Astrophil and Stella is a sequence of sonnets and songs written by Sir Philip Sidney, the Elizabethan poet, courtier and soldier. It details the frustrated love of Astrophil (whose name means "star-lover") for his beloved Stella (whose name means "star"). The first of the famous English sonnet sequences, Astrophel and Stella influenced later writers like Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. In it, Sidney partially nativised the key features of his Italian model, Petrarch, which served to free the English sonnet from the strict rhyming requirements of the Italian form. - Summary by Alan Mapstone

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