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Introduction

Milton’s Paradise Lost, with intricately written characters driven by specific motivations and stunning descriptions of the settings in which those characters exist, often reads more like a drama than an epic. The most overtly theatrical moments in the poem involve the character of Satan as he plots revenge after his banishment from Heaven and the setting of Hell in which he reigns. In this paper, I assert that Milton’s use of dramatic convention stems from the ways in which the monarchy attempted to control portrayals of kingship through literary censorship and the appropriation of artistic forms, a trend which began under James I and continued through the tenure of Charles I. Drama in particular was affected by the control exerted by the kings, and Milton’s inherently theatrical works, including Paradise Lost, mimic the ways in which these idolatrous portrayals proliferated in early Stuart England.

Milton explicitly credits Homeric and Vergilian epic as inspiration for his own work, yet his relationship with drama, classical and contemporary, is crucial to his overall vision for the poem. By 1667, when Paradise Lost was published in its ten-book form,

Milton’s tone regarding the genre had shifted as a result of the political undercurrent which shaped drama over the course of his life. Early in his career, Milton openly acknowledged the influence of drama in his poetry, seen in L’Allegro, which pits the contemporary drama of “Jonson’s learned Sock . . . Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child” (lines 132-33) against Il Penseroso’s preference for the “Buskin’d stage” of ancient Greek theatre (line 102). His dramas Arcades and Comus indicate a tangible 6 affinity for dramatic convention and Paradise Lost in its early stages existed as a tragedy titled “Adam Unparadiz’d,” the inspiration for which was possibly drawn from a

European interest in retelling biblical stories through dramatic representations (Coiro 64).

Aside from textual evidence, there is significant biographical information supporting the poet’s attraction to drama: his father was affiliated with Blackfriars, a private theatre which was home to the King’s Men, after Richard Burbage’s death and Milton himself participated in dramatic exercises while a schoolboy at St. Paul’s and as a young man at

Cambridge (Coiro 59).

In later years, his work was dedicated to prose treatises which centered on his political views and railed against the monarchy. Any references to dramatic performance in his essays are associated with Charles and his court, whom Milton viewed as actors presenting themselves to the public as if in “full measure of a masking scene . . . set there to catch fools and silly gazers” (Eikonoklastes 784). His change in sentiment responds directly to the king’s promotion of an absolutist agenda via dramatic entertainments. By enlisting dramatists to create works which featured the royals as all-powerful beings responsible for restoring order to a steadily disintegrating world, Charles was able to perpetuate the notion that the monarchy was absolute and that no uprising factions would be able to shake what he regarded as a God-given right to rule. Milton regarded these manufactured portrayals as idolatrous, that the king was putting forth a false image in order to disguise the corruption and impotence of his reign; it was the not the world that was disintegrating, but the monarchy itself. With this denigration of theatrical entertainment in mind, we can view Milton’s use of dramatic mode in Paradise Lost, seen principally in the visual aspects of Satan and Hell, as a response to the king’s 7 usurpation of dramatic entertainments for royal propaganda and his view of the idolatrous

Caroline court.

While evaluating the politicized theatricality of Paradise Lost, it is important to note the dramatists to whom Milton felt indebted, for their influences are essential to the work. Specific to Milton’s adaptation of dramatic characterization and setting to enhance epic form is his appreciation of Shakespeare. The playwright’s death in 1616 occurred when Milton was just seven years old, but we do know that Milton held Shakespeare in high esteem, as evidenced in the lines of his early work “On Shakespeare.” Written as a commendatory poem for the 1632 Second Folio, Milton expresses a doubtful anxiety regarding the possibility of adding anything to bolster Shakespeare’s already honored memory and graciously ascribes to the playwright direct inspiration from Apollo, indicating his belief that Shakespeare was not only a dramatist, but a true poet as well. In the poem, Milton addresses “my Shakespeare” (line 1), as though reserving the playwright for himself; what he is saying, however, is that Shakespeare is for every man, and his poetic “Book” (line 11) exists within the reader. Even in death, Shakespeare, whose lines “Dost make us Marble” (line 14), will survive through the living monument of those who read his works. Reverence for the written word and its power may be another factor contributing to Milton’s admiration of Shakespeare. In Areopagitica,

Milton endows books with “a potency of life” which “preserve[s] as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them” (720), and Lukas Erne supports an assertion that Shakespeare too was interested in the preservation of ideas for posterity, stating that the playwright was “aware that a certain artistic ingenuity survives better on the page than the stage” (77). 8

