Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) was a well-loved courtier, soldier, and poet, deeply mourned by the English people after his death in battle at the age of thirty-two. His father was Sir Henry Sidney, three times governor of Ireland. Philip Sidney attended Shrewsbury School, where he was admired for his grace and maturity, and then Oxford. His staunch Protestantism was reinforced by having witnessed massacres of Protestants in France in 1572.

After his travels, Sidney returned to England where he was a courtier and patron of the arts, and in particular of Edmund Spenser, who dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to him. Later, in disfavor with the queen, Sidney retired to Wilton and wrote his pastoral prose work, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, as well as sonnets and literary criticism. In his "Defense of Poesy [Poetry]," Sidney argued that poets can actually improve upon nature by his creating worlds better than the real one. Sidney's argument shows clearly the English Renaissance faith in human abilities and esteem for poetic art.

In the cause of Protestantism, Sidney went to the Low Countries in 1585 as a volunteer in the war against Spain. There he died heroically. Sidney never published his work himself, though today it is considered to be among the most lovely and lyrical in the English language.