ABSTRACT
Following publication of his translation of Philip Melanchthon’s Prayers in 1579, the scribe Richard Robinson noted that the volume was “Dedicated by mee to the Honorable vertuous and renowmed gent Mr. Philip Sydney esq. who gave me for his booke 4 Angels, and his Honorable Father Sir Henry Sydney Knight gave mee for his boke x s [10 shillings]” (Vogt 632; Brennan, Literary Patronage 13-18; Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney 195-203). This transaction exemplifies in its simplest form the patronage system that governed most kinds of literary production in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with an author dedicating his work to a social superior in hopes of reward. As Robinson’s complaints elsewhere in his accounts make clear, however, these hopes were often not fulfilled: gift exchanges can only imply obligation, not require it (Davis 3-14). That Henry and Philip Sidney responded generously to Robinson’s offerings demonstrates how seriously they took their patronage responsibilities. numerous other dedications and panegyrics reveal that the Sidneys, as well as their relatives the Dudleys and the Herberts, played prominent roles in the system of literary patronage. Philip Sidney, his uncle Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, and his nephew William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, were all honored by contemporaries as reincarnations of Maecenas, the famously generous patron of poetry in Augustan Rome (Rosenberg 203; Brennan, Literary Patronage 38, 150, 162). Philip received about forty dedications of printed and manuscript books, as well as numerous panegyric celebrations after his death (Williams, Index; Woudhuysen, ODNB; Brennan and Kinnamon, Sidney Chronology); Leicester was the dedicatee of over a hundred works (Rosenberg 355-62). The Herberts were celebrated by almost 250 writers, with Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, earning more dedications than any other woman of her era, excluding only royalty and her cousin the Countess of Bedford, and her son William more than any other peer of his time (Williams, “Literary Patronesses” 366; Brennan, Literary Patronage xii). Henry Sidney, Robert Sidney, first earl of Leicester, Robert Sidney, second earl of Leicester, Philip Herbert, fourth earl of Pembroke, and Lady Mary Wroth all received dedications, and even less prominent family members such as Mary Dudley Sidney, Barbara gamage Sidney, Frances Walsingham Sidney, elizabeth Sidney Manners, Dorothy Percy Sidney, and Katherine Sidney Mansell garnered tributes (Williams, Index; Brennan and Kinnamon, Sidney Chronology; see also Levin and Medici ARC 1:3, ioppolo ARC 1:6, and Hannay ARC 1:8).
