Sidney's treatment of the theme of virtue in Arcadia

Abstract

Although Sidney revised his original Arcadia he did not change his intentions to present an ideal of public and private virtue. It is, therefore, possible to analyse this in the composite Arcadia of Sidney's unfinished revision, completed by the last three books, also slightly revised, of the original version.Sidney moralises heroic pastoral romance so that the formal structure is also organic to his central purpose. Primarily pastoral both represents an ideal life whose maintenance is conditional on wise government, and symbolises qualities essential to virtue at all social levels. Arcadia reflects the contemporary adaptation of medieval chivalry to the changing needs of society. Although chivalric pageantry and ethics govern much of the action, its impractical extremes are mocked.The rationale of virtue in Arcadia is order. As in the love episodes Sidney shows that this is achieved in the individual by a co-operation of reason and passion necessary for moral health, so he shows that in the state it consists in the reasonable co-operation of king and people for their common good. These public and private aspects of virtue clash in the trial scene, which stresses the need for an impersonal maintenance of justice in the interests of public order, but also reflects on the fallibility of that very reason which is instrumental in understanding and maintaining virtue. In the last analysis reason gives way to religious faith. Human virtue reflects the order of a divine system by which it will finally bevindicated. The plot illustrates a conception of providence working behind the accidents of fortune for human good, and Pamela argues a rational, philosophical justification for a faith in this providence which, although it supersedes human reason, is the mainspring of all virtuous action.