ABSTRACT
PATRONAGE was inevitably a discreet arrangement in the late sixteenth century as at other times. 1 A writer’s description of It obligations attendant on his patron’s gift would reveal rank ingratitude; a patron’s description of his own generosity would betray an unthinkable lack of propriety. Some of the details of the relationship, such as how long it would last, were probably left unspoken even between the concerned parties. Thus, important questions such as “What did authors actually receive?” “What determined which authors were patronized?” “How free were authors to write as they wished, and how much did they have to cater to what their patrons wanted?” are met with silence. Much of what has been written on the subject of Sidney patronage is based on the adulatory dedications of hopeful poets or the embittered complaints of disappointed ones, both untrustworthy because the dedications are often the products of wish-fulfillment (what needy author would not praise someone who might give him money?), while complaints, like Spenser’s “Mecoenas is yclad in clay,” are often too vague to be informative. With the absence of facts or, worse, the presence of misleading ones, the imagination of literary historians is apt to compensate, idealizing the Sidneys’ patronage as a chivalric remnant of a disappearing aristocratic obligation to foster poets. The Countess of Pembroke’s patronage has been especially exaggerated. 2
