The Phoenix and the Turtle

The traditional attribute of the Phoenix is that when it dies, it returns to life, rising from the ashes of its prior incarnation; the Turtledove, by contrast, is mortal.

The unused sheets of the first quarto were subsequently acquired by another publisher, Matthew Lownes, and reissued in 1611 under a different title, The Annuals of Great Britain.

With the true legend of famous King Arthur the last of the nine Worthies, being the first Essay of a new Brytish Poet: collected out of diuerse Authenticall Records.

The Phoenix is envisaged as female and the dove as male: Chester's main poem is a long allegory in which the relationship between the birds is explored, and its symbolism articulated.

It incorporates the story of King Arthur, and a history of ancient Britain, emphasising Welsh etymologies for British towns.

These include, in addition to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, George Chapman, John Marston and the anonymous "Vatum Chorus" and "Ignoto".

The series is introduced by Vatum Chorus and Ignoto, followed by Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle, which ends with mourning for the death of the perfect lovers, "leaving no posterity".

Marston then seems to reply to Shakespeare's "moving epicedium", by referring to the couple's "glorious issue": the being born from the flames.

Jonson ends with an idealisation of the Phoenix, whose judgment shines as "Clear as a naked Vestal, / Closed in an orb of Crystal."

In addition the poem can be seen as an elucidation of the relationship between truth and beauty, or of fulfilled love, in the context of Renaissance Neoplatonism.

A difficulty with this view is the fact that the couple are known to have had ten children, but the poem refers to the relationship as a childless "married chastity".

[10] An alternative is to interpret the Turtle as John Salusbury and the Phoenix as Queen Elizabeth I, which would explain the chastity of the relationship and the implication that their "child" is something mystical rather than physical.

[6] The theory that both Chester's and Shakespeare's poems were intended to refer to the relationship between Elizabeth and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex was first proposed by A.B.

[17] St. Anne Line and her young husband Roger were separated when he was imprisoned and then exiled after being arrested at a prohibited Catholic Mass.

Her body was retrieved from the common grave in the road and one of the Jesuits who knew her hinted that a secret requiem Mass was later offered for her.

[19] Clara Longworth first suggested that St. Anne Line is Shakespeare's phoenix and Mark Barkworth, a Catholic priest who reportedly embraced her body as it hung on the scaffold before he was also executed, is the turtle.

[15] John Finnis and Patrick Martin argued more recently that St. Anne Line is the phoenix and her husband Roger is the turtle.

[21] Martin Dodwell argued further that Shakespeare used St. Anne and Roger Line to symbolise the Catholic Church itself, as disinherited and rejected by England.