The Phoenix and the Turtle is an allegorical poem about the death of ideal love by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

. It is widely considered to be one of his most obscure works and has led to many conflicting interpretations. It has also been called "the first great published metaphysical poem

Metaphysical poets

The metaphysical poets is a term coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them, and whose work was characterized by inventiveness of metaphor...

". The title "The Phoenix and the Turtle" is a conventional label. As published, the poem was untitled.

Context

It was first published in 1601 as a supplement to a long poem by Robert Chester

Robert Chester (poet)

Robert Chester is the mysterious author of the poem Love's Martyr which was published in 1601 as the main poem in a collection which also included much shorter poems by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, George Chapman and John Marston, along with the anonymous "Vatum Chorus" and "Ignoto"...

, entitled Love's Martyr. The full title of Chester's book explains the content:

Love's Martyr: or Rosalins Complaint. Allegorically shadowing the truth of Loue, in the constant Fate of the Phoenix and Turtle. A Poeme enterlaced with much varietie and raritie; now first translated out of the venerable Italian Torquato Caeliano, by Robert Chester. With the true legend of famous King Arthur the last of the nine Worthies, being the first Essay of a new Brytish Poet: collected out of diuerse Authenticall Records. To these are added some new compositions of seuerall moderne Writers whose names are subscribed to their seuerall workes, vpon the first subiect viz. the Phoenix and Turtle.

The "turtle" in the title is the turtle dove

Turtle Dove

The European Turtle Dove , also known as Turtle Dove, is a member of the bird family Columbidae, which includes the doves and pigeons.-Distribution & Status:...

, not the shelled reptile

Turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...

. Chester prefaced his poem with a short dedication addressed to the phoenix and turtle-dove, traditional emblems of devoted love:

Phoenix of beautie, beauteous, Bird of any

To thee I do entitle all my labour,

More precious in mine eye by far then many

That feedst all earthly sences with thy savour:

Accept my home-writ praises of thy love,

And kind acceptance of thy Turtle-dove

Chester's main poem is a long allegory, incorporating the story of King Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

, in which the relationship between the birds is explored, and its symbolism articulated. It is followed by a brief collection of short poems by the "least and chiefest of our moderne writers, with their names sub-scribed to their particular workes". These include, in addition to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

, George Chapman

George Chapman

George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...

, John Marston

John Marston

John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...

 and the anonymous "Vatum Chorus" and "Ignoto". All use the same imagery.

Interpretations

In addition to an allegory of an ideal marriage, the poem can be seen as an elucidation of the relationship between truth and beauty, or of fulfilled love, in the context of Renaissance Neoplatonism. Shakespeare introduces a number of other birds, drawing on earlier literature about the "parliament of birds", to portray the death of the lovers as the loss of an ideal that can only be lamented.

Several attempts have been made to link the lovers of the poem to historical individuals:

John and Ursula Salusbury

Because Chester dedicated the main poem to Sir John Salusbury and his wife Ursula Stanley, it has been argued that all the poems in the collection, including Shakespeare's, also celebrate the couple. Salusbury was a courtier at the court of Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I of England

Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...

, and was a member of the powerful Salusbury Family

Salusbury Family

The Salusbury family is an Anglo-Welsh family notable for their social prominence, wealth, literary contributions and philanthropy. The family started a bank, Salusbury and Co., which later shut down during the Great Depression.-Rise to prominence:...

 of Wales. A difficulty with this view is the fact that the couple are known to have had ten children, but the poem refers to the relationship as a childless "married chastity". This seeming "error" is commented on elsewhere in the collection by John Marston

John Marston

John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...

. The identification of the Salusburys as the subject was first argued in detail by Carleton Brown in 1913.

Elizabeth and Essex

The theory that both Chester's and Shakespeare's poems were intended to refer to the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex was first proposed by A.B. Grossart in 1878, and was revived by William Matchett in 1965. Many authors who reject the identification of the lovers as Essex and Elizabeth nevertheless argue that the events of Essex's rebellion and execution in early 1601 may lie behind some of the more obscure symbolism in the poem and the others in the collection.

Catholic martyrs

A different interpretation is that the poem is a secretly Catholic eulogy. This argument is linked to claims that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic sympathiser

Shakespeare's religion

Knowledge of William Shakespeare's religion is important in understanding the man and his works because of the wealth of biblical and liturgical allusions, both Protestant and Catholic, in his writings and the hidden references to contemporary religious tensions that are claimed to be found in the...