Assessment of Milton’s canon finds multiple ties to drama, only a few of which

I’ve noted. While this shared bond certainly links the poet to Shakespeare, I find situating their texts in the specific historical contexts they were written to be most valuable when identifying the ties which bind the writers. Milton’s Satan is a theatrical representation of the dramatic self-portrayals perpetuated by Charles, but the root of England’s cultural descent stems from manipulations of royal image instigated by James. Shakespeare’s

Measure for Measure and The Tempest, as I will argue, can be viewed as precursory works to Paradise Lost and address the ways in which those in power manipulate representations of self for political gain. The devices and themes employed in these works to represent those in power are borrowed directly from the court masque, the

Stuart kings’ favored vehicle to convey manufactured images of absolute power. It is not, however, simply a preference for theatrical entertainments which drove James and

Charles to exploit the genre. Instead, as I will argue, drama became necessary for the fulfillment of the monarchs’ goals, and they became reliant not only on the form’s conventions but also the artists who created these idealized royal representations. In light of this symbiotic relationship between king and dramatic artist, Milton and Shakespeare utilize theatrical conventions to create a pastiche of royal ideology which criticizes the use of drama to fulfill a perverted goal.

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Chapter 1: “On thir mirth and dance intent:” The Stuart Masque

The spectacle of the court masque, popularized by the Tudor reign and made a political tool by the Stuart kings to reinforce the power of a threatened monarchy, demonstrates the heavy-handed politics of drama in the early modern era. The masque came into being as a dance for courtiers centered on music and play, perhaps initiated in 1513 when a disguised Henry VIII burst in on the ladies of the court (Lindley 2). While resultant entertainments retained the dancing and music of the earliest revels, a decidedly political overtone began to shape the masque, and under Elizabeth I there was a strong focus on the mutually beneficent relationship between the queen and her people. The queen herself often participated in the spectacles, which reinforced the idea that she and the citizens were united in a shared love and respect for furthering the country.

When James I ascended the throne, the aura of royal spectacle was again altered, and the mutual love displayed in the masques presented to Elizabeth became representative of the hierarchy James enforced during his reign. Jonathan Goldberg addresses this shift of royal authority using the pageants of James’s entrance into London as an example:

Whereas Elizabeth played at being part of the pageants, James

played at being apart, separate. The pageants presented for Elizabeth form

a coherent, mutually reflective whole, and Elizabeth acted within the

limits of its design. . . . James’s pageants are not connected; each has its

own symbolic center . . . each exists only in and for the king. His presence 10

gives them life; his absence robs them. Their existence depends upon him.

. . .

Unlike Elizabeth, James said nothing throughout his entrance,

displayed no response to the pageants. Rather, the pageants responded to

him. As he arrived, like the sun giving life, like the groom entering the

bride, like a king in court, the city sprang alive, acting in word and deed to

show what the royal presence contains in itself and gives merely by being

present and being seen. (31)

Goldberg’s work affords a look at the relationship between politics and literature which corresponds closely to Milton’s and Shakespeare’s critiques of the royals’ use of drama. Monarchical representations perpetuated by the early Stuart kings were centered in performance; they played the character of god-king, who was the “model of unattainable power and unapproachable virtues to be copied but never achieved”

(Goldberg 32). James’s actions upon his 1604 procession into London are indicative of this trend toward the dramatization of royal rule, and for James and Charles the created representation of a king became more important than his actions. Masque writers were thus tasked with creating spectacles best showcasing the king in his preferred light. These contrived representations of power became central to the masque tradition and as much as court writers relied on the king’s favor, so were the royals at the mercy of these entertainments to maintain their status as idols. What Milton and Shakespeare create in

Paradise Lost, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest are imitations of court drama which focus on the characters’ manipulation of their outer environment, generally 11 through disguise or scenic convention, to display their power and sway the opinions of those around them.

In order to portray the monarch as the all-powerful center of morality and order in the world, there needed to exist a counterpoint to his divinely-granted authority. Enter the antimasque, instituted by Jonson upon the request of Queen Anne and serving as the discordant foil which royal rule sought to contain (Lindley 2). The inclusion of the antimasque was not only a way in which to further augment the presence of the silent, courtly participants among the loud, disorderly revelry of the professional masquers; instead, the power of the masked courtiers to eradicate the unruly from an ideal world became a metaphor for the kingly desire for absolutism. Hugh Craig, using the example of the satyrs from Jonson’s Oberon, demonstrates how the opposition of the antimasque serves this royal ambition:

The satyrs do not belong in the royal Banqueting House, the sylvan insists.

