Humanist Prosodic Theory, Dutch Synods, and the Poetics of the Sidney-Pembroke Psalter

Abstract

It is now generally accepted that Sir Philip Sidney's share of the SidneyPembroke psalter belongs to the mid-1580s, and thus to the last months of his short life.1 At his death at the age of nearly thirty-two in October 1586, Sidney left the psalter uncompleted, having composed metaphrases of only the first forty-three psalms, but his sister Mary, the Countess of Pembroke, in effect acting as his literary executor, carried forward various uncompleted projects of her brother's, including the psalter. It has recently been suggested that she may have revised and completed at least a draft as early as 1594, although the date for its completion is more customarily given as 1599-1601.2 Whatever the details of its inception and completion, scholars are now increasingly united as to the work's importance and merit, although some dissenting voices may still be heard.3 Despite this increasingly unanimous perception of its value, the Sidney-Pembroke psalter still attracts a disproportionate amount of commentary that confines scholarly attention almost exclusively to an insular or national context, one in which the psalter is regarded as the culmination of a century of English psalmody. In those few cases where commentators have been prepared to look to Europe rather than England, they have usually done so in what I have become increasingly convinced is an inhibited manner: they remain content to note the sporadic influence of the French Huguenot psalter. This psalter had been initiated back in the