The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
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Edition from Project Gutenberg. Public-domain rules differ by country, so check yours before downloading.
- First published
- 1590
- Pages
- 611Digital editionReference edition
- Reading time
- About 12 hours25 half-hour sittings
- Language
- English
- Reading difficulty
- 9 of 10
A little about the story
Two young princes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, are shipwrecked in Arcadia. There they fall in love with two princesses whose father has hidden his family away to escape a prophecy. To get close to them, one prince disguises himself as an Amazon woman and the other as a shepherd.
Philip Sidney’s long prose romance is full of disguises, battles, love poetry and political intrigue. It was one of the most popular books in Elizabethan England, and Shakespeare borrowed from it. It’s demanding but rich.
Is it for you?
You’ll enjoy it if you like
- Elizabethan literature
- romance, disguise and adventure
- the sources Shakespeare used
Maybe not if you want an easy read. The language is ornate.
Things You May Not Know About The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
- Written for his sister. Sidney wrote it for his sister, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.
- Unfinished. Sidney died in 1586 while revising it, after a battle wound.
- Shakespeare borrowed. The Gloucester subplot in King Lear comes from an episode in the Arcadia.
- Poems inside. The prose is broken up by many songs and poems.
About this edition
Read the Project Gutenberg source record for edition details. The Freebookia PDF has 611 pages. The EPUB adjusts to your reading settings.
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