Astrophil and Stella Sonnet 1 Sir Philip Sydney was one of the greatest poets of the Elizabethan age Astrophil and Stella the first sonnet of the Astrophil and Stella sequence which containes 108 sonnets and 11 songs was written in the 1580s The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto word which means little song As a genre sonnet can be defined as a fourteen lined lyric poem written in iambic pentameter It means that the whole work consists of fourteen lines and there are five feet in every