Sincerity In The Renaissance Sonnets Of Sidney And Spenser

To what extent are the sonnets of Sidney and Spenser convincing in their profession of sincerity?

The very act of writing is the adoption of a mask. Yet, by definition, Renaissance lyric poetry professes sincerity. The intensely personal, first person format of these sonnets suggests a pure, unmediated outpouring of the writer`s internal world. However, the production of literature demands a transition from sacred, uncomplicated internal world to the public world of words. It is within the grey area of this transition, the no-man`s-land between feeling and expression, that the most fascinating problems of Renaissance lyric poetry arise: what does it mean to be an individual? Is there such thing as a fixed notion of sincerity? Sidney`s Astrophil and Stella and Spenser`s Amoretti provide fertile ground for the exploration of these issues in the context of Renaissance sonnets.

The period during which Sidney and Spenser were writing saw the birth of the individual, as we know it. Jacob Burckhardt argued in his passage on `the development of the individual` in Renaissance Europe that the typical Renaissance man is `the first-born among the sons of Europe`. More recently, Stephen Greenblatt has extended this idea in Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare that `there is in the early modern period.an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process` . In the context of Renaissance sonnets, the movement towards self-expression as a unique individual, as opposed to as a member of a class in feudal society, can be articulated in Anne Ferry`s carefully argued statement that there is a `remarkable shift in the characterization of inward states` during this period. As Ferry notes, it is at this point in the nascent development of the `individual` as we know it, that the word `sincerity` was born, in its modern sense. With this context in mind, we can examine `sincerity` in light of the poems` speaker: a `self-fashioned` individual persona. In John Donne`s La Corona, the speaker defends his `white sincerity` with religious language connoting purity. The same ideal is present in Sidney and Spenser, as will be shown. However, is such pure sincerity viable, even within poetry? There are two major challenges to this `white sincerity`, which are a persistent presence in Astrophil and Stella and Amoretti. The first of these is that Art itself is a form of deception that necessarily involves insincerity. The second is that the speaker may adopt a persona to fulfil his ambitions in love, with the hostility of an alien other enforcing a conceited self-fashioning at the expense of sincerity. These challenges to sincerity will be returned to throughout this analysis.

The speakers of both Atrophil and Stella and Amoretti emphatically express their alleged sincerity throughout both sonnet sequences. Phillip Sidney`s speaker, Astrophil, explicitly professes the authentic expression of inwardness from the first line of the first sonnet, when he emphasises `loving in truth` and its last line, when his muse bids him `look in thy heart and write`. In Spenser`s first sonnet, the speaker proposes to reveal to us the `sorrowes of my dying spright`. Both poems go further to explicitly emphasise their own introspective vision. In sonnet 15 of Astrophil and Stella, Sidney places his poetry above that which uses `the dictionary`s method` and `stol`n goods` because `those far-fet helps.bewray a want of inward touch`. Sidney`s `inward touch` is echoed in the `inward bale` (woe) described by Spenser in sonnet 2 of Amoretti. Furthermore, in sonnet 45, Spenser entreats his lover to behold his `inward selfe`. Like Sidney, Spenser`s apparent expression of inwardness is intermingled with vehement denials of insincerity, flattery and ulterior motives. Sidney`s speaker harbours a `loathing` for flattery (28) and claims that `my words set forth my mind` (44), whilst Spenser`s speaker is well aware of `poysoned words`, claiming to have `written with tears in harts close bleeding book` (1). The emphasis on the sincere expression is not confined to these two sonnet sequences alone. The sentiment expressed in the `white sincerity` of John Donne`s La Corona is also present in his celebration of the fact that `glass should be as all confessing, and through-shine as I`. These three Renaissance sonneteers certainly profess to be as transparent as glass, the voice of sincerity. The question remains as to how far they are convincing.

