ABSTRACT
In many ways, Katherine Philips's poetry exemplifies the most extravagant claims of early modern friendship. This chapter argues that Philips's reshaping of amicitia through gender also provides a means to reconsider the theoretical basis of monarchic power. The chapter considers Philips's explicit discussions of multiple friendships. In the rhetoric of amicitia perfecta, multiple friendships ought not to exist, or at least cannot attain the status of the highest friendships between a perfectly matched pair. This chapter discusses Philips's political imagination, particularly that of James Tyrrell, whose own writings challenge patriarchalism. The complicated calculus of literary allusion in 'A Dialogue of Friendship Multiplyed' provides an answer that begins to map the fraught interrelations of gender and political form in Philips's appropriation of amicitia for women. The chapter suggests that Philips's allusion to Algernon Sidney relates to her rejection of a patriarchally based monarchy for one founded on the consent of a group.
