Shipwrecks, gory battle scenes, cross-dressing, toxic relationships, abduction, torture (psychological and physical), comical country bumpkins, and, of course, love and poetry –Sir Philip Sidney’s witty pastoral romance The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia is the classic that has it all in terms of entertainment factors. Modern readers mostly know Arcadia in its complete ‘old’ version, but it is the New Arcadia (published in 1590) that was the most influential and most widely imitated literary text of the sixteenth century. While preserving the basic plot – a ruler attempts to escape an alarming oracle by moving his family to the countryside and engaging in shepherd-cosplay until the arrival of two foreign princes triggers a chain of events leading to the fulfilment of the oracle – this version adds further narrative strands and introduces ambitious revisions that showcase Sidney’s stylistic brilliance as a prose writer. -- .