6Boutell's Heraldry, revised C. V. Scott-Giles (London and New York, 1954), p. 60. This again, like the anthem, is introduced with a stage direction:21. H. E. Rollins, A New Variorum Ed. It was that too, but now Elizabeth Boyle was being presented by the greatest poet in England with a work of art of consummate skill, which love had prompted and which should. Phoenix can exclaim, 'Blest be our mother Earth that nourisheth, / In her rich womb the seede of Times increase' (p. 103). . Figurative Language The swan is to serve as priest, its whiteness suggesting both the proper garment and the required purity. Loue hath Reason, Reason none, That would their better objects find: Made one anothers hermitage; The threne is quiet. The intellectual challenge is not met in the poem at the outset. . With tunes mylde 135-6. See The Phoenix Nest, ed. The following section, which critics have called a lapidary, herbal and bestiary, is a fulfilment of the poet's promise to 'those of light beleefe' that they shall see with new eyes, discovering 'herbs and trees true nomination'. Vol. Rollins), p. 2 [10]ff. The first are the abstract statements, which find their climax and summing-up in 'Either was the others mine'. 2 May 2023 , Last Updated on June 8, 2022, by eNotes Editorial. 33-44), the oneness of the lovers was logically argued and stated in philosophical terms.27Shakespeare's restatement of it is of interest, because he made the truth his own, recreated the experience, revived the intuition. The lovers are an exemplar to the city. Apart from the "natural" shrillness of its voice, the cock is traditionally associated with invoking good, and frightening away evil, spiritswhich is approximately its function in our poem.5. And if I be that bird, I am defaced, That all virtues or qualities should be united in one Phoenix creature or mistress was a commonplace in Renaissance love poetry. The relationship of the Phoenix and the Turtle involved even more than Love and Constancy; other qualities also lie enclosed in the cinders that remain. Jove reassures Nature and prescribes a journey; Nature and Phoenix leave Arabia-Brytania in the chariot of the sun, journeying to Paphos Isle, where they find 'a second Phoenix loue'. "The Phoenix and Turtle." The Soule of heavens labour'd Here the Antheme doth commence, 5 Grosart, ed., Loves Martyr, p. 10. . Now, in the last line, the word "bird" reappears, undercutting the whole symbolic structure and leading us back to actual birds and out of the poem again. The difficulty often noted in the anthem is due not to the paradox itself but, as already noted, to compressed syntax, syntax which has suggested Donne to more than one critic. For Matchett, "terse diction within disjunct lines," verbal paradox, and a broad use of metaphor combine to create a "texture of complexities and ambiguities" that he saw as the prevailing nature of the poem. After endeavouring to express this miraculous oneness, to realize vividly an unapprehended absolute, the poet could only maintain this exalted pitch by ending the 'tragic scene' on a further negation in the Threnos. In March 1595, when Salusbury was appointed Esquire of the Body to the Queen,12 Chester wrote a poem entitled 'A Welcome Home', of which the opening lines may be quoted. Twice there has been the gradual growth of a conception which has "become real" and has lifted us to another realm of existence. His poems are not about the occasion, they are for it; and the kind of questions which have endlessly been asked about them are as irrelevant to our understanding of them as Sir Calidore's questions to Colin Clout. And as the turtle Dove The union of Truth and Beauty achieved in the mutual flame of the Phoenix and the Turtle is contrasted with their present divorce in a world which may still hold lovers 'either true or fair,' but cannot allow 'the pure union of the two qualities in one and the same woman.' The first of Shakespeare's poems, the only one in the collection without a title, is in two parts. The death of the Phoenix and the Turtle is a sad event, but all is not lost; there remain others who are true and fair, who can sigh a prayer for the lovers who were, in their way, glorious but are now, after all, dead birds. 11Early English Poetry (Percy Society, 1840) II 78ff. This formulation is, admittedly, too neat, but the basic point is sound: Reason has been confounded by a dazzling series of variations on the common paradox of mutual love. Court-bewtefying Poets in their verse, 76-89. Unlike the first five stanzas, in which the imperatives kept us aware of the poetand unlike the threne, "made" by Reasonthe anthem has no particular speaker. What is Figurative Language? | Merriam-Webster In this essay I should like to leave such readings out of account. Neither the notes of nightingales, nor songful flute Like Envy and Satan, Mordred is described as a tyrant: 'that monster Mordred . (1944), 348. 