ABSTRACT
H. R. Woudhuysen has argued that Philip Sidney, working alongside other writers linked to the Earl of Leicester such as Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey, pioneered 'golden age' Elizabethan literature as a patriotic attempt to rival French cultural activity encouraged by Elizabeth's suitor the Duke of Alencon. This chapter offers, as a footnote to Woudhuysen's thesis, the suggestion that the writings of Oxford and his associates – supporters of Alencon's suit – provided the 'Leicestrian' interest with an important literary stimulus. Antagonism between Sidney and Oxford reached its height in 1579 in the famous 'tennis court quarrel'. The centrality of the writings of Oxford and his associates to Elizabethan court literature has been demonstrated by Steven W. May. In the early years of Elizabeth's reign, courtier poetry had focused on religious and moral themes. At Elizabeth's court in the 1570s the promise of a French marriage would have authorised the writing of English poetry based on neo-Petrarchist French models.
