Summary
“The Phoenix and the Turtle” is a 67-line allegorical poem. It describes the love of the Phoenix and the Turtle (turtledove), who together represent ideal love. The poem is made up of three sections. The first (stanzas 1-5) is known as the Injunction. In this section, the speaker summons a number of birds to perform a ceremony for the deceased Phoenix and Turtle. First, the “bird of the loudest lay” (loudest voice) is invited. Then the screech-owl is told to stay away. Other predatory birds are also not invited, except for the eagle because he is the king of the birds. Then the swan is invited because it is colored white like a priest. The crow is also invited because his feathers are the color of mourning black and because crows are rumored to live long and magically reproduce through breathing.
Once the birds are gathered, the Anthem (stanzas 6-13) begins. This second section of the poem describes the love of the Phoenix and the Turtle. The two birds are dead, having been consumed in the flame of the Phoenix (a mythological bird that renews itself in fire and is born from its own ashes). Using abstract and philosophical language, the Anthem describes a number of paradoxes. The Phoenix and the Turtle “lov’d, as love in twain / Had the essence but in one.” In other words, they loved as two separate creatures but shared a single essence. Similarly, they were two distinct beings but had no division between them. They were also distant without being separated, and this is a “wonder.” Their love broke the rules of personality (”Property”) and logic (”Reason”). Both Property and Reason are personified as characters in the poem. Reason is confused by the love of the Phoenix and the Turtle. It cries out that if this kind of mystical love is possible, then love is more logical than reason. Then Reason begins singing a funeral dirge (”Threnos”) for the Phoenix and the Turtle.
The third and last section of the poem is the Threnos (stanzas 14-18). Reason says that in the ashes of the Phoenix and the Turtle lie “Beauty,” “truth,” “rarity,” and “grace.” This is what the two birds represented in the world, but now they are dead. They had no offspring because their marriage was chaste—that is, spiritual rather than sexual. With their death, truth and beauty are also dead. Reason summons anyone who is “true or fair” to come to the urn that holds the lovers’ ashes to “sigh a prayer” for them.
Analysis
The famous English literary critic I. A. Richards once asked, in reference to "The Phoenix and the Turtle," “is it not fitting that the greatest English poet should have written the most mysterious poem in English?” While “The Phoenix and the Turtle” is today universally recognized as one of Shakespeare’s greatest works, and indeed one of the greatest poems in English, it is also a notoriously difficult poem. Even literary scholars do not agree about the poem’s meaning. Early interpretations suggested that the Phoenix and the Turtle stood in for various historical figures: Sir John Salusbury and his wife Ursula Stanley, Queen Elizabeth and the second Early of Essex, or else Catholic martyr St. Anne Line and her husband.
Contemporary scholarship has given up the hunt for the “real” people behind the characters. Instead, critics today focus on the themes and concepts that are present in the poem. Even more general associations of the Phoenix as a symbol for Beauty and the Turtle as a symbol for Truth or Constancy are limited. As James P. Bednarz writes in his book-length study of the poem, Shakespeare and the Truth of Love: The Mystery of 'The Phoenix and Turtle', the main point of the poem is that the Phoenix and the Turtle are not easily divisible into two separate symbols: “readers will [. . .] always be tempted to conceive of the birds as having distinct and individualized identities apart from each other, ignoring the fact that ‘Single Natures double name,/Neither two nor one was called.’” What the poem describes is a kind of mystical, reason-defying love that makes the two lovers simultaneously one and two, separate and united, single and joined. They die together in a “mutual flame,” as the poem says, and the “wonder” of their love dies with them. It is this mysterious ideal of love that makes the poem perplexing to readers.
The poem’s Injunction (stanzas 1-5) describes a ritual performed by several different birds after the Phoenix and the Turtle’s death. The language is formal. Words like “session,” “interdict,” and “King” make this meeting of birds like a parliamentary session. Similarly, there are religious elements in this section, with a swan serving as a priest. Even in the first line, however, there are mysteries. Scholars have long debated who the unnamed “bird of the loudest lay” is. All we know about this bird is that it has a loud voice, sits on an “Arabian tree,” and serves as a “herald” for the ceremony. Some argue that the bird is actually the Phoenix itself because this mystical bird is associated with the palm tree. (In ancient Greek both the phoenix and the palm tree are called phoinix.) Others point out that this is impossible, as the Phoenix is dead when the poem begins. Others suggest that it is the Turtle or else the nightingale, which is famous for its beautiful song. The poem provides no conclusive answer.