25-32. This perfection (as the Antheme emphasizes) means that they are neither one nor two, that they are both one and two. It is necessary to clarify at the outset the gender of the two birds, the protagonists of Chester's poem, because Professor Wilson Knight, in an essay otherwise rich in ideas,5 has unfortunately brought this question into confusion. 3. In 1601, Love's Martyr was intended to foster belief in the power of allegiance. The same trend may be discerned in lyrical poetry. But Nature gives her no choice, and leaves the two alone together. As Chorus to their Tragique Scene. Certain birds are chosen for the funeral rite. Copland, Murray. Reason, confounded by the mystery of Love, recovers certainty when confronted by the conclusiveness of Death. Elias Schwartz characterized the poem as a funeral elegy and emphasized the thematic implications of the phoenix's failure to be reborn from its own ashes. Venerandum verum; Compare the Pelican's contemplation, in Loves Martyr, of the love-death of the Phoenix and the Turtle: O if the rarest creatures of the earth, Though the poem "celebrates" the love of the Phoenix and the Turtle, it is ostensibly a funeral elegy. Fired the Phoenix where she laid, 12 Lee, Life of Shakespeare (1916 edition), p. 272. And a little later, to persuade this bird to come with her to Paphos: There is a country Clymat fam'd of old, Reason, precisely in admitting her defeat, transcends herself. Figurative Language Quiz A patterne of your love! The earliest development of this is in the fragmentary poem of Parmenides,4 though here it is not the goddess Natura but the poet himself who is the protagonist. (His grandfather, from whom Thomas inheritedfor their father died early, in the year of John's birthhad also been Sir John, and Chamberlain of North Wales.17 The new knighthood therefore had especial significance.) [In the following essay, Ellrodt examines Elizabethan and Renaissance sources of phoenix imagery and explores the symbolic importance of this mythic bird in Shakespeare's The Phoenix and Turtle.]. .". There is something rarefied about it, yet it remains in touch with human qualities, with the meaning of 'true' and 'fair' in the world; while it tells of birds and of the perfection of love, it tells something relevant to imperfect human love. 25 So B. H. Newdigate in his edition of The Phoenix and Turtle (Oxford, 1937). Shakespeare is the creator of both the voice and the poem. Absorbed in an abstract ideal, Reason renounces sexual love; thus he completely fails to appreciate the valid demands of a physical love that is both 'true' and 'faire'. The subject of the poem is therefore not Truth or Beauty or any such abstraction; its subject is the death of the two lovers who are spoken of in the guise of the Phoenix and the Turtle. Dana Ramel Barnes. And since absolute Truth and Beauty are sunk below the furthest horizon of human ken, their withdrawal from this world must be total: 'Truth may seem, but cannot be: Beauty brag, but 'tis not she.' True loue is Troths sweete emperizing Queene: The patriotic part consists of the story of King Arthur, which the person of Nature recounts to the Phoenix.13 Following this she gives a lengthy account of mineral, plant, and animal life, with special attention to their properties both real and supposed. The stanza may be read as saying that the childlessness was not due to physical debility, to sexual sterility or impotence, but to the fact that they remained chaste though they were married; or, that the leaving of posterity was not their infirmity, not the form of bodily weakness with them that it is with others, but that their state was a marriage of chastities; or, finally, that not the leaving of posterity but married chastity was their infirmity, which is to say that the defect in their relationship was not that they were overly concupiscent but that they were overly continent. They are particularly difficult to dispose of because they change their physical form to mimic a person's greatest fear. A That such a Phoenix ne'er should be. So betweene them Loue did shine, 3 Whether the line were trochaic or iambic would depend upon which end we thought had been cropped. Be the death-deuining Swan, would admirably suit the state of mind one may reasonably ascribe to Shakespeare in 1600-1. . It is rather a harmony of solemn rhetoric and inspired idealism rising to a note of triumph and universal hope. With the authority of a long dramatic tradition behind him, Shakespeare celebrates this ideal, in spite of death and disaster, as chorus to a tragic scene. That among creatures even the uniquely perfect must die?These are simply aspects of one