Ostensibly, the strident theme of both poems is that of Reason triumphing over desire and purity over corruption. This is expressed through the idea of a redemptive, spiritual love. In sonnet 81 of Astrophil, Sidney talks of a `kiss, which souls, e`en souls, together ties`. Spenser`s sequence is filled with paradoxical descri ptions of `pure and chast desyr` (22) and `spotless pleasure` (65). Furthermore, Donne argues that `love`s not pure and abstract.being elemented too` (109), an image illustrated in a series of beautiful paradoxes such as `lovers` hours eternity be` and `love.makes one little room an everywhere`, whereby the limitations of the physical universe are subjected to the mysteries of the spiritual world. These poets seek to depict a physical passion as reconcilable with the `sweet sovereignty` of Reason - a sincere mission, and a sincere message. However, the extent to which they succeed, and thus the extent of their sincerity, is questionable. For each image of spiritual love, there is an undercutting image of violent, destructive love. In Astrophil and Stella, love is cupid`s `fine pointed dart` (20) with `sharp arrows` (31) and we see Cupid `in Mars` livery` (53). Spenser repeatedly writes of the love which `pierces` (39) with `darts and wanton wings` (4) in Amoretti. The violent images in both poems would still be compatible with the sincere profession of a spiritually pure love, if it were not for the implicit desire for this darker element of love. Astrophil implores: `spare me not thy cruel shot` (43), growing accustomed to the `sharp desire in my heart` (49). Although he ostensibly dismisses desire in sonnet 71, he undermines himself in the same sonnet: `desire still cries give me some food`. Dark desire is more muted in Spenser. The more detached tone of Amoretti and the fact that it ends in fulfilment makes it a stronger contender for the sincere expression of a high, spiritual love. Nevertheless, even in lines such as `she doth traine me with her looks`, this word not so much in the sense of being educated and disciplined as in the sense of leading him on, to `sustain the paradox that her eyes both entice and instruct` (21) . Far from having the ordered souls that they allegedly aspire to, both speakers embrace madness. Astrophil tells Love: `being blind by nature born, I gave thee my eyes` and is willing to `support that error` of love (28). He adopts a kind of amor fati in expression such as `I am given up for slave` (29). Although Spenser observes that `fondness (madness) it be for any being free to cover fetters, though they golden be`, he is `rapt with joy resembling heavenly madness` (39). Even if the madness appears `heavenly`, it is antithetical to the high rationality that is ostensibly praised throughout both sonnet sequences, suggesting that the sincerity of the poems` aspiration towards spiritual purity is undermined by a repressed desire for the more destructive elements of love.

The inner conflicts of Astrophil and Stella and Amoretti provide a strong case for the argument that these sonnet sequences succeed in their apparent attempt to sincerely express inwardness. However, as has been argued, there is a disparity between the ostensible assertion of Reason over Desire and the repressed impulses implicit in the imagery of destructive love throughout the sonnets. This already complicates the relationship between what the speaker professes at a superficial level, and what the language itself evokes. The sensual desires of these sonnets undercuts their ostensible moral agenda. However, it could still be argued that these poems are at least a sincere expression of the writers` internal world, even if that constitutes a disparity between the conscious profession of spiritual purity and the unconscious deviation from that aim. It is at this point, that the other challenges to sincerity in these sonnets must be explored: art as necessarily deceptive, irony, affected foolishness, melancholy or madness, and ulterior motives for writing of these ambitious poets.

The sonnet sequences of Sidney and Spenser are strewn with images of artifice and deception. As in Sidney`s Defence of Poesy, images of painting and portraiture abound in Astrophil and Stella, where, he seeks `fit words to paint the blackest face of woe` (1), so that he may `paint my hell` (3) and Stella sees `the very face of woe painted in my beclouded, stormy face` (45). Sidney spurns the `bravely mask`d` fancies of affected intellects (3) and differentiates himself from those poets who embellish their sentiments with tales of Jove, `broidered with bulls and swans, powdered with golden rain` (6) and those who use `the dictionary`s method` with affected alliteration `runnning in rattling rows` (15). He repeatedly alleges to simply require the name of Stella to sincerely express himself. However, even the images which he is spurning are expressed beautifully with their powdery `golden rain` of the flamboyant poets. Furthermore, the `golden chain` of the deceptive Orator is arguably not so different from the persuasive power of the poet (58). Spenser, similarly, spurns `fancies wonderment` which is liable to mislead reason (30) and the `sweet illusion` of the beloved`s appearance. However, the language of entrapment and deception again is beautiful, with a `net of gold` equating to her hair in sonnet 57 and `golden hooks` to her appearance in sonnet 47.

