Philip Sidney was in his early twenties when he wrote his 'Old' Arcadia for the amusement of his younger sister, the Countess of Pembroke. The book, which he called a trifle, and that triflingly handled, reflects their youthful vitality. The Old Arcadia tells a romantic story in a manner comparable to that of Shakespeare's early comedies. It is divided into five Acts, and abounds in lively speeches, dialogues, and quasi-dramatic tableaux. Two young princes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, disguise themselves as an Amazon and a shepherd to gain access to the Arcadian Princesses, who have been taken into semi-imprisonment by their father to avoid the dangers foretold by an oracle. As a vehicle for Sidney's prophetic ideas about English versification, the 'Old' Arcadia also includes over seventy poems in a wide variety of metres and genres. In clarity, symmetry, and coherence the 'Old' version is greatly superior both to the ambitious but unfinished 'New' Arcadia and the amalgamated, 'composite' version, a hybrid monster which Sidney himself never envisaged.
