Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
John Sheffield
Sir Philip Sidney
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
John Sheffield, who became the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, lived from 8 September 1647 to 24 February 1721, though older records occasionally create uncertainty about dates because of the calendar conventions and genealogical habits of the period. He was a nobleman, naval officer, soldier, courtier, politician, patron, critic, playwright, memoirist, and poet. Such a catalogue of roles can make him seem les…
“Often for the king, always for the public good.”
In the pantheon of Elizabethan literature, few figures embody the Renaissance ideal as completely as Sir Philip Sidney. Born into privilege on November 30, 1554, at Penshurst Place in Kent, Sidney would live only thirty-one years, yet his brief existence would illuminate the literary landscape of England with such brilliance that his influence continues to resonate more than four centuries after his death. His life r…
“There is no art delivered to mankind that hath not the works of nature for his principal object.”
About 42 km separate London, England from Penshurst Place, Kent, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
John Sheffield: first duke of buckingham, naval officer, battle of solebay, order of the garter, essay on satire, an essay upon poetry, restoration england, james duke of york. Sir Philip Sidney: penshurst place, battle of zutphen, fulke greville, the countess of pembroke's arcadia, old arcadia, new arcadia, astrophil and stella, robert dudley.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
John Sheffield: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Sir Philip Sidney: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.
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