Men Who Weep and Wail: Masculinity and Emotion in Sidney's New Arcadia

Abstract

This essay explores the topic of masculinity and emotion, which has generated a considerable amount of scholarly interest over the past decade, in relation to men who weep and wail in Sir Philip Sidney's New Arcadia (1593). Sidney's romance reflects shifting definitions of manhood toward the end of the sixteenth century when aristocratic men tended to define themselves less as warriors and more as humanists, statesmen, and emotionally expressive courtiers. He alludes to the increasing remoteness of the feudal ideal of the violent warrior by exposing the futility rather than glory of armed violence in some cases and by using the term “armor” in a figurative rather than literal sense. A number of men in the New Arcadia tell stories as well as fight and exhibit a broad range of emotions – desire, rage, pity, and grief. Thoughtful men of action who know when and where to cry are ideal in Sidney's romance.