In the following essay, Klause places The Phoenix and Turtle within its appropriate cultural, literary, autobiographical, religious, and ideological contexts in order to ascertain its proper significance in Shakespeare's oeuvre. The critic concludes that rather than celebrating Sir John Salusbury, as the other contributors to Love's Martyr had done, Shakespeare set out to subtly disparage him.

In the following essay, Matchett analyzes The Phoenix and Turtle with an emphasis on structure, versification, symbolism, and the "texture of complexities and ambiguities in the poem. "

"Shakespeare's 'The Phoenix and the Turtle' and the Defunctive Music of Ecstasy," Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. VIII, 1975, pp. 311-31. In the essay that follows, Petronella discusses the structuring trope of ecstasy, which does not effect the separation of the immortal soul from the body, but the state of "love-in-death."

In the following essay, Dronke discusses the imagery and literary contexts of The Phoenix and Turtle, as well as the poem's theme: "that pure, unwavering love can find its perfect fulfilment in death, and that its power can extend even beyond death. "

In the following essay, McCoy studies the combination sacred and earthly elements in The Phoenix and Turtle and suggests the term "relic" to describe the blending of mortality and continued spiritual power.

In the following essay, Bradbrook examines the literary and biographical themes in The Phoenix and Turtle.

In the following excerpt, Roe studies critical approaches to The Phoenix and Turtle, surveys its relation to literary tradition, and evaluates the work stylistically.

In the following essay, Garber offers a structural analysis of The Phoenix and Turtle, evaluating its fusion of two poetic genres—the elegy and the epithalamion—as well as its subversion of logic, grammar, and paradox.

In the following essay, Ellrodt examines Elizabethan and Renaissance sources of phoenix imagery and explores the symbolic importance of this mythic bird in Shakespeare's The Phoenix and Turtle.

In the following essay, Axton focuses on The Phoenix and Turtle as "a politically philosophical poem " related to the succession of Elizabeth I.

In the essay that follows, Bock contends that The Phoenix and Turtle, like Hamlet, explores a form of unity within which each element retains its identity.

In the following essay, Baldwin examines the various sources that Shakespeare drew from in his The Phoenix and Turtle.

In the following essay, Everett examines the meter and rhyme of The Phoenix and Turtle, and finds that “Shakespeare writes nowhere else—not even in his last plays—quite like this.”

In the following essay, Green examines the “language of alchemy” in The Phoenix and Turtle, and contends that the “alchemical connection clarifies the mode of love in the entire poem.”

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"

In the following essay, Buxton examines the historical background of The Phoenix and Turtle, and emphasizes that Shakespeare's poem represents an exhibition of pure poetry on the theme of constancy in love.

In the following essay, Knight relates the imagery and the paradoxically tragic regeneration of the Phoenix to the creative process, but rejects a narrow biographical interpretation of the poem.

In the following excerpt, Green explicates The Phoenix and Turtle, calling it a love-elegy that muses on three attitudes toward sexual love: "the vulgar, the sublime, and the chaste. "

In the following essay, Straumann argues that The Phoenix and Turtle reflects a shift in Shakespeare's expression and concept of "the possible union of beauty and truth " towards an emphasis on the fleetingness of such a union.

In the following essay, Copland claims that The Phoenix and Turtle is a “sad, searching, tender, human, and humane” meditation on the death of Truth and Beauty, and reproaches interpretations that mystify or sentimentalize the poem.

In the essay that follows, Copland criticizes a mystical interpretive approach to the poem, given the "fashionable" status of metaphysical images in the Elizabethan age.

In the essay that follows, Kay provides a general introductory discussion of the poem, with particular attention to its textual history and critical reception.

In the following essay, Empson comments on the puzzling central theme of “married chastity” in The Phoenix and Turtle, and examines the poem's biographical contexts and mystical conclusion.

In the following essay, Schwartz argues that The Phoenix and Turtle is a funeral elegy for two dead lovers, rather than a metaphysical or philosophical poem.

In the following essay, originally published in 1958, Richards closely examines the structure and meaning of The Phoenix and Turtle.

In the following essay, originally published in 1962, McCully offers an overview of The Phoenix and Turtle, and examines the spiritual meaning of the poem.

In the following essay, Bonaventure dismisses tragic or paradoxical readings of The Phoenix and Turtle, highlighting instead the poem 's final "harmony of. . . inspired idealism rising to a note of triumph and universal hope. "

In the following essay, Bonaventure considers the diverse interpretive approaches to the poem and defends a metaphysical reading.

In the following essay, Davies examines the ritual imagery, specifically its Christian derivation, of The Phoenix and Turtle.