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 amalgamat
