[In the following essay, Straumann argues that The Phoenix and Turtle reflects a shift in Shakespeare's expression and concept of "the possible union of beauty and truth " towards an emphasis on the fleetingness of such a union.]

Scholars and critics seem, on the whole, agreed on the opinion that at the turn of the 16th to the 17th century Shakespeare must have undergone some vital changes, if not a crisis, in his views about man and the basic values he had accepted before that time. And even those who are sceptical of interpretations along such lines will readily admit that the tone of his works is clearly no longer the same after 1601. Whatever conflicting views on 'The Phoenix and the Turtle' may exist, there can be no doubt about the poem being published just at the time when that change had taken place or was still taking place. Incidentally Professor Kenneth Muir was one of the first to point out that aspect.¹ The difficulties begin with the interpretation of its basic meaning and its possible significance for the understanding of that change. It is perhaps well to remember that the poem consists of three parts, namely first the description of a funeral attended by various birds, then a highly complex anthem on the singular union of the phoenix and the turtle, and finally the Threnos, that is the lament uttered by Reason on the death of the two birds, and especially relevant in our context:

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.

I can only briefly—as a sort of reminder—refer to some of the main aspects of the well over one hundred different viewpoints, theories and interpretations that have been set forth in the last fifty years or so before we get to the main point, that is the significance of the poem in the context of the plays.²

One can roughly distinguish three different trends in the various approaches. First there are those who are above all interested in what they consider to be the personal allegory of the poem. They start from the fact that the poem was published in a collection entitled Loves Martyr or Rosalins Complaint with two subtitles containing references to the Phoenix and the Turtle. The collection was edited by Robert Chester and dedicated to Sir John Salusbury, an Esquire at the court of Queen Elizabeth and the husband of Ursula Stanley, with whom he had ten children. In view of this fact it is difficult to understand the expression 'married chastity' and 'leaving no posterity' which Shakespeare uses for the union of the phoenix with the turtle if one assumes that the whole collection was meant to be a eulogy of the Salusbury marriage, unless one resorts to the idea that Shakespeare composed the whole poem as it were tongue in cheek³—but to me at least the tone of the whole seems to make this well nigh impossible. Thus a number of other candidates have been suggested, for instance Essex and Queen Elizabeth,⁴ Salusbury and Elizabeth, the Earl of Bedford and his famous wife Lucy, Shakespeare himself and the Earl of Southampton as well as other less plausible public figures of the time. But there is no direct evidence for any of these assumptions—except of course that the poem can be seen as a celebration of the fulfillment and a lament over the end of a friendship or a love relationship.

The second group of interpreters try to approach the poem by putting it in the context of the traditions and conventions of that genre. In this light a great number of different elements have been suggested, for instance the court of love tradition of French origin, Chaucer's 'Parlement of Foules', the medieval bestiaries with their allegorical implications, the Elegy on the death of Sir Philip Sidney in the collection The Phoenix Nest with similar birds as in Shakespeare's poems, the literature of emblems with many references to the characteristics traditionally attributed to the different birds, e.g. the turtle as a symbol of conjugal faithfulness, the phoenix with its associations of singularity, immortality, chastity, hope, constancy—or with persons of outstanding fame. Added to all this there is a touch of the platonic conceptions fashionable at the time, especially since Lyly's Euphues, that is the equation of beauty, truth and goodness, the concept of non-sensual love, and the problem of the existence or non-existence of an idea beyond the concrete world: Truth may seem but cannot be', and finally the question of scholastic philosophy, especially the problem of 'essence'.⁵

The belief of these critics seems to be based on the assumption that Shakespeare when confronted with the task of writing the prescribed eulogy simply toyed with all those traditional and fashionable devices in order to prove that he could do this as easily and effectively as anyone: in other words that there is a considerable measure of irony in the whole.

