The Silent Woman was acted in 1609. None of the writings of Sir Philip Sidney was published during his lifetime. He ordered his poems to be burnt after his death. Some survived, perhaps through copies, but if his translation of certain Psalms into verse had been destroyed completely there would have been no loss to English literature. Even Milton failed miserably in the impossible task of versifying them.
Poor poetry is fallen to be the laughing stock of children.
And those sweet wits which wont the like to frame Are now despised and made a laughing stock. No period of history has been misjudged to a greater extent, and the learned professors of literature and history are guilty of misleading the public through their ignorance. The current impression that the spacious times of great Elizabeth were a period of high moral and intellectual development is not endorsed by history, nor is it deducible from the evidence of men who were then living. The period is not confined to that of Queen Elizabeth, it extended a long time after.