John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought by Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns

Abstract

MLR, 105.4, 2010 1139 the concept [. . .] than as an exemplar (p. 225), McMullan uses Shakespeare as a case study to interrogate the concept of late styleused across the disciplines. The book offers this critique most effectively,perhaps, through its examination of the contexts of production of these plays in the collaborative early modern theatre. Indeed, one of themost interesting aspects of this study is theway inwhich itbrings together two commonly used critical approaches in Shakespearian studies, and, by examining the tensions between concepts of latewriting and considerations of the plays in their historical and institutional contexts, demonstrates the limitations of an approach that continues to ignore history?a limitation that this book carefully avoids through itsdetailed historicized analysis of lateness. McMullan aptly concludes this studywith a chapter on the utility of lateness as a discourse through case studies of performances of The Tempest by JohnGielgud and Mark Rylance. Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing, therefore, provides a fresh history of criticism on Shakespeare's late plays through to the present day and reconsiders the plays' chronology, historical contexts, and appropriations: topics thatwill be of immense interest to Shakespearians and earlymodernists. Moreover, McMullan provides a new critical account of concepts of latewriting and late style. He not only achieves his aim of making it as difficult as I can for Shakespeareans ever again to treat "late play" as the neutral term' (p. 126), butmakes itequally difficult for critics in any discipline to use this term lightly. University of Sydney Edel Lamb JohnMilton: Life, Work, and Thought. By Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. xiii+488 pp. ?25. ISBN 978-0-19-928984-4. Such has been the level of scholarly attention paid to JohnMilton in recent years that sceptics have been drawn to refer to the Milton literary-critical 'industry', insinuating an emphasis on output over insight.Not unrelatedly, some observers have identified Milton studies as characterized, if not partly driven, by a recognizably bien pensant liberalism which routinely scants, and sometimes overlooks altogether, the less palatable aspects of his work and life. It is but one index of this book's profound achievement that it lends neither perception any credence. Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns, both distinguished Milton specialists, undertake an illuminating reassessment of the key Miltonic primary sources and a judicious re-evaluation of the secondary, melding impressive historical sweep with close textual scrutiny. The result is an involving book which provides fascinating apergus not only ofMilton himself, but also of the changing political and literary landscapes?or rather, in a figurative sense at least, battlefields?on which Milton was such a conspicuous feature. For sure, one may detect a gently stated authorial sympathy with both their subject and his causes, notably republicanism. Nevertheless, any such affinityfalls very far short of hagiography; to borrow from the famous contemporary painting of his onetime employer, Oliver Cromwell, we are served in this study with 1140 Reviews Milton, warts and all. Thus, while the book remains a hero's life' (p. 4), itdoes not stint in exposing him as 'flawed, self-contradictory, self-serving, arrogant [...] and cunning (p. 3). Such even-handedness permeates an impressively comprehensive re-examination ofMilton's prose works. For instance, while his alignment in the 1640s with the influential credo of Protestant tolerationism is fulsomely extolled, his expressed perspective on Catholicism remained inimical and vengeful' (p. 172); and though TheDoctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) marks him as a 'heterodox thinker of growing confidence', whose 'exegetical skills [are] both subtle and bold' (pp. 161,164), by contrast his ideas for a radical overhaul of the nation's education system, set out in Of Education (1644), are 'Repressive, prescriptive, elitist, masculinist, militaristic, dustily pedantic, class-ridden, and affectionless' (p. 181). The explicitly chronological structure of the book?Milton's shifting age range is printed at the top of each page?might, in other biographies, have seemed unnecessarily rigid. Here, however, it complements one of the overriding objectives of the authors: to trace the specific trajectory ofMilton's radicalization. The governing paradigm of a Milton who was somehow always predisposed towards the revolutionary ideas on Church and state thatwould ultimately lead to the...