An early Sidney allusion

Abstract

IN ‘Some Unfamiliar Sidney Allusions’,1 Jackson Boswell and H. R. Woudhuysen quite rightly remark that ‘there are surprisingly few specific allusions to the main characters in the Arcadia during the period we are concerned with [pre 1640]’.2 As I pointed out in Notes and Queries, lvii (2010), 421–2, when I drew attention to a late 1620s allusion by Nicholas Oldisworth, literary manuscripts are more likely to be the source of references to Sidney and his works. This is confirmed by the discussion of Sidney in Greville’s A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney, composed some time between 1610 and 1614, and witnessed by four manuscripts: one formerly owned by the late Dr B. E. Juel-Jensen and recently acquired by the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Shropshire Archives MS 6001/295 (formerly Shrewsbury Public Library MS 295); Trinity College, Cambridge MSS R.7.32