The Metaphysics of Milton’s Masque, 1634 to 1645

Abstract

The Poems of 1645 marks a defining moment in the poet’s career. Milton’s need for respectability to counter the attacks on his divorce tracts, combined with anxiety that his “late spring no bud or blossom shew’th” (“Sonnet 7” 4), converge in the printing of this volume of poetry. Though A Masque was the longest poem he had composed thus far, length was perhaps the least of Milton’s reasons for placing at the center of the collection. In this paper, I suggest that the career of the Masque from its performance in 1634 to its inclusion in the 1645 Poems may be traced by observing the changes in Milton’s metaphysical view of the world, from rudimentary Platonic abstraction in the early poems, through a more serious exploration of the body-soul dualism in the more mature poems, and finally to glimpses of materialist monism in the divorce tracts. In the end, I argue that the success or failure the virtuous soul in the Masque depends on how one views the materiality of the soul, but this metaphysical question is yet to be worked out in 1645, and the Lady continues to sit in ambiguity.