Finally there is a third group of critics whom for lack of a better term we may refer to as idealists. The idealists stress the intellectual and thematic aspect of the poem, i.e. for them the theme of the poem is the miracle of fulfilled love, the fusion of the feminine and the masculine principles in bisexual love, the union of two different entities beyond the world of human realities, beyond life and death and therefore beyond any rational understanding, partly in the sense of scholastic philosophy (especially according to J. V. Cunningham). In this way one has further arrived at the idea that the poem is meant to be a concentrated paradox ultimately expressing Shakespeare's self-conscious understanding of poetry and the poetic process: 'Form wedded to imagination but dying when the poem is finished' (R. A. Underwood).⁶ The poem could then be seen as a kind of forerunner of the metaphysical style. In view of all the possibilities represented by the three groups of interpretations one may well have one's doubts about any definite solution of the problem. But I think there is a way out—as I tried to show as early as 1953⁷—and this lies in the principle of interleaved levels of meaning, i.e. in the fact that the poem was composed with an inherent multiple appeal, so that it could be read first as a personal allegory (now lost), secondly as a brilliant display of a number of literary conventions and fashionable topics, and thirdly as the expression of a highly complex idea about the union of two values fatally exposed to destruction and yet continuing in their existence. To this may be added a hidden quasi magical element⁸ appearing in the use of trochaic tetrameters otherwise rather rare in Shakespeare but used by the poet for songs approaching that character in the plays, e.g.

Much Ado: Tardon, goddess of the night . . .

(V, 3, 12)

Merry Wives: Tie on sinful fantasy . . . '

(V, 5, 99)

Lear: 'Be thy mouth or black or white . . . '

(III, 6, 68)

Whatever part the scholastic element in the poem may have played at that time—one thing is certain and it must have struck the contemporary reader as well as it strikes the modern one: the couple of the phoenix and the turtle dove are referred to by Shakespeare as 'co-supremes and stars of love', that is as two ultimate values associated with beauty and truth and further connected with qualities such as grace, simplicity, rarity, loyalty, and love.

Now beauty and truth are united in love—but this union is not permanent: the two co-supremes disappear in a mutual flame, they are enclosed in the cinders of an urn and do not, together, exist any more in reality. Real truth and real beauty have gone from this world, because as realities they only exist in a union through love, and love and constancy are dead. Or, in a more abstract paraphrase: a synthesis of a highest aesthetic value with a highest moral value is only possible as an idea—but not as a real thing, or at the utmost as a very short-lived phenomenon. And yet the last three lines of the poem seem to contradict this:

To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

This can only mean that there are still true and fair human beings—but one is either true or fair, i.e., one cannot be both at the same time, and with reference to the other three lines immediately preceding them and expressing the idea that there is only apparent truth and apparent beauty, one may add that even those who may be considered as bearers of these attributes do not really possess them—because the attributes can only be real in the aforementioned short-lived union through love. We may pray for the synthesis but we cannot achieve it as a permanent entity.⁹

Now the question is: does this concept occur elsewhere in Shakespeare, and if so in what context? There is no other passage in which the phoenix and the turtle dove appear together directly in a combined metaphor. On the other hand there are a number of passages where at least attitudes similar to the one expressed in our poem can be found—especially the sonnets where the question of truth or constancy and beauty existing together in one person is repeatedly brought up, for instance in sonnets 14, 53, 105. In the latter the final couplet clearly says that the attributes 'fair, kind and true' have so far never existed in one person together:

Fair, kind and true, have often lived alone
Which three till now never kept seat in one.

In the plays, too, the theme plays its special part. In the present context I shall refer to the existential aspect of the problem exclusively, that is to characters and their demeanour directly connected with the problem and not to further reaching implications such as the questions ofhuman identity¹⁰—I wish to avoid any speculations beyond what the text really yields.

