A Defence of Poesie and Poems

Sidney's answer to a puritan attack on the stage, and the first substantial work of literary criticism in English. He argues that the poet, unlike the historian who is tied to what happened and the philosopher who deals in precepts nobody acts on, delivers a golden world instead of a brazen one, and moves people to virtue by delighting them first. Along the way he surveys the kinds of poetry, defends the drama while complaining that English playwrights observe neither the unities nor common sense, and assesses the state of English verse in his own day with some severity. A selection of his own poems follows, including the sonnets and the renunciation beginning "Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust".

Philip Sidney wrote the Defence about 1580 and died of a wound at Zutphen in 1586; it was printed in 1595, in two competing editions, one as An Apologie for Poetrie and one as The Defence of Poesie. This edition is the one Henry Morley prepared for Cassell's National Library, with his introduction.

This Bibliomancer edition presents the Defence and the poems complete.