The criticism of artifice, from within the artificial world of poetry, has the effect of creating an ironic distance between the poet and the speaker in these sonnets. As Janet MacArthur notes, Sidney employs a masterful use of `irony and subtle manipulation of personae` . In drawing attention to the constructed illusion of sincerity within the sonnet, Sidney and Spenser create self-conscious art. Spenser goes as far as writing `such Art of eyes I never read in books` (21), knowing full well that we are reading this very line in a book. But where does this leave sincerity? Contrary to the ostensible professions of authenticity and inwardness, Spenser and Sidney become entirely divorced from the speaker, and the solemn doctrine of sincerity appears as little more than a game. Astrophil is right when he tells us `of my life I must riddle tell` (17). The speaker even distinguishes himself from the protagonist of the poem in saying `I am not I, I pity the tale of me` (45). However, it is through this distance that, paradoxically, sincerity may be achieved. Both poets lament the inadequacy of words in what Anne Ferry calls `the poet-lover`s struggle to write sincerely` . Astrophil laments the `weak proportion` of words (50) and asks `what ink is black enough to paint my woe?` whilst Spenser states that `the lovely pleasance.cannot expressed be by any art` in sonnet 17. Frustrated by the inadequacy and insincerity of words, the only way to even approach sincerity is arguably by embracing the limitations of insincere words.

Spenser and Sidney adopt two guises in the poem, which play with the idea of sincerity. The first of these is that of the fool. Sidney`s Astrophil is a `foolish wit` (34) for falling in love. We cannot help but laugh at him in his absurd jealousy of Stella`s sparrow, who rests in her bosom in sonnet 83. He has the same (equally hilarious) jealously of Stella`s dog later, who she kisses in sonnet 59. This tone of playfulness is also present in Astrophil`s amusing argument that Stella saying `no` twice is equivalent to `yes`, asking `to grammar, who says nay?` Here, Sidney appears to stand apart from the poem, laughing at himself in the foolish guise of Astrophil, in what Robert S. Miola calls his `deliberate element of self-parody` . As Anne Ferry notes, `Astrophil widens the distance between outward and inward experience`. In sonnet 54 of Amoretti, Spenser gives a striking illustration of this idea in the image of him performing `the pageants.disgysing diversely my troubled wits`, whilst Love sits in the audience, heartlessly watching and laughing at him. Like Sidney`s foolish Astrophil, he will occasionally adopt the `mask in myrth` too (54), which is merely another fleeting persona. Just as the guise of the fool is merely one of many adopted personas, the guise of the Renaissance melancholic is also framed in the language of deceit and insincerity. Spenser, in Amoretti, often changes his tone on the `stage` to `waile and make my woes a Tragedy`. Similarly Astrophil addresses `my friend, that oft saw through all my masks of woe` (69). This playfulness is reflected later in this period, when Hamlet`s `antic disposition` is extended to his `quintessence of dust` speech, given to the spying Rosencrantz and Gildenstern partly in mockery of fashionable Elizabethan melancholy.

Sidney and Spenser laugh at themselves in the guise of the fool, and mock themselves in the guise of the self-indulgent melancholic. The `sincere` authorial voice, if such a thing is possible, is obscured behind a series of masks. It appears that there is no place for sincerity in these sonnets on close inspection. However, in deliberately drawing attention to persona, masks, guises, and the deceptive nature of Art itself, these poets arguably come closer to true sincerity than they would through any other form of writing. As Charles Coffin writes of Donne:

`It is imperative to realise that Donne does not look at life through any one glass at a time his personality is prism-like, breaking up into a spectral pattern and diffusing over all else he thinks and feels the light that flows into him from one great experience of mind or body`

Through various personas, Renaissance sonneteers give a broad, kaleidoscopic vision of reality. Oscar Wilde wrote that `man is only himself when he is wearing a mask` and more recently, Alan Moore suggested that `artists use lies to tell the truth`. If identity can be viewed as something that we construct in the context of other people`s perception, then we are all performers. The greatest expression of sincerity is in the recognition of this fact. Spenser`s image of `this world`s theatre in which we stay` in sonnet 54 of Amoretti has a heritage in the Renaissance that grows from Erasmus` essay `In Praise of Folly` and flourishes into Shakespeare`s famous line `all the world`s a stage` in As You Like It. During the period in which the modern notion of individual identity was being born, these writers express the paradoxical wisdom of the world as a stage: the greatest sincerity is achieved through lies the greatest articulation of truth is in the language of untruth.