THE PHOENIX AND TURTLE1 ... 1 This elegy, in which the rhymes are arranged as in Tennyson's In Memoriam, was first printed above the signature "William Shakespeare" in 1601. It forms the fifth of fourteen "Diverse Poeticall Essaies on the . . . Turtle and Phoenix, done by the best and chiefest of our moderne writers." The "turtle" is of course the "turtle dove." These "Diverse Poeticall Essaies" constitute an Appendix to a volume which is mainly filled by a long mystical poem called "Loves Martyr: or Rosalins Complaint, allegorically shadowing the truth of love in the constant fate of the phoenix and turtle now first translated out of the venerable Italian Torquato Cœliano, by Robert Chester." The volume was published in London by Edward Blount in 1601. "Torquato Cœliano" seems a fictitious personage. An Italian poet, Livio Cœliano, wrote nothing which bears any relation to Chester's effort. Of the fourteen poems in the Appendix, the present poem is signed by Shakespeare, two are signed by Ben Jonson, and one each by John Marston and George Chapman. The rest are either anonymous or are pseudonymously signed. All the contributions to the volume seem somewhat incoherent and irresponsible plays of elegiac fancy, which were suggested by the recent obsequies of some unidentified leaders of contemporary society, who in life gave notable proof of mutual affection. Matthew Roydon in his elegy on Sir Philip Sidney, which was appended to Spenser's Astrophel, 1595, similarly represents the eagle, the turtle, the phoenix, and the swan as taking part, with other birds, in his hero's obsequies. 1-2 Let the bird . . . Arabian tree] "The sole Arabian tree" is the palm-tree which the poets regard as the home of the fabulous bird called the phoenix. Cf. Tempest, III, iii, 22-24: "in Arabia 10 Let the priest in surplice white, There is one tree, the phoenix' throne; one phoenix At this hour reigning there," and Ant. and Cleop., III, ii, 12: "O thou Arabian bird!" See, too, Roydon's elegy on Sir Philip Sidney: The fable of the phoenix seems first to have been told by Herodotus, and is found in Ovid, Metam, xv, 391-407. Only one of the species is supposed to live at one time. In due course it is consumed by fire and out of its ashes a successor springs. A phoenix is one of the two subjects of the present elegy. The opening apostrophe to "the bird of loudest lay," who is to act as "herald and trumpet" at the funeral, cannot, therefore, refer to the dead bird, but must prematurely presume a successor. The construction of the poem is too vague and indeterminate to permit any quite logical interpretation. In Rosalins Complaint, st. xiv, the tongue of the phoenix is described as "the utterer of all glorious things, The silver clapper of that golden bell." 5 shrieking harbinger] apparently the screech owl. Cf. Macb., II, ii, 3: "It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,” and Mids. N. Dr., V, i, 365–367: "Whilst the screech owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud." The vocabulary in the text somewhat resembles Hamlet, I, i, 121–123: "And even the like precurse of fierce events, As harbingers preceding still the fates, And prologue to the omen coming on.” 11 the eagle, feather'd king] Cf. Roydon's elegy: "the sky-bred eagle royal bird," and "The Eagle marked with piercing sight The mournful habit of the place, And parted thence with mounting flight, 14 That defunctive music can] That is skilled in funeral music. Be the death-divining swan, And thou treble-dated crow, That thy sable gender makest With the breath thou givest and takest, Here the anthem doth commence: Love and constancy is dead; Phoenix and the turtle fled In a mutual flame from hence. go. 15 the death-divining swan] Cf. Roydon's elegy: "The swan that sings, about to die," and "The swan that was in presence here Began his funeral dirge to sing." 17 treble-dated] thrice as long-lived as a human being. The long life of the crow is a commonplace of Greek and Latin poetry. But the classical poets differ as to the number of times its life exceeds that of man. Hesiod gave the ratio as nine to one, Aristophanes (Birds, 610) as five to one, Ausonious, Idyll ix, wrote "Et totiens trino cornix vivacior aevo." To Lucretius' words "cornicum ut saecla vetusta ' (V. 1084) Steevens added the words "ter tres aetates humanos garrula vincit Cornix as though they were part of Lucretius' text, but they do not figure there, although Steevens' error has been universally accepted by the commentators. 18 gender] race or kind. Cf. Othello, I, iii, 323: "one gender of herbs.” 19 With the breath thou givest and takest] The uncouth line seems to mean that the crow first gives breath or birth to its young, and then provides support for its offspring by taking breath from, or feeding on, other creatures. 23 the turtle] turtle dove. At line 50, infra, the bird is called "the dove." Cf. Roydon's elegy: "The turtle by him never stirred 20 |