What kind of love is portrayed in Sir Philip Sidney’s poem “Loving in Truth”?

Or, Discuss the nature of love the speaker presents in Sidney’s poem “Loving in Truth”.

The love the speaker advocates in Sidney’s poem “Loving in Truth” is genuine and pure love. It’s a spontaneous feeling which comes
from inside one’s heart. The love he talks about in the poem is not feigned or imitated, but certain and unconditional.

The kind of love portrayed here is mainly romantic love. We see that the speaker is passionately in love with his beloved lady. But she
doesn’t reciprocate his love. That is why the speaker tries to express his pain in his verse, thinking that the lady might take some pity
on him knowing his pain. But the speaker fails to find appropriate words to express his feelings. He vainly tries to borrow words from
other poets’ works. And finally he realises that true poetic inspiration comes from the core of heart.

The poet here wants to convey the message that the expression of our feelings like love and pain should come spontaneously from
inside the heart. Only then it can be true. The title of the sonnet “Loving in Truth” also adds to the same message that one’s feeling
of love should be real or genuine.

Sonnet No. 1 (Loving in Truth), taken from Astrophil and Stella, is modeled on the Petrarchan sonnet. It deals with the single subject
(i.e. the lover’s hopeless love for his beloved) and is visible in two parts- the octave and the sestet. The octave describes the lover’s
attempt to entertain the wits of his beloved by writing a poem. The sestet exhibits the difficulties that he faces to fulfill his desire.

Summary of Loving in Truth

My love being sincere, I wanted to show it to my beloved through the medium of verse so that my dear beloved might get some
pleasure out of my product of pain. Pleasure might induce her to read my poem from which she would come to know of my sorrow
arising out of her rejection of me. Sorrow might win her sympathy which in its turn might help me obtain her grace (=favour). This
being the case, I searched for fit words so that I could draw the face of my misery in the blackest way. I began to study fine inventions
(=original ideas and expressions, novel imagery and striking figures of speech) from others’ works with a view to entertaining (=giving
delight to) her wits (=intelligence) therewith (=with these) after using them in my own poem. I also turned over others’ pages to see
whether I could procure there from (=from them) some inspiration that would help me to produce some lively and productive ideas
in my dry (without ideas) head: I did this in the same way a man with a ‘sun-burnt brain’ turned (=moved) from the leaves of one tree
to those of another to test if some fresh and fruitful showers would fall on his head.

But words began to come out in a halting manner as a result of my study, and they needed support from invention. Unfortunately
invention, which preferred spontaneity, avoided the company of study which comprised of effort and imitation. It happened in the
same way a child runs away for fear of a stepmother’s blows. I also felt uneasy when, advised by study, I wanted to imitate and use
others’ feet (=metrical patterns) in my poem. This was like the uncomfortable experience of one who, accustomed to walking over a
lonely place, suddenly heard the sound of strangers’ footsteps from behind. So I fell into a distressing situation and felt like a
pregnant woman suffering from labour although unable to cause the delivery of her child. I held between the teeth my pen which
like a boy who staying away from school without permission, shirked its duty of composition. Seeing me in such a hopeless state my
Muse (=goddess of poetry) called me a fool and advised me to write about the feelings of my heart (instead of fruitlessly trying to
study and imitate others’ poetic creations).

Loving in Truth Analysis

A Record of Hopeless Love: Sonnet No.1 (Loving in truth) is taken from Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence entitled Astrophil and
Stella (composed in 1582 but not printed until 1591). Consisting of 108 sonnets and 11 songs, the work provides an excellent record
of the poet’s hopeless love for Penelope Rich ‘in terms which combine traditional Petrarchan conceits with considerable individuality
expression and feeling’.

The title literally means the love of Astrophil (‘star-lover’: name of a plant having clusters of small white star-like flowers) for Stella
(‘star’) the love of an earthly object for a distant one. Though Sidney was betrothed to Penelope Devereux, the marriage did not take
place, one of the reasons being Sidney’s indifference. Later when she was married to Lord Rich, he suddenly realized his deep love for
her and fruitlessly tried to obtain love from her. The sonnet sequence describes the various moods of the lover and his efforts to win
back his former beloved.

Sonnet No.1 is not only a record the lover’s desperate attempt to obtain her favour but also an account describing the difficulty one
faces while writing a poem. It was not before the last line when the difficulty was resolved through the Muse’s advice. Showing of
Love ‘in Verse’: The lover wants to show his love ‘in verse’. This is a sixteenth-century rhetorical strategy which aims more to
persuade and impress than to reflect sincerity and naturalness. He chooses verse rather than bare prose as the former is a language
of emotion having scope to adorn his thoughts with novel imagery and striking figures of speech. In addition this would give him an
opportunity to write about the art of writing love poems rather than the fact of writing directly about love.

The lover is not willing to let his beloved know of his real intention straightway. He rather has recourse to a cumbrous process by
which he wants to reveal his true purpose. He believes that if he tells her directly about his sorrow and unhappiness on account of
her non-response to his love appeals there is every possibility of her paying no heed to these. So he thinks of a clever ploy (=tactic;
trick) which has some chance of success. He plans of writing a poem which will be based on his own sorrow and suffering. It being a
product of art, his poem is likely to give her pleasure. He expects that pleasure might make her read his poem and reading might
make her know of his real state. Knowledge might win pity (sympathy) from her and pity might cause him to obtain her ‘grace’
(=favour). This faint and distant possibility of getting favour from the beloved, thus, makes the lover ready to write a poem in which
he intends to paint his distress in the darkest way, without caring whether his pain in this way will be more exaggerated than real.
This periphrastic way of revealing his real intention to his beloved serves a number of purposes: this helps to unravel the complex
and cavernous nature of the feminine heart; at the same time this enables the poet to launch an indirect attack on the artificial
nature and logic-chopping habit of the contemporary sonneteers to whom sonnet writing was more a literary exercise than an
occasion for showing their personal emotions and individual ways of expression.

Philip Sidney opens this first sonnet Loving in Truth by explaining his motivation for composing the sonnet sequence. He believes that
if his beloved were to read the sonnets, she would eventually return his affection. He argues that her pleasure in his pain would cause
her to read his sonnets, and her reading of the sonnets would allow her to know the extent of his affection, which might make her pity
the author’s situation-and this pity may transform into grace and love.

The author also describes the difficulties he faces in composing the sonnet sequence ( a collection of sonnets). He has struggled hard
to express the pain and misery of his emotions and has tried to look at other poets’ works in order to gain inspiration. Still, he has been
unsuccessful. Finally, the author has realized that the only way to fully express his love for Stella in his poetry is to write from his
heart.

The central theme of this sonnet is love. Here the poet argues to find inspiration for his verse to please his ladylove Stella. The poet
seeks to show her the depth of his love through his poetry, written in her praise. In order to express this, he is searching for an
appropriate picture of his deep pang of love. But his frantic search for his inspiration from other poets and from other devices’ proves
to be in vain. Finally, he realizes the secret of his poetic inspiration which lies in his heart, and in no sophisticated invention or labored
imitation, and the port should write the poem by utilizing the feelings that spring from his heart.

This sonnet Loving in Truth is taken from Astrophel and Stella, a sonnet sequence.

In English sonnets, Iambic pentameter is a normal meter. But here Sidney followed lambic hexameter as his meter in the sonnet. The
rhyme scheme is ab ab ab ab cd cd ee.