. Clare Asquith

Clare Asquith

Clare Asquith, the Countess of Oxford and Asquith is an independent scholar and author of Shadowplay: the Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, which has posited that Shakespeare was a recusant Roman Catholic whose works contain code which was used by the Catholic underground,...

 has suggested that it commemorates the Jesuit martyrs Robert Southwell and Henry Walpole

Henry Walpole

-Early life:He was born at Docking, Norfolk, in 1558, the eldest son of Christopher Walpole, by Margery, heiress of Richard Beckham of Narford, and was educated at Norwich School, Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Gray's Inn. Converted to Roman Catholicism by the death of Saint Edmund Campion, he went by...

. John Finnis

John Finnis

John Finnis , is an Australian legal scholar and philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of law. He is Professor of Law at University College, Oxford and at the University of Notre Dame, teaching jurisprudence, political theory, and constitutional law...

 and Patrick Martin argue that it is about Anne Line

Anne Line

Saint Anne Line was an English martyr who was executed during the reign of Elizabeth I for harbouring a priest. She was born in 1567, the second daughter of Heigham, Esq., of Essex, a strict Calvinist, and was, together with her brother William, disinherited for converting to Catholicism...

, a Catholic executed at Tyburn in 1601. Anne Line and her young husband Roger were separated when he was exiled due to his Catholic activism. He died on the continent. She was later convicted for illegal performance of the Mass

Mass (liturgy)

"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...

 and the harbouring of priests, leading to her execution. Like Shakespeare's couple the Lines had no children.

Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, another proponent of the view that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic, argued that it was intended as a memorial to the Earl of Essex and his friend Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton

Henry Wriothesley , 3rd Earl of Southampton , was the second son of Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, and his wife Mary Browne, Countess of Southampton, daughter of the 1st Viscount Montagu...

. They were both sentenced to death on the first day of their trial for treason, on 19 February 1601, though Southampton's sentence was later commuted.

According to these interpretations the poem is an allegory containing an imaginary Catholic requiem to the deceased couples. In Hammerschmidt-Hummel's view, other "birds" mentioned are Anthony Shirley

Anthony Shirley

Sir Anthony Shirley was an English traveller, whose imprisonment in 1603 by King James I was an important event because it caused the British House of Commons to assert one of its privileges—freedom of its members from arrest—in a document known as The Form of Apology and Satisfaction.He was the...

, Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

, Robert Cecil

Robert Cecil

Robert Cecil may refer to:*Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury , statesman, spymaster and minister to Elizabeth I of England and James I of England...

, James of Scotland

James I of England

James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...

 and Queen Elizabeth I. Finnis and Martin argue that the "bird of loudest lay" is the composer William Byrd

William Byrd

William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...

 and that the crow is Father Henry Garnet

Henry Garnet

Henry Garnet , sometimes Henry Garnett, was a Jesuit priest executed for his complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Born in Derbyshire, he was educated in Nottingham and later at Winchester College, before moving to London in 1571 to work for a publisher...

.

Text of the poem

The Phoenix and the Turtle

Let the bird of loudest lay,

On the sole Arabian tree,

Herald sad and trumpet be,

To whose sound chaste wings obey.


But thou, shriking harbinger,

Foul pre-currer of the fiend,

Augur of the fever's end,

To this troop come thou not near.


From this session interdict

Every fowl of tyrant wing,

Save the eagle, feather'd king:

Keep the obsequy so strict.


Let the priest in surplice white,

That defunctive music can,

Be the death-divining swan,

Lest the requiem lack his right.


And thou, treble-dated crow,

That thy sable gender mak'st

With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,

'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.


Here the anthem doth commence:

Love and constancy is dead;

Phoenix and the turtle fled

In a mutual flame from hence.


So they lov'd, as love in twain

Had the essence but in one;

Two distincts, division none:

Number there in love was slain.


Hearts remote, yet not asunder;

Distance, and no space was seen

'Twixt the turtle and his queen;

But in them it were a wonder.


So between them love did shine,

That the turtle saw his right

Flaming in the phoenix' sight:

Either was the other's mine.


Property was thus appall'd,

That the self was not the same;

Single nature's double name

Neither two nor one was call'd.


Reason, in itself confounded,

Saw division grow together;

To themselves yet either-neither,

Simple were so well compounded


That it cried how true a twain

Seemeth this concordant one!

Love hath reason, reason none

If what parts can so remain.


Whereupon it made this threne

To the phoenix and the dove,

Co-supreme and stars of love;

As chorus to their tragic scene.


THRENOS.

Beauty, truth, and rarity.

Grace in all simplicity,

Here enclos'd in cinders lie.


Death is now the phoenix' nest;

And the turtle's loyal breast

To eternity doth rest,


Leaving no posterity:--

'Twas not their infirmity,

It was married chastity.


Truth may seem, but cannot be:

Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;

Truth and beauty buried be.


To this urn let those repair

That are either true or fair;

For these dead birds sigh a prayer.