Revision in Astrophel and Stella

Abstract

In his edition of the Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, William Ringler proposed that all the known manuscripts and early printed editions of Astrophel and Stella descended from a single source that was subject to various states of textual corruption in their transmission. This article proposes that instead of a unitary source, Sidney worked through various states of the text as the sequence evolved, and that the textual history reflects the genesis and evolution of Sidney at work, dividing the z tradition into two distinct parts. Further, it examines in detail the nature and character of the adjustments made to the z2 tradition when the copy was prepared for the press, and what it might indicate about the third party that did this.