The Phoenix is the most sententious and didactic of all Thomas Middleton's plays. Even his tragedies and tragicomedies are not as pervasively moralistic as this play. The reason for this difference in The Phoenix has never been explored because only the more attractive, realistic parts of the comedy have been singled out for comment.

Like A Fair Quarrel and The Old Law, which are also more didactic than the rest of Middleton's dramatic work, The Phoenix was performed before the King: the quarto edition has the subtitle, ‘as it hath beene sundrye times Acted by the Children of Paules, And presented before his Maiestie’. The sententiousness of The Phoenix derives, I think, from a definite attempt by Middleton to interest the King and in a sense advise him. The Phoenix, I hope to show, is a comedy written for a king.

When Maurice Scève wrote his Délie, obiect de plus haulte vertu, he did not allow his creative powers unlimited scope. Many of the dizains are imitations or else direct translations of Italian models. All of the poetic conventions of Scève's era are to be met with in the book. Addressing erotic verse to an actual or invented mistress called Delia was itself a convention, for that matter, at least as old as Tibullus. But in spite of this, there are abundant indications that some of the poems recount an authentic love experienced by Scève. Indeed, the reader is told as much when in one instance the poet remarks that he has chosen the name Délie in order not to disclose a real woman. In telling us that this is the ‘surnom’ by which his lady is to be called, the poet takes care to assert in addition that it is a ‘surnom louable’ (LIX).