The Thrones of Satan and God: Backgrounds to Divine Opposition in "Paradise Lost"

Abstract

SINCE THE ENGLISH COURT MASQUE of the Renaissance has for nearly three centuries been an archaic genre sometimes misinterpreted by literary critics, it is not surprising that they have never fully assessed its impact on Paradise Lost. Commentators such as Enid Welsford and Merritt Y. Hughes have cited individual allusions to the masque, yet there is little awareness of the overall shaping influence of the genre upon certain themes, character types, structural features, and visual images in the epic. Neither have critics and scholars given attention to the possible influence of the masque upon Milton's depiction of Satan and God. Still, mask, and antique Pageantry, Milton wrote in L'Allegro, are among those sights of which youthful Poets dream! On Summer eves by haunted stream.' And an examination of Paradise Lost does in fact reveal that the poet, though no longer young, created parallels between heaven and hell by appropriating elements from the masque. Milton's outlines for an early drama entitled Adam Unparadiz'd, a germinal study for Paradise Lost, also can be shown to contain distinguishing masque elements. Milton's conception of a biblical theatrical production like Adam Unparadiz'd, however, hardly corresponds to modern ideas of the drama. In The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty (1642), the poet uTrites,