They are an affront, an embarrassment. At the same time, they are needed

as an object on which to exercise and thus demonstrate the power of the

forces of order. They infiltrate the masque, and yet their banishment is the

climax of the masque; at the moment when a foreign element is expelled,

the inviolability of the courtly realm is registered. The antimasquers are

interlopers in the masque that are nonetheless required by the very form of

the entertainment. (188)

By controlling the divisive element of the antimasque, James and Charles were, by extension, exerting a kind of control over the dissenters who railed against the kings’ agendas. Through the arm of drama they were creating a new image of kingship, one that 12 was all at once protected from and powerful over the outside world that threatened to impede on the sanctity their rule.

Furthering the mystery of royal rule and expanding the divide between court and country was the change in locale of masque performances. Where Elizabethan masques were often presented during the queen’s progress across country, the Stuart masque was an indoor affair, carefully regulated within the confines of the Banqueting House

(Chibnall 81). This transition necessitated a change in the scenic conventions of the form, allowing designers to create sets and costumes more extravagant than ever before.

Coming to the forefront of this design movement was Inigo Jones, whose “architectural fantasies, spun out in the decor of Jacobean and Caroline masques, express imagined power, just as the Banqueting House at Whitehall, which he designed, served as the place where masques were performed” (Goldberg 39). The decadence of these entertainments became a hallmark of the Stuart dynasty, which was already rife with self-indulgent and expensive behavior despite a lack of money, and those already fractious over religious and political differences with the crown saw these ostentatious spectacles as just another way James and Charles abused their role as king. The common innovations seen in

Jones’s designs included temporary proscenium arches, painted-perspective flats, and mechanical systems for changes in scenery (Wilson and Goldfarb 203). The scale of these scenic devices common to Stuart masques were integral to the portrayals of kingly rule which showcased them as all-powerful restorers of morality and order.

Milton and Shakespeare, as I will discuss in future chapters, were well-versed in the politics of the Stuart court masque and the implications of those politics on the culture of England. The dramatic conventions of the masque utilized by James and Charles to 13 reinforce a desired image are re-appropriated by the authors and used to showcase the flaws that exist in these false portrayals. In addition, the attention paid to the specific setting in which their manufactured representations exist are often overt in their parallel to the extravagance of Jones’s designs and enhance the duplicitous nature of the characters.

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Chapter 2: “The Image of a Brute:” Fabricated Appearances of Satan and the Duke

Dramatic and poetic representations of the royal self as divine ruler existed as a veil for the king to hide behind when confronted by his actual indiscretions. The importance of outer representation as a way to hide the inner mysteries of the soul emerged as a theme of the Jacobean court; to James, the iconology of the monarchy “gave him the latitude he desired for his physical self. To justify such abuses as his frequent absences from court, his pleasure jaunts to the countryside, his general disinclination to take seriously the business of state or to appear in public, the king called for the rhetoric of the royal arcana and its exclusions” (Goldberg 82). The mystery of the inner self became a protection, a way for James to hide the true manner of his outward actions. For Charles, perpetuating the myth of kingship was not so much about excusing the actions of the man; unlike his father, he was less prone to immoral behaviors which needed justification. Rather,

Charles’s manufactured representations of self were used to enforce the idea that the actions of the king were indeed absolute and dictated by the grace of God. Similar to their kingly counterparts, Milton’s Satan and Shakespeare’s Duke in Measure for Measure further their respective agendas by hiding behind disguises and proxies who carry out their plans, much like the deified representations of kingship in the court masque which create order out of chaos. Power is reinforced through absence for the characters and the kings, but instead of supporting this royal philosophy, Milton and Shakespeare bring to light the flaws which exist in rulers who operate in secrecy. 15

Shakespeare’s play brings the theme of self-representation to the forefront, and

Goldberg assesses its cultural significance in relation to the reign of James: “[C]riticism is no doubt correct in feeling that Measure for Measure has some special relationship to the king. . . . That relationship, and with it, Shakespeare’s relationship to his culture, are explored through the crucial notion that links theater and culture in James’s time. . . .

Measure for Measure is a play about substitution, replacement—and thus, re- presentation” (232). Substitutions exist throughout the play in many forms, and it often seems that all of the characters are operating under false pretenses: Isabella hides behind

Mariana to avoid Angelo, Claudio is switched out for Barnardine, who is subsequently switched out for Ragozine, and, of course, there is Angelo, whose outer approximation of upstanding citizen cloaks his inner depraved lech. I believe, however, that the Duke uses his other “self” for gain in ways most similar to Milton’s Satan. Duke Vincentio, like the

Great Tempter, closets his inner self as he relies on his outer presentation to supply him in his deception in ways which mimic the Stuarts’ dramatized versions of power.

