The Countess of Pembroke as a Spenserian Poet

EDMUND SPENSER SOUGHT THE PATRONAGE of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, after the death of her famous brother Sir Philip Sidney, whom he termed “the hope of all learned men, and the Patron of my young Muses.” ¹ Unlike most poet/patron relationships, however, the debt may have been mutual, for she deliberately assumes a stance as a Spenserian poet in her diction and poetic style, in her use of Spenserian characters in “Astrea,” and in allusions to The Faerie Queene in her Psalmes. Like the echoes in her verse of the words of Thomas Wyatt and particularly of her brother Philip, her allusions to Spenser reveal the Countess of Pembroke attempting to position herself not on the margins, but in the center of the English poetic tradition.