful manuscript version of
this stanza, but it doesn't seem to me very different
There is a close analogy—perhaps even a source—in an
erotic sonnet by one of the Pl&ade, Jean-Antoine de Baif,
'O doux plaisir plein de doux pensemenf .* Here embracing
and the uniting of soul with soul and body with body evoke
the exclamation, 'O douce morf, as the poefs soul flows
into his lady ('De moy dans toy s'ecoulant'); he becomes a
lifeless mass ('masse morte'), but then her kiss returns his
soul and restores his life ('Puis vient ta bouche en ma
bouche la rendre, / Me ranimant tous mem membres per-
clus'). Astrophil imagines just such a scene, demonstrating
both his great longing for Stella and his readiness to use
the thought of her for solitary sexual stimulation.
If the sense of Song Ten does suggest that Astrophil is
indulging rather pathetically in a barren sexual fantasy, it
demonstrates powerfully his failure to adjust realistically
to his rejection by Stella. There is very little prospect that
PUNS IN 'ASTROPHIL AND STELLA' 355
he will ever be permitted to revive his powers by drinking
nectar from her lips, let alone enjoy dovelike munnurings
and glad moanings. It seems to me that his state in this
song is almost hysterical; his romantic idealism has dis-
integrated under the strain of his disappointment and he is

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resorting to a vengeful brutalisation (comparable to that in
the Fifth Song) of what remains of his relationship with
Stella. If we compare the song with the earlier sonnets I
have discussed we must be struck by the greater direct-
ness, indeed coarseness, with which Astrophil here behaves
and uses words. The double meanings are employed to veil
(very thinly in my opinion) a quite offensive conversion
of Stella to a mere object of sexual fantasy, and the possi-
bility of reading the song as idealistically sentimental and
love-lorn only strengthens our sense of the confusion to
which AstrophiPs passion has reduced him.
Like the detection of Christ-figures, the discovery of
sexual double meanings risks a response of boredom or
hostility. However, I have tried to show that the criteria
I proposed are to a considerable extent satisfied. All the
meanings advanced here can be found in nearly contem-
porary writings, including Sidney's own and the sonnets
and love poetry of other people; they are consistent both
with their immediate context and with the sequence as a
whole; and I think they do make the poetry better. I have
concentrated upon the parts of Astrophil and Stella which
have directly sexual implications not previously noted, but
the interpretations I have proposed affect very many of the
sonnets, adding qualifying and often ironical implications;
indeed, they modify the whole way we think about Sidney.
If correct, they must mean that the traditional image of
the elegant but naive courtier is not only inadequate but
misleading.
University of Sussex

NOTE
x
tes Amours de Jean-Antoine de Batf (1552), ed. Mathieu
Aug<*-Chiquet (Geneva, 1972), XX, p. 147. Sidney must have
known de Baif s work on quantitative metres.