idea. This is the paradox which Shakespeare exploited. Alwayes inconstant, false and variable, This sort of emphasis is hardly compatible with the view that the Phoenix has been reborn.3 I do not think it very important that we know who the bird of the "lowdest lay" is, so long as we know it is not the Phoenix. Allegorically shadowing the Truth of Love, in the constant Fate of the Phoenix and Turtle (London, 1601). Of course they do remain distinct; but that paradoxical relationship, as Cunningham demonstrates, is conceived of in terms of the mystical relations of the Trinity. The anthem praises Love, not two lovers: it is not 'about' Sir John and Lady Salusbury's marriage, as Robert Chester's poem had been. In the first possibility, the praise consists in the suggestion that these lovers surpassed what was wonderful for others; in the second, it consists in their having attained the common state of lovers in spite of special disabilities. But the crow is commanded to take its place among "our mourners. . Figurative Language What this pervading moral tension enacts is Reason's sense of its own failure to understand what has really happened. 25], written about 96 A. D., onwards); and the Dove is a figura of the Holy Spirit: Than sayd the phnix, Authenticity has long ceased to be a problem, despite the poem's unusual and even unique appearance within the Shakespearean canon. Nature leaves, suggesting by her departure the transcendence of what is about to happen, yet each bird recognizes the other to be a child of Nature. 19 The suggestion is strengthened by the stage imagery, "Chorus" and "Tragique Scene.". Marston's first poem, 'O Twas a moving Epicidium! . So, at least, it seemed to Robert Chester, who had somehow contracted the fashionable itch to celebrate an occasion in what he supposed to be poetry. Out of the cinders of her peerless plumes. The Phoenix and the Turtle were two and yet attained a single essence of love. Log in here. That birds did sing to make it heauenly. Consider, too, the new phoenix's paradoxical identity in lines 77-78 and 165-70 of the Carmen. In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot; alliteration metaphor personification simile Hooker employs it in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,19 and so do Bacon and Donne. The qualities themselves did not die with the lovers, however fully the lovers appeared to embody them. It is totally misleading to suggest that these birds are androgynous. Interpretation then implied inventing an 'occasion' for the poem, to fit one's choice of candidate. The question of Shakespeare's use of traditional forms has also And like a hissing Serpent seek'st to sting. be', 'obay', 'come . 202-3, 194, 204). The sexes of the two birds thus reverse what we would expect on the basis both of natural consonance and of tradition. . 17 Compare these lines from Troilus and Cressida: "O madness of discourse, As a result of this terse diction within disjunct lines, there are not only ambiguities within lines but also contradictory possibilities due to the fact that succeeding lines can frequently be related to each other grammatically in a number of ways. The maid a Phoenix, and is still but one.25. Alvarez, A. A. 4Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th ed., Berlin 1951) I 228 ff. The 'wonder' of the union startles Reason because the phenomenon is empirically inadmissible. Shakespeare's handling of paradox is far more serious and philosophical than in the poems of Lactantius and Claudianus41 or in the conceits of most sonneteers. . Yet in 1601 there was no agreement about who that successor should be; without unanimity Elizabeth's demise would produce no second Phoenix. The celebrant at the Requiem is the Phoenix, and the climax of the rite is, in its lighter mood, a splendid counterpart to Shakespeare's poem: Domine, exaud orationem mean! According to Platonism, a beautiful appearance signifies an inner spiritual goodness (fairness indicates truth); but according to the poem, only ideally is this so. xi. Flame is the proper medium for the death of the traditional phoenix, but here we have a "mutual flame" because the untraditional phoenix of this poem had a companion in death. In mentioning these possibilities I am not, I hope, laying undue emphasis on the esoteric and exotic. . 3The Poems of Robert Chester (1601-1611). The derogation implied by this view rather heightens than lessens the tragedy: the situation is the more tragic for their having remained childless. 116-30. 