A well known example is the passage in Cymbeline, where Iachimo on first meeting Imogen begins to doubt whether he will win his wager about the faithlessness of woman and of Imogen especially:

If she be furnished with a mind so rare
She is alone the Arabian bird

(I, 6, 17)

Iachimo does not believe in the miracle of the absolute constancy of a beautiful woman's love, and he tries everything to prove his point, but the miracle though seriously threatened with destruction continues to the end. Beauty and truth, love and constancy remain victorious.

Cymbeline is a late play, and it is obvious that in the plays of our period (that is shortly before and after 1601) the situation is different. In the following plays normally considered to have been composed before 1600 the question of truth and beauty appearing together in one and the same person is clearly put: in The Two Gentlemen of Verona it is the girls Julia and Silvia whose constancy in love and belief in their lovers is put to a test which they pass successfully though not without difficulties. Similarly Helena and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, although their love and their lovers are threatened with deception finally manage to get through their trials and hardships unscathed.

In Romeo and Juliet love and constancy triumph but it is a short-lived triumph and yet the catastrophy that overtakes the lovers makes them as Capulet says:

Poor sacrifices of our enmity

(V, 3, 304)

That is through their death they create goodwill and peace between the hitherto hostile families, not forgetting Montague's final word about ' . . . true and faithful Juliet', as he says.

A remarkable though not yet vital change in this syndrome of values is to be found with the women characters in The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and As You Like It, that is the four plays which according to Chambers were produced between 1597 and 1600, or if one prefers to follow Peter Alexander somewhat earlier, but definitely before 1600. The change in no way affects the attractiveness of the women characters—on the contrary critics generally seem to agree that they are definitely more mature, more differentiated and therefore more human and more 'real' than the earlier ones; they are equally devoted in their love and constancy—but in order to get united with their lovers they are willing or obliged to resort to all sorts of tactics, ruses and mystifications to achieve their ends. Portia cheats a little when arranging the test of the caskets for Bassanio; Nerissa joins Portia in feigning disbelief about her ring; Jessica on eloping with Lorenzo takes part of Shylock's treasure with her. Viola cleverly conceals her identity and yet manages to express her true feelings in her cryptic remarks to Orsino. Rosalind risks, or pretends to risk making fun of the sonneteering Orlando although or rather because she loves him deeply. In all these plays the union of love, constancy and beauty remains intact, but truth has to be kept secret—at least temporarily.

This theme borders on the tragic in Much Ado About Nothing where through a diabolical intrigue the 'maiden truth' of the heroine seems to be so utterly defiled that her lover can only speak of her in the contradictory terms of 'most foul, most fair' and will henceforth 'turn all beauty into thoughts of harm' (IV, 1, 108)—i.e. even there the negative statement is enhanced by its juxtaposition with the principle of beauty. Here, too, truth and the person embodying both truth and beauty have to be carefully hidden in order to survive until the veils and the masks can be dropped and love be restored. This, on a level of wit and bantering also applies to Beatrice and Benedick. Whatever the impediments, the trinity of love, beauty and truth in these plays finally remains undisputed.

All these plays were written before the publication of our poem. In the plays composed after 1601 the situation is entirely different. In Hamlet the physical beauty of Ophelia is repeatedly referred to and never questioned but in her dependence on her father she betrays her qualities of honesty and truth towards her lover. In the nunnery scene Hamlet himself puts the problem in a nutshell:

. . . the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love thee once.

(III, 1, 112)

That is: Hamlet once believed in the union of beauty and honesty in human beings, especially in Ophelia and possibly also in his mother—but through what has happened at court and particularly through Ophelia's conduct at this moment his belief in that union has totally collapsed. Ophelia perishes.

In Troilus and Cressida the theme of the infidelity of an attractive woman was and has remained a classic. In All's Well That Ends Well Helena is forced to take refuge in deceit in order to achieve her end. In Measure for Measure the problem is somewhat different, but here, too, Isabella's virtue can only be saved at the price of the bed trick, i.e. through carefully prepared deceit.