The Duke’s motivation in choosing Angelo to represent him as sovereign in

Vienna is cloaked in secrecy immediately. It is not clear whether the Duke believes

Angelo is in fact fit to rule in his place, if he truly possesses “such ample grace and honor” which best embodies those in power (Measure for Measure 1.1.23) or if Angelo is being set up to fail. The Duke’s insistence that Angelo is the only citizen upright enough to contain and obliterate the baseness of his fellow Viennese seems to be an indication that he himself is unfit for the job and will be ultimately futile in his mission, as he too is reproachable for his actions while in power (Goldberg 233). The Duke then makes haste in leaving Angelo to fulfill his delegated duties, and openly declares his preference for 16 hiding his true self by operating via surrogate: “I love the people,” he admits, “But do not like to stage me to their eyes” (MM 1.1.67-68). This metaphor is significant to the relationship between politics and theatre that Shakespeare is playing upon. The Stuart kings used dramatized portrayals to mesmerize the audience of the English people, and the Duke’s hesitation to stage his own theatre of politics is only a ruse played out for

Angelo. Like James and Charles, the Duke knows precisely what role he needs to play to fulfill his private objective.

Belying the Duke’s concern over how the people perceive him is his further action in disguising himself as the Friar. To Angelo, he is openly hesitant to exercise his political power, but as we see, he takes no issue with appropriating the power the Friar holds as a religious man. Throughout the play, he serves as puppet-master, manipulating the characters to do his bidding. As the Duke plays the role of the Friar to the citizens of

Vienna, we can see again a parallel to James. The Duke operates under the guise of religion, using the outer representation of the Friar’s robes to obtain who and what he wants, while shielding from view his machinations, much like James used the divine right of kingship to assert his authority over the realm. Ultimately, in the denouement, we are still unclear as to what the Duke wanted to achieve. Whether he knew the depths of

Angelo’s corruption at the start of the play or not is unclear; also ambiguous is the motivation behind his contrived marriage to Isabella. Questions abound in regard to the

Duke’s machinations, and Shakespeare only leaves us with a suggestive tag which does little to satisfy our curiosity: “So, bring us to our palace, where we’ll show / What’s yet behind, that’s meet you all should know” (MM 5.1.536-37). This seems a fitting end for a 17 character whose actions mimic those of the player-king, James, whose true self is bound up in a fusion of imagery created by the ruler himself.

Milton’s depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost utilizes Shakespeare’s conventions and develops them even further to make an example of the theatrical nature of the Stuarts and the ways in which they portrayed the power of the throne. Charles, perhaps to an even greater extent than James before him, relied heavily on the idea of kingship as an earthly representation of power bestowed upon one by God, subsequently enlisting dramatists to create roles which likened him to a quasi-god. While James, as noted earlier, preferred to enhance the mystery of divine rule by presiding over the court masques as a silent spectator, Charles was fond of playing in the spectacles himself, and the implications of his participation are addressed by Barbara Lewalski:

Charles I and his Roman Catholic queen were promoting a fashionable

cult of Platonic Love as a benign representation and vindication of royal

absolutism and the personal rule (1629-1640), when Charles ruled without

Parliament. In the court masques of the early 1630s the royal pair

displayed themselves under various mythological and pastoral guises as

enacting the union of Heroic Virtue (Charles) and Divine Beauty or Love

(Henrietta Maria). . . . The King and Queen themselves danced in several

masques, symbolizing their personal and active control of all the

discordant elements represented in the antimasques – unruly passions,

disorderly or mutinous elements in the populace and threats from abroad.

(296) 18

The characters portrayed by the king in his masques fought against threatening entities who sought to destroy the order of the world. Through the vehicle of drama he attempted to represent an unobtainable ideal; I say unobtainable because he was the actual embodiment of the entities which were a danger to the world. Charles’s idolatrous models of himself as a godly ruler, the censorship he exercised, and the ways in which he abused his power by eliminating the balancing influence of Parliament all jeopardized the foundation on which England was built.

Milton was, as we know, vehemently opposed to the king’s politics and the ways in which Charles dramatized himself as the arm of God; his answer to these false portrayals is in the thoroughly theatrical character of Satan, whom he develops as a mimic of the dramatic roles played by the king. Merritt Hughes inadvertently supports my assertion that Milton’s Satan is an inherently dramatic character, stating “[w]e seldom see Satan except at moments of high drama” (Introduction 173). While Hughes is indicating that the scenes containing Satan are emotionally charged, high-stakes moments, he is also appropriately implying the theatricality of the character. Satan’s actions are amplified by actorly flourishes, played on the stages of Hell, Heaven, and

Eden. Like Charles, he is dependent upon the image of his power, supplemented with beguiling costumes and ornate backdrops. Even in the few moments we see Satan alone, without an audience to play to, he maintains his stage presence. Looking upon Eden, poised between Heaven and Earth, he laments his circumstances through a soliloquy which was originally intended for the start of a tragedy (Coiro 65). Thus, it is the theatrical nature of the character which drives the scenes, not the scene itself that is solely dramatic. These moments are steered by Satan’s motivation to counter God’s good with 19 evil, which becomes his Stanislavskian through line during the course of the epic.

