It was during the ten years preceding the publication of Webbe's
_Discourse_ (1586) that this controversy seems to have been hottest.
From the first, perhaps, it bulked more largely with the critics than
with the poets themselves. Certainly it allowed both poets and critics
sufficient leisure for the far more important controversy which has
left an enduring monument in Sidney's _Apologie for Poetrie_. [Footnote:
The most important pieces of Elizabethan criticism are:--

Gosson's _School of Abuse_, 1579.
Lodge's _Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays_, 1579(?).
Sidney's _Apologie for Poetrie_, 1580(?).
Webbe's _Discourse of English Poetrie_, 1586.
Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_, 1589.
Harington's _Apologie of Poetrie_, 1591.
Meres' _Palladis Tamia_, 1598.
Campion's _Observations in the Arte of English Poesie_, 1602.
Daniel's _Defence of Ryme_, 1603.]

The historical bearing of Sidney's treatise has been too commonly
overlooked. It forms, in truth, one move in the long struggle which
ended only with the restoration of Charles II.; or, to speak more
accurately, which has lasted, in a milder form, to the present day.
In its immediate object it was a reply to the Puritan assaults upon
the theatre; in its ultimate scope, a defence of imaginative art against
the suspicions with which men of high but narrow purpose have always,
consciously or unconsciously, tended to regard it. It is a noble plea
for liberty, directed no less against the unwilling scruples of
idealists, such as Plato or Rousseau, than against the ruthless bigotry
of practical moralists and religious partisans.