In Desdemona we see absolute truth, devotion, love and constancy united—but she becomes a victim of the terrible blindness and delusion of her husband and is killed. For Cordelia, to whom the term 'grace in all simplicity' seems to be specially applicable truthfulness towards her father and her devotion for him assume absolute priority—she is not allowed to live. In Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare chose a subject that corresponded exactly to the new concept: the race towards catastrophe of a couple ensnared in uncontrolled passion but unable to believe in mutual loyalty except in a moment of violent death. In short the attributes of beauty, truth, love, constancy etc. still appear in all these plays, but their union in one and the same person does not occur anymore or if it does, it will be destroyed by hostile forces—bodily strangled as in the case of Desdemona and Cordelia.

Only in the very last plays, the romances, is the existence of a woman character embodying both beauty and truth and finding fulfillment in love again made possible—but Imogen and Hermione, as well as Perdita and Miranda owe this to almost incredible luck or else to magic.

From all this I for one can only draw one conclusion. As in no other work and in the smallest possible space the Phoenix and the Turtle represents a clearly defined turning point both in poetic expression and in the abstract of Shakespeare's existential concept of the possible union of beauty and truth i.e. of two highest values, through love in a woman character. Before 1601 this union is seen as possible and it can even be permanent. After 1601 the union, if it occurs at all, is only very short-lived and is bound to end in death through violence. Only in the last plays can the union be found again—but by then it is nothing short of a miracle.

Notes

¹ Kenneth Muir and Sean O'Loughlin, The Voyage to Illyria (London, 1937). It is however only fair to mention that Kenneth Muir seems to dissociate himself now from much of what is said in this book.

² The most complete and detailed summary of the different interpretations of the poem is given by R. A. Underwood in his book Shakespeare's 'The Phoenix and the Turtle': A Survey of Scholarship, Salzburg Studies in English Literature (Salzburg, 1974).

³ See Georges Bonnard, 'Shakespeare's Contribution to Robert Chester's Love's Martyr', English Studies, XIX (1937), 66-9.

⁴ See William H. Matchett, 'The Phoenix and the Turtle': Shakespeare's Poem and Love's Martyr' (The Hague, 1965).

⁵ See J. V. Cunningham, ' "Essence" and the "Phoenix and the Turtle" ', ELH. A Journal of English Literary History, 19 (1952), 265-76.

⁶ R. A. Underwood, op.cit., pp. 299 and 353, and especially K. T. S. Campbell, ' "The Phoenix and the Turtle" as a Signpost of Shakespeare's Development', British Journal of Archeology, X (1970), 169-79.

⁷ See Heinrich Straumann, Phoenix und Taube: Zur interpretation von Shakespeares Gedankenwelt (Zürich, 1953), especially pp. 28-35.

⁸ See R. A. Underwood, op.cit., pp. 287-9.

⁹ In this respect I fundamentally differ from Peter Dronke's otherwise highly illuminating essay 'The Phoenix and the Turtle', Orbis Litterarum, XXIII (1968), 199-220. Dronke, who argues that 'the bird of loudest lay' must be the phoenix itself, does not sufficiently account for the expression 'either-or' in the last but second line of the poem. He therefore concludes that 'the vestiges of perfection are made possible in time' (p. 211).—On the other hand Robert Ellrodt in his equally instructive essay 'An Anatomy of the "Phoenix and the Turtle" ', Shakespeare Survey, 15, 1962 (pp. 99-108), believes that in the apparent contradiction of the final lines of the Threnos 'lies the deeper meaning of the poem' and that Shakespeare does not refer to 'true lovers and beautiful creatures' but to 'Love and Constancy, Truth and Beauty' as such.

¹⁰ See Daniel Seltzer, ' "Their Tragic Scene": 'The Phoenix and the Turtle" and Shakespeare's Love Tragedies', Shakespeare Quarterly, XII (1961), 91-101.