The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as The Arcadia is by far Sir Philip Sidney's most ambitious work. It was as significant in its own way as his sonnets. The work is a romance that combines pastoral elements with a mood derived from the Hellenistic model of Heliodorus. In the work, that is, a highly idealized version of the shepherd's life adjoins (not always naturally) with stories of jousts, political treachery, kidnappings, battles, and rapes. As published in the sixteenth century, the narrative follows the Greek model: stories are nested within each other, and different story-lines are intertwined. The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance... Several persons named Heliodorus are known to us from ancient times, the best known of which is Heliodorus of Emesa, author of the novel Aethiopica. ...

The work enjoyed great popularity for more than a century after its publication. William Shakespeare borrowed from it for the Gloucester subplot of King Lear; parts of it were also dramatized by John Day and James Shirley. According to a widely-told story, Charles I quoted lines from the book, an excerpt termed "Pamela's Prayer" , from a prayer of the heroine Pamela, as he mounted the scaffold to be executed; Samuel Richardson named the heroine of his first novel after Sidney's Pamela. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Jump to: navigation, search King Lear and the Fool in the Storm by William Dyce (1806-1864) King Lear is generally regarded as one of William Shakespeares greatest tragedies. ... Jump to: navigation, search There have been several well-known people called John Day: John Day (fl. ... James Shirley (or Sherley) (September 1596 - October 29, 1666), was an English dramatist. ... The name Charles I is used to refer to numerous persons in history: Kings: Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland Charles I of France (also known as Charles the Bald) Charles I of Spain (also known as Charles V of the German Empire) Charles I of Romania Charles I... Samuel Richardson (August 19, 1689 – July 4, 1761) was a major eighteenth-century writer best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753). ...

Arcadia exists in two significantly different versions. Sidney wrote an early version during a stay at Mary Herbert's house; this version is narrated in a straightforward, sequential manner. Later, Sidney began to revise the work on a more ambitious plan. He completed most of the first three books, but the project was unfinished at the time of his death. After a publication of the first three books sparked interest, the extant version was fleshed out with material from the first version.