27Shakespeare Survey 15, Cambridge 1962, p. 99. Against the Princely Eagle in his flight, Were the anthem not to begin until the next stanza, it would begin with an unidentified pronoun. Are these three lines to be taken as fact stated by the poet who arranged the event? Here stands the historical epitome of Phoenix's enemies. The twelfth stanza, in which Reason cries out, has a slightly bizarre quality in keeping with Reason's confusion: it is composed of a detached subordinate clause. To heven he shall, from heven he cam!Do mi nus vo bis cum! H. E. Rollins, 1931, pp. And for short time an endlesse moniment. But this identification will not do either. In the world of the play, neither love nor honor can existnot, that is to say, the real thing. 4 The most obvious parallels can be noted in Sonnets 14, 36, 101, 136. notes. Now, Astrophel's and Stella's well-known 'flame' became 'mutual' while remaining chaste. SOURCE: "Shakespeare's Dead Phoenix," in English Language Notes, Vol. to Imagery, Symbolism, and Figurative Language When she came to the throne in 1558, a coin was issued which featured Elizabeth on one side, a phoenix on the other. To this vrne let those repaire, Furthermore, that the selfsame should not be the same (1. Shakespeare availed himself of the convention to call attention to the values symbolized by his heroes or connected with their love. Uses The Phoenix and Turtle to illustrate a conception of metaphorical language as capable of accommodating disparate ideas or meanings within a single image. 2 Hyder Edward Rollins, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Poems (Philadelphia, 1938), p. 583. 1-4, 12-14; 210, 11. The excluded fowls of "tyrant wing" stand in direct contrast to "chaste wings," an opposition suggesting that the purity required goes beyond mere sexual continence to rule out those who are despotic or coercive in any social relationship. Onely here subsist invested. She behaves in a way that accords well with things as they are. The mythic pattern which orders Shakespeare's poem is the same as that of Chester's cruder work. 8 King Arthur and, among the nine women worthies, Matilda, the mother of Henry II. 13 It is here that Elizabeth Watson finds that Chester's purpose is to offer an allegorical tribute to the Queen, Arthur initiating a line which culminates in Elizabeth (see Watson, pp. . The white swan, which traditionally sang only before its own death (like the Phoenix) is the least unexpected of the attendants at the ceremony; but the long-lived crow, often, like the screech-owl, a bird of ill omen, is here acceptable because of its legendary reputation for chastity. Then comes the return to earth, and the revelation of the world of mutability, by a way which cannot be certain but only probable. In such a mood did Hamlet send Ophelia to a nunnery. The effect there is of the solemn regularity of a dead march. When requested to write a poem on the Phoenix and Turtle theme, he might have been merely told that they were a symbol of ideal love ending in death. Whose truth shines most in her forsaken state; Maid. . 73)some authorities give other periodsthe unique Phoenix built a nest in a palm-tree which proved to be its funeral pyre and also the birthplace of the next Phoenix. So too in Alain's Anticlaudianus the ascent of Prudentia in the chariot, whose horses are the senses, is followed by receiving in a state of ecstasy the idea of human perfection, and by bringing a copy of it down to the world. 1 "An Anatomy of 'The Phoenix and the Turtle,'" Shakespeare Survey, XV (1962), 99. So too was the figurai identification of Phoenix with Christ and of Dove with Holy Spirit, as I mentioned in connection with The Armony of Birds. With heavenly substance, she herself consumes. At least, except for Chapman, they all conform to such a plan. 27Lactantius: the Minor Works, trans. The Threnos certainly has the power of an explanatory epilogue, but not one that asks for applause. 44-55. Lastly, as a 'trumpeter', he does not 'preside' at the funeral, as Baldwin and Wilson Knight assume: he is less important than the swan who acts the priest's part (11. Kkeritz has, of course, other criteria and specifically states that rhyme is less dependable than they (p. 31). His Altars kept from the Decay, It is especially remarkable that these two achieved such unity in love, and they are, in the an-them, further praised for doing so in the face of their peculiar relationship. Grace is an inward virtue appearing in outward conduct, but it is, one feels, a 'sublime', highly abstract concept of sexual love that can be summed up as 'Grace'. The point need not be discussed since it is beyond proof. ), it is clear that (until 1938 at least) the great majority have been per sonal or historical readings. That due to thee, which thou deseru'st alone. . . God, Man, nor Woman, but elix'd of all Such to the parrat was the turtle dove. He goes on to suggest (p. 202) that this is why Shakespeare and other former supporters of Essex wrote no elegies for the Queen in 1603. Would Shakespeare have written such a poem in the mid-1580s? Physical intercourse is excluded in Shakespeare's lyric only by the assertion that "twas not infirmity' that prevented the lovers from leaving 'posterity'. 