CRITICISM

Bates, Ronald. “Shakespeare's The Phoenix and Turtle.” Shakespeare Quarterly 6, no. 1 (winter 1955): 19-30.

Analyzes the language, tripartite structure, and enigmatic tone of The Phoenix and Turtle, maintaining that the poem clashes with the remainder of Robert Chester's Love's Martyr by refusing to valorize its themes of constancy, chastity, and love.

Buxton, John. “Two Dead Birds: A Note on The Phoenix and Turtle.” In English Renaissance Studies Presented to Dame Helen Gardner in Honor of Her Seventieth Birthday, edited by John Carey, pp. 44-55. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Argues that the subject of Shakespeare's The Phoenix and Turtle is not a topical one (that is, not concerned with Sir John and Lady Salusbury, for whose marriage it was written, or with any of the other historical couples who have been suggested by critics), but rather is an intricately crafted critique of Chester's “clumsily contrived myth” of constant love and beauty.

Campbell, K. T. S. “The Phoenix and the Turtle as a Signpost of Shakespeare's Development.” British Journal of Aesthetics 10, no. 2 (April 1970): 169-79.

Evaluates The Phoenix and Turtle as a self-consciously poetic work, “a metaphoric crystallization” of the notion that a poem has no existence beyond its own universe.

Cunningham, J. V. “‘Essence’ and The Phoenix and Turtle.” ELH 19, no. 4 (December 1952): 265-76.

Observes that the language of The Phoenix and Turtle is replete with terms appropriated from Scholastic philosophy, which Shakespeare employed to formulate the central theme of the poem: the mystical union of two lovers.

Dronke, Peter. “The Phoenix and the Turtle.” Orbis Litterarum 23, no. 2 (1968): 199-220.

Sees The Phoenix and Turtle as a meditation on love derived from a balanced consideration of ideas and paradoxes imported from Elizabethan literary convention: Neoplatonism, metaphysics, and medieval theology.

Knight, G. Wilson. The Mutual Flame: On Shakespeare's “Sonnets” and “The Phoenix and the Turtle.” London: Methuen, 1955, 233 p.

Lengthy study of The Phoenix and Turtle that explores its status as a metaphysical poem celebrating an abstracted and perfected love.

Roe, John. “Introduction: The Phoenix and the Turtle.” In The Poems: “Venus and Adonis,” “The Rape of Lucrece,” “The Phoenix and the Turtle,” “The Passionate Pilgrim,” “A Lover's Complaint,” by William Shakespeare, edited by John Roe, pp. 41-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Surveys the historical context of The Phoenix and Turtle, summarizes its critical history, and offers a reading of the poem largely informed by concepts from Renaissance Neoplatonism, while acknowledging that the work exemplifies no single literary tradition.

Seltzer, David. “‘Their Tragic Scene’: The Phoenix and Turtle and Shakespeare's Love Tragedies.” Shakespeare Quarterly 12, no. 2 (spring 1961): 91-101.

Describes The Phoenix and Turtle as “a Metaphysical poem par excellence,” and contends that the movement of the work closely resembles that of a love-tragedy.

Tipton, Alzada. “The Transformation of the Earl of Essex: Post-Execution Ballads and The Phoenix and the Turtle.” Studies in Philology 99, no. 1 (winter 2002): 57-80.

Discusses the popular myth of the Earl of Essex in regard to an assortment of ballads written after his death as well as the poems of Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, including Shakespeare's The Phoenix and Turtle.