SOURCE: "Shakespeare's Heroic Elixir: A New Context for 'The Phoenix and the Turtle,'" Studia Neo-philologica, Vol. 51, No. 2, 1979, pp. 215-235.

In the following essay, Green interprets The Phoenix and Turtle as an "alchemical recipe" that is intended to enact a transformation of the reader's values and ideals"

Critics generally recognise the language of scholasticism as an important stylistic context for Shakespeare's Phoenix and Turtle¹ J. V. Cunningham, who formally proposed the context, refers the poem to the Thomist doctrine of the Holy Trinity, i.e., the relationship between the Phoenix and Turtle is continuous with that between the Persons of the Trinity.² The reciprocal relation between the Father and the Son derives from their mutual participation in the Holy Ghost, who both joins them together and in turn issues from their relation. The Phoenix and Turtle, then, symbolises the union between two real human lovers on the analogy...