|
COPYRIGHT 2006 www.wmich.edu/compdr
Criticism that addresses the presence of theatrical language and imagery in Miltons later poems is usually one of two types. The first type considers the ways in which the later poems incorporate dramatic conventions and criticize or redefine particular theatrical genres. Issues of genre are especially relevant to Samson Agonistes, a tragedy "never intended" for the stage. (1) Essays by D. M. Rosenberg, John D. Cox, and Peggy Samuels all explain ways in which Samson engages with the dramatic conventions of the Restoration and especially the work of Dryden. An alternative path is followed by Elizabeth Sauer, who looks at Samson specifically as a closet drama and examines the ways in which Milton's play criticizes theatricality in general. (2)
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained require alternative approaches, since they are not dramatic in form. Nevertheless, critics have argued persuasively that each engages with theatrical genres. In the case of Paradise Regained, Steven Zwicker has emphasized its pairing with Samson, showing how Milton uses dramatic technique in Paradise Regained to correct Dryden's conception of heroic drama. Regarding Paradise Lost, Barbara Lewalski's classic study of literary forms in the epic takes tragedy as one of those literary forms and analyzes the dramatic structure of Books 9 and 10, which follow first Aristotelian and then Christian paradigms of tragedy. Her reading counters that of Richard S. Ide, who sees Books 9 and 10 as shaped by the conventions of Elizabethan tragicomedy. Finally, John Demaray's Milton's Theatrical Epic shows how much of the imagery in Paradise Lost comes from the English masquing stage. (3)
The second type of criticism that deals with theater in Milton's late poems tends to consider theater as a trope. For example, David Loewenstein's Milton and the Drama of History shows how Milton conceptualized history as a form of theater. Milton incorporated the metaphor of drama into his prose writings and later poems as a way of linking literature with history: A second notable example is Historicizing Milton, by Laura Lunger Knoppers, which argues that Milton criticized the English monarchy for its manipulative histrionics while also figuring his own political and authorial agency through the metaphor of the stage. (4)
This essay offers a different perspective on theatricality in Paradise Lost, and argues that Milton's literary imagination was also stimulated by his conception of the emotional responses of theatrical audiences. He systematically incorporated into the poetic language of his epic a pair of words, wonder and amazement, that link these emotional responses to a rich philosophical history and ultimately to Milton's sense that spiritual agency is as much a form of response as it is a form of performance.
I do not base this claim on any assumptions about Milton's actual experience with theater. Certainly he was interested in theatrical literary forms; he wrote a masque, and sketched out several ideas for stage tragedies, one of which, entitled "Adam Unparadiz'd" eventually became his epic poem. As Zwicker points out, these sketches speak to "a vivid theatrical imagination." (5) The extent of Milton's own experience as a playgoer is not known. In 1992, the historian Herbert Berry argued that John Milton, Sr., became a trustee of Blackfriars Playhouse in 1620, and may well have had the privilege of attending that theater, with his family, free of charge. (6) This is only speculation, however, and a more recent article by T. H. Howard-Hill tries to lay to rest the idea that Milton had much interest in the English stage, either literarily or as an audience member. (7)
Nevertheless, the preface to Samson Agonistes suggests that the experience of emotionally responding to drama interested Milton. There he writes that tragedy is the "gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions." (8) For Milton, the emotional response generated by tragic drama is the defining and justifying feature of the genre, a testimony to its moral seriousness. The importance of this concept is underscored by the final lines of the drama itself:
His [God's] servants he with new acquist Of true experience from this great event With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent. (1755-58)
Within its text, Samson Agonistes testifies to the purgative effect of witnessing tragic passion.
But the most important evidence of Milton's interest in emotional responses to theater is the way he uses wonder and amazement in his poetry. In Paradise Lost these words seem to take on their highest moral significance for him, but several occurrences in other works indicate both that he thought of them as a pair and that he associated them with theatrical spectacle. When characters or figures become internal audiences--that is, when they witness and react to performances by other characters--their responses are often divided into wonder and amazement. An early example occurs in "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" an ode composed shortly before Milton worked on his two stage entertainments, Arcades and A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle. In the Nativity Ode, nature is the audience to the glorious sounds and scenes of the divine descent. The image of Peace "softly sliding / Down through the turning sphear" (47-48) suggests, John Demaray has pointed out, the stage machinery of masquing with which Milton was likely familiar. (9) The dramatic spectacle accompanying the nativity finds its audience in personified natural elements. In parallel passages, "the Windes with wonder whist, / Smoothly the waters kist" (64-65) while "The Stars with deep amaze / Stand fixt in stedfast gaze" (69-70). Not only does the poem position wonder and amazement as corresponding emotions, but it also associates wonder with movement and amazement with stasis. This kinetic distinction between the terms also forms a pattern in Milton's poetry, a pattern whose significance I discuss below.
I. Wonder, Amazement, and Internal Audiences
A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle contains a more elaborate instance of an internal audience. Musical performances are part of the action in masques, and Milton's includes a scene in which the main character, the Lady, sings a song invoking help from the nymph Echo (a traditional figure in seventeenth-century masques). In the performance of 1634, Lady Alice Egerton, playing the Lady, would have sung for the historical audience at Ludlow Castle, but in the fictional world of the masque the Lady has two auditors (neither of them Echo, to whom the song is actually addressed). The Lady's audience is divided along moral lines. She is heard both by Comus, the evil enchanter, and by the Attendant Spirit, who has been sent from Heaven to protect her. Comus is so moved and surprised by the beauty of her song that he resolves to make her his queen, through either temptation or force. He steps out of hiding and greets her with the words "Hail forren wonder" (265). Comus's experience of wonder at the Lady's performance is paralleled by the response of her other listener. At first the Attendant Spirit reacts only to the lovely voice, but soon he realizes that the voice belongs to the Lady and that she is therefore alone and in great danger. At that point his feelings change: "Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear" (562-65). Here, as in the Nativity Ode, wonder and amazement are attributed to parallel parts of a divided audience and are linked with the opposed qualities of moving and standing still.
In the passages from A Masque, we also see that amazement suggests negative emotions. The Attendant Spirit's "grief and fear" (565) contrast with Comus's "home-felt delight" (262). This...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
