ABSTRACT
The texts of Mary Sidney’s poems “To the Angell Spirit of the most excellent Sr Philip Sidney” and “The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda” 1 reveal evidence of neoplatonism. In this paper, spiritual elements in the poems of Mary Sidney will be analyzed, with particular emphasis on these neoplatonic influences. Although the influences of Calvinism and Protestant politics in the work of Mary Sidney aptly have been covered in the literature on the subject by Waller and others, 2 the neoplatonic style and content evident in her verse has been largely overlooked. In particular, the somewhat diffused but nevertheless clear influence of the fifteenth century Italian neoplatonist, Marsilio Ficino, merits further attention.
