The Style and Structure of Milton's “Readie and Easie Way”

Abstract

ABSTRACT The second edition of The Readie and Easie Way was published when all politically conscious Englishmen knew that a restoration was imminent. A recognition of this fact, and its near-tragic implications for Milton's cause, governs the style and structure of the pamphlet. When Milton contemplates the forces leading England to the Restoration, his coordinate, linear style implies that the situation is beyond rational control. When he proposes his ready and easy way, his more structured style generates an image of the politics of pure reason. These two styles alternate throughout the tract and create a pattern of futile but heroic political struggle. Periodically, Milton makes his serenely rational plan more detailed and socially comprehensive, but the intervals between these propositions are filled with denunciations of political reality, insinuations that no republican solutions are feasible at the moment. As this pattern unfolds, suggestions of political fantasy, suggestions that Milton realizes his plan is all too ready and easy, become more and more prominent in the positive or rational sections. The tract concludes with a sentence in which the style of reasoned presentation is gradually replaced by the style of futility. Realism defeats the fulfillment of wishes, but does not quite extinguish political commitment.