Relating to the Stuarts’ fabrications of kingship are the physical cues given to us by

Milton, which at times reveal and at times mask Satan’s devious intentions.

The first glimpse we have of Satan is in Book I of Paradise Lost, after the revolt in Heaven; as readers we are able to identify him, but Milton takes care not to name him until eighty-two lines in. Even before this, Milton addresses his eyes, which are “baleful”

(82), and “Mixt with obdúrate pride and steadfast hate” (83). I find this initial acknowledgement of Satan important, as it pertains to the inner and outer representation of self, and Milton’s inspiration would likely have come from the scriptural source: “The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light: But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (King James Version, Matt.

6.22-23). Satan’s inner light is indeed a paradoxical darkness, which we encounter when we first meet him. Supporting this idea is Satan’s conviction regarding the power of inner over outer: “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (Paradise Lost 1.254-55). Ultimately, Satan’s is fully in control of deciding which mask he wears, making sure that his audience sees what he wants them to see.

What follows in the action of the epic are his multiple attempts and apparent successes at disguising the sinister machinations of his soul with his manipulative costumes.

Descriptions of angelic physicality in the poem are controlled by Satan, as he is the first to vocalize the visual change undergone pre-fall to post-fall. Milton does not give a narrative account of the angels’ new appearance, instead opting to give Satan the opportunity to voice the transformation as he peers at Beelzebub beside him: 20

If thou beest hee; But O how fall’n! how chang’d

From him, who in the happy Realms of Light

Cloth’d with transcendent brightness didst outshine

Myriads though bright. (PL 1.84-7)

Milton makes a powerful choice by bestowing these lines on Satan. Readers must trust

Satan’s description of how Beelzebub appears in contrast with his Heavenly manifestation, and use it as a basis for our mental image of angelic corporeality. Milton, of course, is writing Satan’s lines for him, and our information is the poet’s interpretation of the angels’ glory. What Milton does, however, is cleverly mimic the way in which self-portrayal was manipulated by the monarch. Satan has planted the image in our mind, and each subsequent mention of the angels’ appearance, whether narrated or conferred by a character, is simply supplementing what Satan has already imparted.

Early in the poem, Satan makes his intentions regarding what motivates him after his fall from grace quite clear, telling his fellow fallen that: “To do aught good never will be our task, / But ever to do ill our sole delight” (PL 1.159-60). While this declaration is straightforward and indicative of a truly evil presence, his outer likeness still retains a measure of the previous glory bestowed upon him by God, although dimmed and shadowed by the malevolent presence within:

He above the rest

In shape and gesture proudly eminent

Stood like a Tow’r; his form had yet not lost

All her original brightness, nor appear’d

Less than Arch-Angel ruin’d, and th’excess 21

Of Glory obscur’d: As when the Sun new ris’n

Looks through the Horizontal misty Air

Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon

In dim Eclipse disastrous twilight sheds

On half the Nations, and with fear of change

Perplexes Monarchs. (PL 1.589-99)

Satan’s presence is impressive, and his glory, the actual physical brightness that surrounds him as a creation of God, is still perceivable. There is a change in him though, and Milton’s description of this alteration lies in a veiled reference to kingship. As

Hughes notes, Milton may have intended to remind his readers of the passage in Richard

II in which Richard is described as the sun looking into the face of dark clouds which threaten “To dim his glory and to stain the track / Of his bright passage to the occident”

(3.3.66-7). Satan’s glory, like Richard’s, is altered, and he must now rely on false disguises because his transgressions have dimmed his transcendental light. Charles too would most likely have been at the forefront of Milton’s mind when describing the “false dissembler” (PL 3.681). We know the king relied heavily on dramatic representations of himself as divinely-appointed, and the sun metaphor common to royal portrayals can be seen in the masques he favored. Chloridia (1631) addresses Charles as the bringer of spring and of life, through the “warmth of yonder sun” (Jonson qtd. in Creaser 124). The mythology of the sun-king begins to dim, however, when forces opposed to the fallen king’s politics began to rise in revolt. As the images Charles presented of divinely- appointed rule began to crumble, the king, like Satan, becomes fearful of the changes ahead. 22

