Shakespeare was always avid for words and never hesitated to gather them, when they might serve his need, from learned sources, in the law, medicine, music, astrology. 99-110. Since Jonson and Marston had recently been engaged in the violent Stage Quarrel we cannot suppose that either would have invited the other to contribute; and Shakespeare and Chapman both seem unlikely editors. ), it is clear that (until 1938 at least) the great majority have been per sonal or historical readings. 4). "The Phoenix and Turtle - Introduction" Shakespearean Criticism . XV, c. IX. 50, 54.) Before them playd such well-tun'd melodie, Some awkwardness arising from compression may even be acknowledged: it is not unfrequent in Shakespeare's rhymed verse of a more or less gnomic kind. The whole world's soul, Anima Mundi, everything which is the lover's proprium, is 'contracted', is drawn together and reflected in the eyes of his beloved; so that (to complete the syllogism) to him she is all things, soul of his soul. . Truth in poetry must be imaginative truth, not factual truth, nor even, here, the truth conveyed by allegorical equivalence. In Responses: Prose Pieces: 1953-1976, pp. Shakespeare's poem follows the splendid ritual 'The King is dead, long live the King!'. Following this line of thought, Marie Axton, in 1977, maintained that Shakespeare's verse was "a politically philosophical occasional poem" composed in anticipation of "an historical moment of transition"the succession of Elizabeth I. Axton argued that Shakespeare adopted the iconography and myths of Elizabethan succession drama, specifically the phoenix, to expound his own thoughts on political theory. The parallel extends to bisexuality since Adam was first created both male and female (f. 35v). 41; N.L.W., MS 5390D. The bird of tyrant wing has no real desire to become actively involved in the paying of homage, but only in the novelty and sensation of announcing the death. The threne ends as the poem began, with a clause governed by "let," but a vastly different clause it is. The Dove is at once a symbol for the love and fidelity of the monarch in her capacity as a natural woman, and for the love and fidelity of her subjects' (The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (1978), p. 119). The Phoenix and the Turtle Most specifically, the bird is not the phoenix. This evolution of Shakespeare's sensibility is sketched in the third volume of my Potes Mtaphysiques Anglais (Paris, 1960), pp. 13-16), an office devoted to the newborn Phoenix when he burnt his father's ashes on the altar of the Sun God in Heliopolis.11, To ascertain the meaning of the phoenix symbol in Shakespeare's poem, Renaissance adaptations of the myth must be considered rather than the time-honoured poems of Lactantius and Claudianus, though commentators have strangely ignored the latter. Skeat) VII, Chaucerian and other Pieces, 409 ff. Nature refers to the earthly home of the Phoenix as both Arabia and Brytania; conventional geography is best forgotten for Nature sees two aspects of the single earthly kingdom, corresponding to the twin-personed Phoenix-Dove. 10 Lactantius, 11. 24 V. NED, s. v. mine 1 c, citing this example. Vulgar love is unchastity or lust, the concupiscent force of the lover's worst motives. Yet the 'abstract allusiveness' of his approach (Alvarez, p. 13) brings him no nearer to Donne. So too, in the Chartrain poets, Natura's quest for a pattern of perfection in heaven succeeds in bringing fertility to the earth. Bates, Ronald. Because the tone of The Phoenix and the Turtle is 'detached and impersonal', it does not follow, as Brown assumes, that it is 'frigid and perfunctory' (p. lxxiii). The mood of the later plays seems to me quite a different one. The Arabian bird is compassionate but, it seems, somewhat disconcerted, and asks tentatively 'Shall I welcome him?' Shakespeare's contribution to Loves Martyr is unlikely to have been first conceived as a mere complimentary puff, as F. T. Prince surmises, allowing only 'a chance conjunction of images' to precipitate 'a sudden intensity of emotion in the poet'. 11 Peter Dronke, ('The Phoenix and the Turtle', Orbis Litter arum, XXII [1968], 208), however, points out that Phoenix is described as 'the bird of greatest lay' in Lactantius's De Ave Phoenice (lines 45-50). Mutual surrender means exercising one's 'right' for the benefit of the beloved. Property was thus appaled, . Into your flame, of whom one name may rise. Turbaque prosequitur munere laeta pio. Now, in the medieval tradition of the birds attending a Requiem Mass, the Phoenix summons the birds to the ceremony of her death. 14 What Brown does not tell us is that the Salusburys had eight more children after Jane and Harry. 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). There were also contributions from 'Chorus Vatum' (perhaps of composite authorship) and 'Ignoto'. . The effect would be the same were Shakespeare creating his own legend. Such comfort fervent love According to Harington it also signifies 'the mind of man being gotten by God', overcoming its earthboundness and mounting to the contemplation of heavenly things. cit., p. xvi, prints a transcript from the registers of Bodfari parish in which, under the year 1587, we have: 'Jane Salusbury. But in them it were a wonder. .' "Love" in the third line is personified, but "Reason," in its first appearance in that line, would be better understood without the capital: the reason of Love surpasses, indeed annihilates, the reason of Reason, if. The traditional palingenesis is flatly contradicted by the next line: "Leauing no posteritie." Nature visits the Arabian Phoenix and finds her wasting away, for as she has lost her power of regeneration she has no longer a reason for living. 27Commentarium, II, 8; Dialoghi, ed. So they loved as love in twaine, In enumerating qualities not mentioned in the anthem, Reason adds to the praise, but the last line of the first stanza of the threne (with, possibly, the emphasis of imperfect rhyme) calls attention to their present state: "Here enclosde, in cinders lie."
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