You knew—who knew not Astrophil?

This line is the opening of an elegiac poem traditionally attributed to Matthew Roydon, written on the death of Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586). “Astrophil” was Sidney’s poetic persona in his sonnet sequence *Astrophil and Stella*, and the poem addresses the widespread public grief that followed Sidney’s death from wounds received at the Battle of Zutphen. The rhetorical question “who knew not Astrophil?” signals Sidney’s exceptional fame among contemporaries—both as a courtly figure and as a celebrated writer—while also framing the poem as a communal lament rather than a private one.

The line uses a pointed rhetorical question to assert that “Astrophil” (Sidney) was universally known and admired: to have *not* known him would be the exception. By invoking Sidney’s literary alter ego rather than his proper name, the speaker fuses the man with his poetic identity, implying that Sidney’s cultural presence was inseparable from his writing. The dash after “knew” creates a pause that mimics a catch in the voice, heightening the elegiac tone. The effect is to elevate Sidney into a near-mythic figure whose loss is presented as a shared national and literary bereavement.