The limitations of Charles’s false portrayals are alluded to in Milton’s depiction of the mercurial nature of angels. Heavenly beings can change their shape in a way impossible to humans, who are bound by the laws of nature. Their physicality is determined by their will, and Milton addresses their mutability as such:

Spirits when they please

Can either sex assume, or both; so soft

An uncompounded is thir Essence pure,

Not ti’d or manacl’d with joint or limb,

Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,

Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose

Dilated or condens’t, bright or obscure,

Can execute thir aery purposes,

And works of love or enmity fulfill. (PL 1.423-31)

This passage is as much about the limitations of humans as it is about the freedom of angelic representation. Milton, I believe, is actually making a rather subtle reference to

Charles’s attempts at altering representations of monarchical character. Charles’s reputation is tied to his mortality; kings may attempt to manipulate the ways in which they are depicted, but the fact remains that the quality of the man is embedded in the strength of his bones. No matter what façade is placed on the institution of kingship, it can never completely obliterate the actuality of a debased monarch.

While Charles can never fully metamorphose into the righteous images of kingship he fabricates, neither can Satan’s fully mask his motivation to destroy mankind.

Milton does however, make another allusion to the masques through which the king 23 attempted to assert his representations of power. The cherubic disguise Satan wears when deceiving Uriel seems to be convincing, and Milton describes his authentic transformation as such:

[T]o every Limb

Suitable grace diffus’d, so well he feign’d;

Under a Coronet his flowing hair

In curls on either cheek play’d, wings he wore

Of many a color’d plume sprinkl’d with Gold,

His habit fit for speed succinct, and held

Before his descent steps a Silver wand. (PL 3.638-44)

The poet seems to have created Satan’s disguise out of various masque characters of the time, including that of the airy spirits of Hymenӕi, which were “in several colours. . . .

Through all which, though they were round and swelling, there yet appeared some touch of their delicate lineaments preserving the sweetnesse of proportion. . . . Their haire being carelesly (but yet with more art then if more affected) bound under the circle of a rare and rich Coronet” (Jonson qtd. in Nicoll 162). Inspiration for Satan’s costume could also have been drawn from interpretations of Zephyrus as “a young man of pleasing aspect, with wings and puffed cheeks” (Ripa qtd. in Nicoll 165), or even Milton’s own

Comus, who “enters with a Charming Rod in one hand” (Comus 92). The inclusion of many similar elements from court entertainments demonstrates Milton’s acknowledgement of the form and its use as a tool for exhibiting power. Satan, however, is ultimately unsuccessful at disguising his inner self, revealing his dark nature upon seeing the beauty of Eden. His face betrays his emotions, “chang’d with pale, ire, envy 24 and despair” (PL 4.115), and we are again reminded of our first acknowledgment of

Satan’s eyes which reflect what is in his soul.

Even though Satan’s disguise has given way to his true feelings, he has still gained entrance to Paradise, thus putting the First Parents in peril. Milton, however, acknowledges that Uriel must not be held accountable for his failure to protect Eden,

“For neither Man nor Angel can discern / Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks / Invisible”

(PL 3.682-84). This statement recapitulates his words from Eikonoklastes concerning the iconology of Charles and those who accepted his fabricated images. To Milton, it is the responsibility of the king to portray himself honestly, and the many people who “through custom, simplicity, or want of better teaching, have not more seriously considered kings than in the gaudy name of majesty, and admire them and their doings as if they breathed not the same breath with other mortal men” (782) were simply beguiled by Charles’s hypocrisy.

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Chapter 3: “A Fabric Huge:” Grandeur of Setting in Paradise Lost and The Tempest

The inordinately expensive scenic design of Jacobean and Caroline masque form influenced Milton’s depiction of Hell in Paradise Lost as well as Shakespeare’s The

Tempest. Both works, which sample from the preposterously extravagant masques designed by Jones, rely heavily on the worlds in which their characters exist to aid in the showcase of power. The court architect’s innovations were benchmarks in the evolution of theatre design, but for James and Charles it was not simply patronage of drama in which they were interested. For the Stuart kings, Jones’s unparalleled designs were the backdrop for their manifestations of royal power. The settings that Milton and

Shakespeare create mirror the conventions of Jones, amplifying the auras of power surrounding Satan and Prospero.

