ABSTRACT
Tyranny has attracted a great deal of attention in studies of The New Arcadia, but little has been written about the tyrants who populate the Defence in such numbers. Historical truth is simply inadequate, given the foolishness of the world, to the demands of historical life. It is useful to begin with renewed attention to how Sidney configures the relationship between poetry and history in his Defence since that relationship is crucial for understanding his preoccupation with tyranny in the text as a whole and for reevaluating the connection between his poetics and his politics. The Roman imperial allusion secures a heightened grandeur and significance for the contemporary event as an obvious parallel to Huguenot interpretations of the Massacre. Scholars from Robert Hoopes to R. S. White have written extensively about the pervasive influence of natural law arguments upon an early modern English culture. Tyrannicide is both the natural response and the true obligation of a free people.
