CRITICISM

Bilton, Peter. “Graves on Lovers, and Shakespeare at a Lover's Funeral.” Shakespeare Survey 36 (1983): 39-42.

A study of Robert Graves's “The Thieves” as a direct response to The Phoenix and Turtle.

Eriksen, Roy T. “‘Un certo amoroso martire’: Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle and Giordano Bruno's De gli eroici furori.” Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual II (1981): 193-215.

Comparison of the bird imagery in The Phoenix and Turtle and Giordano Bruno's De gli eroici furori.

Janakiram, Alur. “Ebreo, Leone and Shakespeare: Love and Reason in Dialoghi d’amore and The Phoenix and the Turtle.” English Studies 61, No. 3 (June 1980): 228-33.

Examines the resemblance between The Phoenix and Turtle and the Italian philosopher Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore, and explores the conflict between love and reason in Shakespeare’s poem.

Knight, G. Wilson. “The Shakespearian Aviary.” In The Shakespearian Tempest, pp. 293-325. London: Oxford University Press, 1932.

Examines the bird imagery in Shakespeare's dramas as well as in The Phoenix and Turtle.

Marder, Louis. “The Phoenix and the Turtle: Another Unsolved Mystery.” The Shakespeare Newsletter 39, Nos. 3-4 (Fall 1989): 40-42.

Offers an overview of popular theories surrounding The Phoenix and Turtle, including the Oxfordian position, and finds that the new scholarship does not clarify the mystery, but only clouds the poem further.

Matchett, William H. The Phoenix and the Turtle: Shakespeare's Poem and Chester's Loues Martyr. London: Mouton & Co., 1965, 211 p.

Explores various interpretations of The Phoenix and Turtle in an effort to de-mystify the poem.

Medcalf, Stephen. “Shakespeare on Beauty, Truth and Transcendence.” In Platonism and the English Imagination, edited by Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton, pp. 117-25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Examines the platonistic overtones in both The Phoenix and Turtle and Troilus and Cressida.

Schwartz, Elias. “Shakespeare's Dead Phoenix.” English Language Notes VII, No. 1 (September 1969): 25-32.

Offers an interpretation of The Phoenix and Turtle which centers around Shakespeare's breaking of tradition by having the Phoenix remain dead.

Thomson, Walter. “The Phoenix and the Turtle.” In The Sonnets of William Shakespeare & Henry Wriothesley: Third Earl of Southampton, Together with A Lover's Complaint and The Phoenix & Turtle, edited by Walter Thomson, pp. 63-74. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1938.

Detailed discussion of the autobiographical aspects of The Phoenix and Turtle.