2 3 4 5 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. 9 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.