135). 1998 eNotes.com That thy sable gender mak'st. It is unfair to look in Love's Martyr for the simple celebration either of chastity or physical love between man and woman for, although the work contains elements of both, it is only coherent so long as it is read as neither one nor the other. If its exemplar of truth (the Veritas of Reason being here subordinate to the fidelitas of Love) and its exemplar of beauty have gone, there can no longer be a standard of values in these thingsthere is merely appearance, which is deceptive, nothing by which to test it. Symphosius, Aenigma XXXI, 'Phoenix'. This is the only surviving copy of The Anuals of great Brittaine, a 1611 reissue of Robert Chesters 1601 Loves Martyr, which included the Shakespeare poem now known as The Phoenix and the Turtle.. The poem opens with an imperativenot "There is . Shakespeare might have repeated Sidney's warning to the readers of Astrophel and Stella: You that with allegory's curious frame, What is the tragedy? Donne introduced a further innovation in describing the two lovers as making up one Phoenix. (fol. Soldati (Florence, 1902), n, 350; Lodge's Phillis (1593), xxv; Fletcher's Licia (1593), xv; Drayton's Ideas Mirrour (1594), 'Amours' 17 and 32. Hither, thither, and whither are typically locational; most uses of hitherto are temporal. or is it simply that the Phoenix is permanently bedded in death? Flaming in the phoenix' sight; So as not to enlarge this essay unduly, I shall take for granted the glosses and the explications of birdlore that can be found in standard editions such as the Variorum and the new Arden, those explications at least that are no longer problematic. . Then follows the development of the phoenix image that makes evident Shakespeare's originality of treatment and his power in weaving the texture of paradox. And this suggests that such a relationship is possible only in the supra-human order. Shakespeare, writing his variations on the theme initiated by Robert Chester, wished to suggest, by an extravagantly sophisticated diction, an ironic response to the clownish original. Salusbury's appointment, though not of much importance any longer, at least showed that he had regained the royal favour, and two years later, on the recommendation of the Earl of Pembroke as Lord President of the Council in Wales, he became Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire. Shakespeare's The Phoenix and Turtle is a short poem originally published as part of the collection Love's Martyr, compiled by Robert Chester in 1601. B. Grosart (1878), p. 239. William H. Matchett represents another strain of critical thought, similar to that of Dronke, that observes Shakespeare's rendering of paradoxical language in The Phoenix and Turtle. After the burning comes a series of cantos which have been cited as proof of Chester's superficial concern with the theme of chastity.10 Dismal as they are, these cantos illustrate the main theme and are designed to be read in two ways so that conventional love verses can be seen, through the use of acrostic, as something transcendent. My sorrow springs from her want that is gone. [In the following essay, Buxton examines the historical background of The Phoenix and Turtle, and emphasizes that Shakespeare's poem represents an exhibition of pure poetry on the theme of constancy in love.]. Dyce) I 69. . One is drawn to echo F. P. Wilson's judgment that Shakespeare, had he turned from dramatic verse to nondramatic at the end of the century, might have been the greatest of the metaphysical poets.13 For here the rhetorical and symbolic conventions are lifted from the level of the sensuous imagination, refined to the language of pure mathematical abstraction, and organized within the frame of rational argument. Much criticism of The Phoenix and Turtle has tended to focus on Shakespeare's concern with themes connected to love, chastity, and desire in the poem. "The Phoenix and Turtle - Introduction" Shakespearean Criticism By noting this difference, we can see how far Shakespeare has come; by understanding "The Phoenix and the Turtle," we can conjecture how he got there. Simple were so well compounded. To an Elizabethan, therefore, there must have been from the outset something of a paradox in mating the amorous and hymeneal Turtle with the virginal Phoenix.26 In Chester's floundering allegory it may mean no more than the sacrifice of maidenhead to 'put on perfection, and a woman's name', to use Donne's words. For further information on The Phoenix and Turtle, see SC, Volume 10. Cressida herself sees things clearly, and what she sees is not pretty to look at: Women are angels, wooing: They evoke the inner response always awakened in the soul by an impassioned negation of duality. The Phoenix and the Turtle have left, alas, no posterity. cit. And syth the Spiright In essence, according to Axton, The Phoenix and Turtle symbolizes the relationship between monarch and subject, and, perhaps, represents the poet's own view of Elizabeth. with its Cirrhaean modes can match her song. Phoenix references have appeared repeatedly over the centuries until the present day, including JK Rowling's 'Fawkes', Professor Dumbledor's familiar in the Harry Potter books. WebThe creative use of figurative language in this song make the song interesting and demonstrative. 