Shakespeare’s use of magic, music, and mystery in The Tempest far exceeds that seen in his other plays. Power, as we see it embodied in Prospero, is manufactured much the same as it was under James and literary criticism has indeed identified Shakespeare’s character as “thoroughly representative of the princely ideal which animated his age”

(Nicoll 19). For both king and sorcerer, their power lies in the mystique of the goings on around them. The supporting characters succumb to Prospero’s machinations throughout the play, and the masque he presents for Miranda and Ferdinand borrows from Jones’s grand designs.

The masque Prospero stages for the young couple’s betrothal is ethereal in nature, as the airy spirits carrying out his bidding represent nymphs and goddesses seen in the 26

Stuart masques. Allardyce Nicoll addresses this similarity and acknowledges the likelihood that Shakespeare drew his inspiration from those spectacles:

That Shakespeare himself, as a prominent member of the King’s company

of actors and thus attached to the royal service, would have been granted

the opportunity of witnessing some at least of these entertainments seems

likely, and the likelihood strengthens almost to certainty when we observe

that the whole imagery of Prospero’s speech, together with the masque

from which it springs, is based on the revels which had already charmed

Stuart eyes at Whitehall. (19)

Shakespeare’s knowledge of the creative conventions of masque form is also showcased in his stage directions. Juno descends to the playing space, resplendent in her peacock- driven chariot. The chariot was a common set piece used in the revels, and there is an almost identical presentation of the goddess in one of Jones’s renderings featured in

Nicoll’s book, which the author addresses: “In most of the scenic designs which have come down to us from the Renaissance we see, in the sky or on the waves, figures fundamentally similar and similarly presented. There, too, Juno was seated in her cloud- borne chariot, drawn by a pair of peacocks” (128-29). This entrance, along with the abbreviated masque itself, are representative of the illusory power kings retained during court performances; like Prospero’s absolute control over the workings of his island, so too did James preside over the island of his court.

Paradise Lost contains within its lines similar representations of courtly grandeur, but lack the ethereal, dreamy nature of the spirits on Prospero’s island. Milton’s adaptation of masque convention lies in the bowels of the earth, as Satan and his fellow 27 fallen raise a grotesque palace of excess. Once broken free of the shackles which tethered them to the lake of fire, they rendezvous on the molten shores to plan their next move against the goodness of Heaven. What the angels build then is a command central of dread, their Pandӕmonium, a construction to which Milton devotes nearly one hundred lines.

This palace, and the environs of Hell, are a stark contrast to the poet’s other worlds of Heaven and Eden. Heaven is an ethereal realm adjacent to the “Precincts of light” (3.88) and when God speaks the air is filled with “ambrosial fragrance” (3.135).

Eden, too, is light and goodness, filled with life and beautiful flora meant for exquisite

“sight, smell, taste” (4.217). Milton’s description of the Hell is the antithesis of his other worlds, dangerously spectacular with a “womb . . . of metallic Ore” (1.667). There is nothing pleasant about Milton’s dominion of darkness, and as the devils undertake the construction of Pandӕmonium, their actions are an assault on the body of Mother Earth.

Like the court masques which seem to have influenced this tableau, the horridly magnificent scene change is accompanied by the paradoxically sweet voices of the angels who still retain their heavenly voices in much the same way they have kept a semblance of their glory:

As in an Organ from one blast of wind

To many a row of Pipes the sound-board breathes.

Anon out of the earth a Fabric huge

Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound

Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet,

Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round 28

Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid

With Golden Architrave; nor did there want

Cornice or Frieze, with bossy Sculptures grav’n;

The Roof was fretted Gold. (PL 1.708-17)

In this passage, it seems as though Milton intends for his readers to feel as though they were experiencing one of the spectacles at Whitehall. The gilded set, the expansive construction, and the musical harmonies all meld to form an image reminiscent of those revels rich in Jones’s artistry.

The allusion to masque tradition which I have inferred from Milton’s depiction of

Pandӕmonium is supported by examination of William Davenant’s Britannia

Triumphans, designed by Jones. The court masque performed in 1637 at the grand masquing hall at Whitehall Palace included a scene in which a palace was raised. Quoting the original scenic description from Davenant’s work, Nicoll relays the emergence of the set from the stage: “in the further part of the Scene the earth open’d and there rose up a richly adorn’d Palace, seeming all of Goldsmiths worke, with Portico’s vaulted on

Pillasters running farre in. The Pillasters were silver of rusticke worke, their bases and capitels of gold. . . . Above these ran an Architrave, Freese and Coronis of the same, the

Freese enrich with Jewels” (115). This grand palace of Fame is remarkably similar to

Milton’s stately palace; not only have the massive structures risen from the earth, they are cosmetically similar as well. The grandeur of precious metals, even the architectural elements used by both Davenant and Milton demonstrate that the latter had a very clear understanding of the scenic innovations of the time; more importantly, Milton knew precisely the cultural significance of those designs’ lavishness. 29

In a reign defined by excess, the masque became central to portraying an elevated representation of power and Jones’s designs supported this propagandized theatre. While

James and Charles used the form to bolster their own morale in a time of decreasing popularity, those factions who fought against the Stuarts’ abuses of power and money found that this form of entertainment had “come to be a symbol of the dissolution, rather than the defence, of the traditional hierarchical order” (Norbrook 102). As Charles perpetuated false images of kingship by spending exorbitant amounts of money, dissenters grew more and more vocal, ultimately resulting in the country’s civil war.

