Brother-Sister Act
Illustration
Stories
I say, “You are gods,
children of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, you shall die like mortals
and fall like any prince….” (vv. 6-7)
There have been any number of brother-sister acts that achieved a measure of fame. Take the Carpenters, famed for their singing, musicianship, and songwriting skills. Also worthy of mention are John and Joan Cusack who have acted together in over sixteen films.
Nowadays, not many people have heard of Philip (1554-1586) and Mary (1561-1621) Sidney, but four centuries ago this brother-sister act lit up literary England with their joint translation of the biblical Psalms into verse. Although they are little known today, they were writing royalty in their time. They were not actually born into nobility, but they were connected well enough to be socially visible.
At one point Philip, following a tour of European society, seemed destined for great things. His poetry, which had circulated privately among people who mattered, raised his reputation. He became royal cupbearer in the court of Queen Elizabeth I in 1576, and served as ambassador in an important diplomatic mission the following year, but his fortunes began to fail when he backed the wrong horse in a controversy about the queen’s possible marriage while arguing with a well-connected member of royalty over who had priority at a tennis court. However, his fortunes seemed to change when he married the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, the head of the queen’s spy network. Alas, while fighting heroically in the 1586 war against the Netherlands, he took a bullet in the leg which led to infection, gangrene, and death some weeks later, when he was only 32.
His sister Mary and he were very close, and both shared an interest in reading and writing poetry. In 1577, at the age of 16, she married Henry Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, a man thirty years her senior, and having survived the dangers of childbirth and produced heirs, seems to have been left alone in order to pursue her artistic interests. Mary Sidney Herbert was extraordinary well-educated for her day, despite the handicap of being a woman in a male-dominated era. She was fluent in several languages as well as in literature and the Bible. She made it her task to see to the publication of her late brother’s poetical works, cementing his already considerable literary reputation, but she also took it upon herself to finish what became one of the greatest literary works of that era.
Before his death, Philip had begun to translate the Psalms into English poetry. It was after all an era of the first great English translations of the Bible. William Tyndale’s translations of the New Testament and selected portions of the Old Testament, after all, heavily influenced Matthew Coverdale’s Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishop’s Bible, and the extremely popular Geneva Bible. But though the Psalms were understood to be poetry, it was not yet clear to the translators how Hebrew poetry worked, and so they were translated into prose.
However, there were those who were attempting to adapt these translations into metrical verse so they could be sung in worship. Some of these were more successful than others, but Philip attempted to translate the Psalms into true poetry, and moreover, to use a different meter and rhyme scheme for each psalm.
When he died, Philip had only completed a draft if the first 41 psalms. Mary took over the project, rewriting her brother’s work, and finishing the rest. Since Psalm 119, the longest of the psalms, is divided into twenty-two distinct and separate poems, one for each of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, she actually ended up using 172 different meters and stanzas. Only once is a form repeated. In addition, some of her psalms were arranged to create shapes, like angel’s wings.
Because in her day printers sometimes changed poems in order to fit them on the page, Mary intentionally did not allow the psalms to be printed in her lifetime. She wanted to keep control of the work. Instead, the poems circulated among readers in manuscripts copied out by hand.
Mary’s literary reputation was well-established through other works of her hand, including both poetry and drama. But the great poets of her age, including John Donne, praised the Sidney’s work their work. In his tribute he wrote:
Two, by their bloods, and by thy Spirit one;
A brother and a sister, made by thee
The organ, where thou art the harmony.
He praised their groundbreaking work, noting:
Both told us what, and taught us how to do.
Other poets, including George Herbert and John Milton, styled their own adaptations of the psalms after her work.
Today’s lectionary readings include Psalm 82, addressed to the “gods.” The psalmist used the term “gods” to indicate both members of the heavenly court as well as earthly kings, which Israel’s neighbors in ancient times were believed to have been descended from the gods. Mary used the term to specially charge kings and queens, believed in her day to have been appointed by God, to provide equal justice to all. Mary emphasized the accusatory nature of this psalm, directed at royalty who fail to uphold the poor.
Where poor men plead at princes’ bar,
Who gods (as God’s vicegerents) are;
The God of Gods hath his tribunal plight,
Adjudging right
Both to the judge, and judged wight.
‘How long will ye just doom neglect?
How long’, saith he, ‘bad men respect?
You should his own unto the helpless give,
The poor relieve,
Ease him with right, whom wrong doth grieve.
Mary Sidney herself died in 1621, of small pox. The literary legacy of both her and her brother Philip has risen in recent years as the Sidney Psalter has become better known.
