ABSTRACT
At the start of her essay on ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia’ Virginia Woolf muses on the succession of readers and readings that have entered Sidney’s great volumes: We like to summon before us the ghosts of those old readers .who have read their Arcadia from this very copy - Richard Porter, reading with the splendours of the Elizabethans in his eyes; Lucy Baxter, reading in the licentious days of the Restoration; Thos. Hake, still reading, though now the eighteenth century has dawned with a distinction that shows itself in the upright elegance of his signature. Each has read differently, with the insight and the blindness of his own generation. Our reading will be equally partial. In 1930 we shall miss a great deal that was obvious to 1655; we shall see some things that the eighteenth century ignored. But let us keep up the long succession of readers; let us in our turn bring the insight and the blindness of our own generation to bear upon the ‘Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia\ and so pass it on to our successors.