Milton’s creation of Pandӕmonium is a literary representation of the visual vices used by

Charles to shore up his status as an absolutist monarch. I believe that it was not Milton’s intent to characterize Charles himself in Paradise Lost, but rather to depict the idolatrous and extravagant nature of his reign by using the same theatrical conventions the king preferred in his entertainments.

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Conclusion

The relationship between politics and drama, as I have presented through the above examples, is an intimate one. For James and Charles it was the metaphor of the actor, present on stage for all to see, which provided a way for them to simultaneously divulge and obscure. In order for them to divert attention away from their transgressions, they cultivated an image of kingship and disseminated it through the public nature of performance. What becomes key in linking the politics of the Stuarts, or politics in general, and drama is the need for an audience. Both require recognition from whom they are playing to in order to achieve the desired result. For an actor on stage, it is applause; for James and Charles, it was an acknowledgement that they remained all-powerful in the face of revolt. Milton and Shakespeare recognized the vulnerability of the Stuart kings, and the depictions of power they presented in their works was not only meant to ridicule but also to express concern over the failing system. The ways in which James and Charles manufactured representations of their power indicated that it was not, in fact, truly absolute. The country’s trust was to be placed in the monarch’s hands and during the seventeenth century that trust was betrayed so thoroughly that it resulted in regicide.

For Shakespeare, any critique of the monarch’s politics had to be expressed quietly. James’s patronage of the King’s Men meant his livelihood came from the crown itself. Censorship was a certainty under royal licensing control, as the publication of

Richard II sans abdication scene demonstrates. Thus, political statements in Measure for

Measure and The Tempest are subtle and handled with care. The Duke, aside from not 31 being a king, carries out his deceitful dealings in Italy, far away from Stuart England.

Prospero’s absolutist agenda is carried out by Ariel and the other Spirits, and the presence of the masque may have been viewed as flattering by the royals who enjoyed the same entertainments.

Milton’s openly radical stance against the king’s politics permeated his writing, seen in both verse and prose. The dramatic end of Charles’s life was, to Milton, representative of the entirety of his reign: pompously staged to make an example of him as an icon and subsequently, a martyr. The poet recognized that the ways in which the king staged his politics was a form of theatre itself, with Charles playing his role up to the very end. By the time Paradise Lost was published, however, Charles II had been recalled to the throne, and the political climate had shifted. Milton, now under close royal scrutiny for his explicit criticism of the monarchy, was forced to downplay the political nuances in his epic to avoid further retaliation, which may account for the deviation from his original vision of the work as a tragedy. The parallels to kingship as it existed in the seventeenth century can be teased out of the text, as I have noted, by viewing it in light of the historical context in which it was written and in light of the dramatics of royal rule.

The significance of Milton’s use of dramatic mode is crucial not only to understanding Paradise Lost but also to understanding Milton. His skill at interweaving various literary forms to create a rich tapestry of verse is unparalleled, and the specific attention he paid to drama is indicative of his own preference for the genre. Much Milton criticism relies on either his career as a political writer or his life as a poet, but I believe that it is important not to separate these stages of his life. In viewing Paradise Lost, his greatest poetic work, as a type of political drama, it opens up opportunities for further 32 exploration of the tie between drama and politics in Milton’s canon, and beyond.

Furthermore, this essay has only touched on the moments which I find to be the most relevant when discussing Milton’s views on portrayals of power; there are many more dramatic scenes within the text which can be unfolded and analyzed.

Milton sought to ensure the preservation of literary freedom, fighting against the shackles of royal censorship and exploitation by creating literature infused with dramatic convention and political rhetoric. His canon can be viewed as inter-connected, with each work supporting another, all ultimately meant to impart his views to the world. Paradise

Lost is a benchmark for political literature; it must not only be appreciated nearly four hundred years removed from its original publication as the world’s greatest English epic, but also within its historical context, using relevant conventions to speak about the specific cultural climate in which it was written.

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