The other birds invited or rejected from the gathering are easier to identify. The “shrieking harbinger” is the screech-owl, who is not invited because it is a bad omen and associated with death. Birds of prey are also not invited, with the exception of the eagle because he is regal: a “feather’d king.” The swan is to act as the “priest” because its white color is like a “surplice,” the white garments worn by priests in the Church of England. Both the church and monarchy are now represented at the ceremony. The swan is also significant because it is known in mythology and literature for singing as it dies. The crow is invited because its “sable gender” (natural blackness) makes it suitable for mourning. The crow also has mystical associations: it is thought to live three lifetimes longer than humans (”treble-dated”) and can reproduce through its breath (”With the breath thou giv’st and tak’st”). At this point in the poem, the “mourners” are gathered and the next section begins.
In the Anthem (stanzas 6-13), presumably sung by the chorus of birds, the poem’s diction becomes more abstract. It is less about the birds gathered and instead more concerned with concepts like “property,” “reason,” “division,” and “essence.” These concepts are used to describe the paradoxical love of the Phoenix and the Turtle: “Two distincts, division none:/Number there in love was slain.” They were both two distinct creatures and they had no division between them. They were simultaneously both one and two, a truth which destroys “Number” or mathematics. At the same time, they were both separate and not separate: “Hearts remote, yet asunder.” The effect of this mystical love is that “Property was [. . .] appalled/That the self was not the same.” In other words, a personified 'Property' (an older term for “personality”) is shocked that the Phoenix and the Turtle were both themselves and each other at the same time. They became “Single nature’s double name” because they were both two separate creatures with their own names and also shared a single nature.
Reason (also personified as a character in the poem) is confused by this love and cries out: “How true a twain/Seemeth this concordant one!/Love has reason, reason none,/If what parts can so remain.” In other words, this single joined being also appears as a couple. If two beings that are separate can remain united like this, then love is the true possessor of logic, and logic turns out to have nothing logical about it at all. This breakdown of reason is also reflected in the structure of this section of the poem. Up until this point, the poem has been based on seven-syllable lines with four accents evenly spaced out. However, as Reason is shaken by this impossible love, its confusion is reflected in the addition of an extra, irregular syllable to the end of lines 41-44.
After Reason declares itself unreasonable in the face of this love, it goes on to sing a “Threnos” (funeral dirge) for the Phoenix and the Turtle. This makes up the poem’s third and final section (stanzas 14-18). Reason declares that “beauty,” “truth,” “rarity,” and “grace” all lie in the “cinders” (ashes) of the deceased Phoenix and Turtle. The two are not separate symbols of beauty and truth but actually four things all combined, just as the ashes of their bodies are combined. The birds and their qualities are now united in death. They leave no children behind because their relationship was one of “married chastity.” With them now gone, “Truth may seem but cannot be.” Truth might seem like truth, but with the Phoenix and the Turtle gone, truth cannot exist. The same is true for beauty. The poem ends with Reason declaring that those who are “true or fair” should come to the urn where the two birds lie and “sigh a prayer” for them.
The central theme of this poem is the love between the Phoenix and the Turtle. The idea that lovers are joined as one is an old idea. It is elaborated in texts from Plato’s Symposium to Shakespeare’s plays. However, what Shakespeare does in this poem is something more complex. The lovers are not just joined as one; they manage to be both one and two. According to Bednarz, what the poem gives us is a “radical formulation of ideal love as an experience in which the self and other merge while remaining distinct in a state that guarantees community and independence.” For many scholars, this poem’s vision of a love separate but united draws heavily on the idea of the Holy Trinity. This is an important concept in Christian doctrine relating the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three are both joined and separate. In other words, God is both one substance and also three persons. As a statement of Christian belief (the Athanasian Creed) used in the Church of England expresses it: “one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity: Neither confounding the persons: nor dividing the substance.” Shakespeare would have been familiar with this statement. It is clear that his description of the love of the Phoenix and the Turtle draws on this mystery. Lines like “Reason, in itself confounded,/Saw division grow together” echo how the Trinity is described. Similarly, the last section of the poem plays with the notion by including stanzas of three lines. Like the Trinity, the Phoenix and the Turtle are both themselves and each other. They merged in a relationship but were also separate. The central point of “The Phoenix and the Turtle” is not theological. Rather, the Holy Trinity is used to illustrate the mystery of the ideal form of love. It is perhaps an impossible ideal, as the two birds eventually die in their “mutual flame.” They leave behind them a world lacking in beauty, truth, and rarity.