9Dits et contes de Baudouin de Cond et de son fils Jean de Cond, ed. We are all one, thy sorrow shall be mine . The "fact" of the poem is that the Phoenix and the Turtle are dead, but we are given this fact in terms already heightened by praise. It can prove an astringent for the "creative" reader and at the same time lead towards further clarification and new synthesis. The opening stanzas' modification, fashioning, and refinement of emblematic allegory is what gives the poem its air of confident self-possession. It seems to me that on this contradiction the whole poem turns. Out of the wood he rose, and toward them did go. . A troublesome labour . In discussing the line, I suggested that we should perhaps avoid this possible belittling of the lovers in a context of praise. . While carrying some plausibility, this reading allows Chester more subtlety than is normally attributed to him in claiming that he was trying to assess the Queen's state of mind following the rebellion (p. 63); she is also forced to disregard the argument put forward compellingly by Carleton Brown for placing the poem's dedicatee, Sir John Salusbury, at the centre of Loves Martyr's interest (see below, pp. But the line quoted is of a sententious kind which needs no context. Baldwin connects Shakespeare via Lactantius to Ovid, Amores 2.6. date the date you are citing the material. SOURCE: "The Phoenix Renewed," in Ball State Teachers College Forum, Vol. The mood of the later plays seems to me quite a different one. They expire together in a passionate observance of the ideal of chastity which they both share: Then I command thee on thy tender care, But Reason is a sublunary power, and so its understanding of their purity and glory is limited and imperfect. . A theologian could see a parallel in the Trinity, with Son and Spirit, Phoenix and Dove, dying eternally into the Father. (The last line recalls the inscriptions over the doors in the House of Busyrane, Faerie Queene, III. 12 'false Mordred, thou deceitfull Kinsman . Stated more simply, it is important to recognize the dramatic form even of a poem which might seem to be spoken by the author. 24 V. NED, s. v. mine 1 c, citing this example. The examples below show a variety of This Phoenix I do feare me will decay, 2 (April 1996): 147-53. I am most grateful to Miss Enid Roberts of the Department of Welsh in the University College of North Wales for excellent advice on the history of the Salusbury family. Phoenix is created by the vow of troth and will 'live' as long as the fires of love sustain it. While keeping biographical aspects in mind, they see The Phoenix and the Turtle essentially as a phase in Shakespeare's imaginative development.10 Along roughly similar lines is G. Wilson Knight, who, in an argument apparently favouring Platonic bisexuality, asserts that 'the Turtle signifies the female aspect of the male poet's soul'.11, All the above readings, based wholly or in part on eminent contemporaries, pay in the view of some scholars insufficient regard to the role of Loves Martyr's dedicatee, Sir John Salusbury (or Salisbury). 10). In The Phoenix and Turtle, Green argued, Shakespeare explores the interaction of all three. Mutability is still found on the isle but, after her historical journey, Phoenix is able to see in each of the creatures and plants that principle which makes earthly things 'eterne in mutability'. 26 Robert Ellrodt, 'An anatomy of The Phoenix and the Turtle', S. Sur. Flaming in the Phoenix sight; Shakespeare Survey 15 (1962): 18-30. It rests on the assumption that the bird sitting 'on the sole Arabian tree' must be the Phoenix since that tree has been described by Lyly, Florio and Shakespeare himself as 'the phoenix' throne' (Tempest, III, iii, 23). Dana Ramel Barnes. A higher degree of rejuvenating scholarship has flowered in detailed examinations of literary influenceclassical, medieval, Elizabethanas Shakespeare's assemblage of symbolical birds of mourning has been traced to Ovid's Amores, poems of Lactantius and Claudianus, Pliny, Petrarch, and to Chaucer's Parlement of Foules.