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Study Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings..© 2003 Revised in 2010.© Type of Work .........William Shakespeare's "The Phoenix and the Turtle" is a poem that may be characterized as both an allegory and an elegy. An allegory is a literary work with a hidden meaning (and sometimes several hidden meanings). An elegy is a somber poem lamenting a person's death or memorializing the dead person. .........“The Phoenix and the Turtle" appeared in a 1601 book that also included works by Shakespeare contemporaries Ben Jonson (1572-1637), George Chapman (1559-1634), and John Marston (1576-1634). .........In Egyptian mythology, the phoenix was a bird that lived five hundred years, then died in a fire after the sun ignited an Arabian tree on which the phoenix was perched. The tree was located near Heliopolis, Egypt. From the ashes, the phoenix rose to new life. The turtledove is a small pigeon sometimes erroneously referred to as a mourning dove because of its melancholy cooing. (The mourning dove is native to America, not Europe.) .........The turtle is a turtledove, an affectionate wild dove known for its plaintive cooing. .........The
hidden, or symbolic, meaning of “The Phoenix and the Turtle" is open to
interpretation. In other words, what or whom the birds symbolize is a matter
for the reader to decide. Some readers believe the birds represent Queen
Elizabeth I and the Second Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux (1566 or 1567-1601).
Devereux had
Summary .........In
Shakespeare's poem, the birds become one in their love and die together
in a fire. The poem begins when other birds are summoned for a funeral
pageant. Banned from attending are the fiendish screech owl (Stanza 2)
and “fowls of tyrant wing" (Stanza 3). But the eagle, a “feathered king"
(Stanza 3) is welcome, and a swan is to act as “the priest in surplice
white" (Stanza 4). The crow, too, may attend (Stanza 5), his caws and sable
feathers appropriate to the occasion. The poem then describes the loving
relationship between the phoenix and the turtledove. Stanza 9 is particularly
moving; its last line–either was the other’s mine–is superb with
its double-meaning. On the one hand, it suggests a fusing of identities:
I
am you, and you are I; or, put another way, you are mine, and I
am yours. On the other hand, it suggests that either bird is a mine–as
in gold mine or diamond mind–for the other bird.
![]() Let the bird of loudest lay,1
But thou, shriking2harbinger,3
From this session interdict5
Let the priest in surplice7
white,
And thou, treble-dated
crow,10
Here the anthem doth commence:
So they lov'd, as love in
twain
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
So between them love did
shine,
Property11
was thus appall'd,
Reason, in itself confounded,
That it cried how true a
twain
Whereupon it made this threne12
THRENOS. Beauty, truth, and rarity.
Death is now the phoenix'
nest;
Leaving no posterity:—
Truth may seem, but cannot
be:
To this urn let those repair
1....lay:
Song, voice.
Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem. Alliteration Let the bird of loudest lay (line 1) Be the death-divining swan (line 15) That it cried how true a twain (line 43) Truth and beauty buried be (line 60) Metaphor Let the bird of loudest lay,
Paradox Distance, and no space was seen (line 30) .......The main theme of the poem is the intense love that binds two creatures to each other, turning them into a single being. A secondary theme is the sadness that pervades the poem. .......In each of the four-line stanzas (quatrains), the last line rhymes with the fourth; the second line rhymes with the third. The first stanza demonstrates the pattern. Let the bird of loudest lay,Note, however, that the second stanza has close rhymes only, unless one alters the pronunciation of harbinger, making it har bin jeer, and the pronunciation of fiend, making it fe end. .......In the threnos, the first, second, and third lines of each stanza rhyme. However, note that in the first stanza of the threnos, lie must be pronounced as lee or the y in rarity and simplicity must be pronounced as an i. .......There are seven syllables in each line. The stress falls on the first, third, fifth, and seventh syllables, as the second stanza indicates: BUT thou, SHRIking HARbinGER,The metric pattern thus is trochaic tetrameter, meaning each foot consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable and that each line has four feet. However, the last foot of each line is catalectic—that is, it consists of only one syllable. The following presentation of the second stanza illustrates its metric format: .......1..................2................3............4Study Questions and Essay Topics 1...Write
a short poem that imitates the rhyme scheme of "The Phoenix and the Turtle."
The topic is open.
Leaving no posterity:—Shakespeare Plays on DVD (or VHS) ..
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