(Want to know more. The Sidney Psalter is available online. One helpful book is The Sidney Psalter: The Psalms of Sir Philip and Mary Sidney, edited with an Introduction and Notes by Hannibal Hamlin, Michael G Brennan, Margaret P Hannay, and Noel J. Kinnamon, Oxford University Press, 2009.)
children of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, you shall die like mortals
and fall like any prince….” (vv. 6-7)
There have been any number of brother-sister acts that achieved a measure of fame. Take the Carpenters, famed for their singing, musicianship, and songwriting skills. Also worthy of mention are John and Joan Cusack who have acted together in over sixteen films.
Nowadays, not many people have heard of Philip (1554-1586) and Mary (1561-1621) Sidney, but four centuries ago this brother-sister act lit up literary England with their joint translation of the biblical Psalms into verse. Although they are little known today, they were writing royalty in their time. They were not actually born into nobility, but they were connected well enough to be socially visible.
At one point Philip, following a tour of European society, seemed destined for great things. His poetry, which had circulated privately among people who mattered, raised his reputation. He became royal cupbearer in the court of Queen Elizabeth I in 1576, and served as ambassador in an important diplomatic mission the following year, but his fortunes began to fail when he backed the wrong horse in a controversy about the queen’s possible marriage while arguing with a well-connected member of royalty over who had priority at a tennis court. However, his fortunes seemed to change when he married the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, the head of the queen’s spy network. Alas, while fighting heroically in the 1586 war against the Netherlands, he took a bullet in the leg which led to infection, gangrene, and death some weeks later, when he was only 32.
His sister Mary and he were very close, and both shared an interest in reading and writing poetry. In 1577, at the age of 16, she married Henry Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, a man thirty years her senior, and having survived the dangers of childbirth and produced heirs, seems to have been left alone in order to pursue her artistic interests. Mary Sidney Herbert was extraordinary well-educated for her day, despite the handicap of being a woman in a male-dominated era. She was fluent in several languages as well as in literature and the Bible. She made it her task to see to the publication of her late brother’s poetical works, cementing his already considerable literary reputation, but she also took it upon herself to finish what became one of the greatest literary works of that era.
Before his death, Philip had begun to translate the Psalms into English poetry. It was after all an era of the first great English translations of the Bible. William Tyndale’s translations of the New Testament and selected portions of the Old Testament, after all, heavily influenced Matthew Coverdale’s Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishop’s Bible, and the extremely popular Geneva Bible. But though the Psalms were understood to be poetry, it was not yet clear to the translators how Hebrew poetry worked, and so they were translated into prose.
However, there were those who were attempting to adapt these translations into metrical verse so they could be sung in worship. Some of these were more successful than others, but Philip attempted to translate the Psalms into true poetry, and moreover, to use a different meter and rhyme scheme for each psalm.
When he died, Philip had only completed a draft if the first 41 psalms. Mary took over the project, rewriting her brother’s work, and finishing the rest. Since Psalm 119, the longest of the psalms, is divided into twenty-two distinct and separate poems, one for each of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, she actually ended up using 172 different meters and stanzas. Only once is a form repeated. In addition, some of her psalms were arranged to create shapes, like angel’s wings.
Because in her day printers sometimes changed poems in order to fit them on the page, Mary intentionally did not allow the psalms to be printed in her lifetime. She wanted to keep control of the work. Instead, the poems circulated among readers in manuscripts copied out by hand.
Mary’s literary reputation was well-established through other works of her hand, including both poetry and drama. But the great poets of her age, including John Donne, praised the Sidney’s work their work. In his tribute he wrote:
Two, by their bloods, and by thy Spirit one;
A brother and a sister, made by thee
The organ, where thou art the harmony.
He praised their groundbreaking work, noting:
Both told us what, and taught us how to do.
Other poets, including George Herbert and John Milton, styled their own adaptations of the psalms after her work.
Today’s lectionary readings include Psalm 82, addressed to the “gods.” The psalmist used the term “gods” to indicate both members of the heavenly court as well as earthly kings, which Israel’s neighbors in ancient times were believed to have been descended from the gods. Mary used the term to specially charge kings and queens, believed in her day to have been appointed by God, to provide equal justice to all. Mary emphasized the accusatory nature of this psalm, directed at royalty who fail to uphold the poor.
Where poor men plead at princes’ bar,
Who gods (as God’s vicegerents) are;
The God of Gods hath his tribunal plight,
Adjudging right
Both to the judge, and judged wight.
‘How long will ye just doom neglect?
How long’, saith he, ‘bad men respect?
You should his own unto the helpless give,
The poor relieve,
Ease him with right, whom wrong doth grieve.
Mary Sidney herself died in 1621, of small pox. The literary legacy of both her and her brother Philip has risen in recent years as the Sidney Psalter has become better known.
(Want to know more. The Sidney Psalter is available online. One helpful book is The Sidney Psalter: The Psalms of Sir Philip and Mary Sidney, edited with an Introduction and Notes by Hannibal Hamlin, Michael G Brennan, Margaret P Hannay, and Noel J. Kinnamon, Oxford University Press, 2009.)
