Shakespeare and the Truth of Love: The Mystery of 'The Phoenix and Turtle'

In 1601, at the height of his career, Shakespeare wrote a 67-line untitled elegy—now frequently known as "The Phoenix and Turtle"—for inclusion, along with verse by Ben Jonson, John Marston, and George Chapman, in a collection called Diverse Poetical Essays. Readers familiar only with the core of Shakespeare's most popular work might be surprised to learn that since the end of the nineteenth century this extraordinary lyric has regularly been regarded, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Frank Kermode, as one of the most highly prized works in the canon. None of Shakespeare's masterpieces has been more enthusiastically celebrated while remaining almost entirely unappreciated by general readers. It is a neglected treasure poised for rediscovery. This book was written to encourage a larger audience to consider a fascinating but relatively unexplored side of Shakespeare's art at its most riddling, erudite, and difficult.