Expanding Eyes: A Visionary Education

The action of the play is over by the end of Act 4, culminating in two speeches. One is the renowned speech of Theseus on the imagination—of which he is completely skeptical. The other is Bottom’s soliloquy about having had a “bottomless dream,” which echoes I Corinthians 2:9. The sense of a mysterious power that has shaped the ends of all the characters, including the fairies, a power that works...

The riotous farce in the middle of the play, courtesy of Puck and the “love juice.” Titania infatuated with Bottom, who has the head of an ass. The male lovers keep changing who they are in love with, resulting in complete confusion. Yet behind all this there is a strange order reflected in imagery of opposites that are yet identified with each other and interchanging.

In the “green world” comedies of Shakespeare, the action moves from ordinary society out into a wood in which all sorts of transformations happen. The uncertain dating of the play’s action, though “midsummer” is the summer solstice (June 21). Women’s friendship, a theme that Shakespeare is exceptional in regarding as important. The theme of metamorphosis and influence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses .

Male-female power struggles occur in all four of the play’s sub-plots, even in the comic relief of the “rude mechanicals,” who are preparing a dramatic version of the story of the star-crossed lovers Pyramis and Thisbe out of Ovid’s Metamorphoses . The lunar imagery of conflicting opposites: love versus irrational social law; madness versus reason; feminine versus masculine; stable identity versus...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a “festive comedy,” i.e. associated with seasonal festivals, from Shakespeare’s “lyrical period.” Three interlinked plays all dating from around 1595: Richard II , Romeo and Juliet , A Midsummer Night’s Dream . The contrapuntal plotting of the comedies. Here, four interlinked sub-plots, three of which represent social class distinctions: the ruling class (Theseus and H...

What we know for sure about Shakespeare, contrasted with the numerous speculations and conspiracy theories. The four genres of Shakespearean drama: comedies, tragedies, history plays, romances. The theory of comedy, and comedy’s poor reputation in the critical tradition.

Comic relief: Samson has mysteriously recovered his high spirits and his martial vigor, and challenges the giant Harapha to single combat. The cowardly Harapha refuses. What has changed Samson? He has resisted temptation and cast off an inward passivity. As a result, obeying another inward “motion,” Samson agrees to go perform for the Philistines, and brings the arena down upon the Philistines, ki...

Dalila comes to visit Samson in an attempt at reconciliation. Samson furiously rejects her attempt, abetted by a misogynistic Chorus whose Ode should not be identified as Milton’s own opinion of women. Dalila’s betrayal cannot be justified, but is it possible to view her in part sympathetically, as a woman caught in a power game, trapped in a no-win situation?

In Act 1 Samson defends himself to the Chorus: in twice marrying Philistian women, he was following inward “motions” from God. But in Act 2, speaking to his father, Manoa, he takes full responsibility for allowing those women to manipulate and betray him. His mood by the end of the second act is hopeless and near suicidal, and the Chorus, so confident in the first act that God’s ways were justifia...

Written at the age of 21 while on Christmas break from Cambridge, the Nativity Ode almost amounts to what Milton later called a “brief epic.” Its theme is “our great redemption from above,” the descent of a miraculous power down the vertical axis of being to our fallen world, redeeming in a moment of new Creation. But that moment of redemption is paradoxical—“now,” but “not yet.” And yet now—as th...

Samson justifies his marriages to two Philistian women as commanded by God. Samson’s God is always an internal “motion,” never a projected supernatural figure. Echoing Paradise Lost , the Chorus says that God’s ways are justifiable—but not by reason. The case for a Trickster God, when reason and realism lead only to hopelessness and despair.

An emotionally intense drama of the mind, in which the blind and enslaved Samson confronts the failures of his life and questions the ways of God. Modeled on Classical tragedy, yet also with a hidden 5-act Shakespearean structure. Samson, originally a folktale Trickster rehabilitated into one of the Old Testament judges, is an unlikely-seeming choice for tragic hero. Samson’s opening soliloquy: th...

The third earthly kingdom, Athens, is the temptation of humanism and humanistic culture as a substitute for the spiritual vision of the Bible. The 3rd temptation, to stand on the pinnacle of the Temple, is the temptation to exercise one’s own will and draw upon one’s own power rather than trusting to the will of God. As with all the temptations in Paradise Regained , it is a temptation for all hum...

The suspense of Paradise Regained lies in the fact that Jesus is fully human and vulnerable.  The temptations are the temptations that every one of us faces in this world. The ultimate argument of Satan is that to survive in the world you must make a deal with the devil. You must compromise, and can only choose which temptation you will give in to—which will thereafter become your prison. The...

Paradise Regained is a profound analysis of human nature, whether or not one is committed to its religious point of view. The enormously expanded second temptation comprises temptations of desire (2a) based on physical appetite rather than need: sex, food as sensuous luxury, riches. These are succeeded by the temptations of ambition (2b): glory and various forms of earthly kingdom, beginning with...

In Milton’s interpretation, the first temptation is that of survival, of physical need. In the 2ndbook, he enormously expands the 2nd temptation into a full range of the temptations of desire, beginning with those desires that have a basis in physical appetite: sex, food, and riches. Jesus’s refusal is not mere ascetic refusal of pleasure. If he accepts Satan’s offers, he is then in Satan’s debt a...

Milton’s Jesus is fully human and vulnerable: there are real stakes in the temptations. But that makes his temptations a model for us. Milton expands the temptations to include the full range of possible human temptation, beginning on the most basic level of physical survival, symbolized by the temptation to turn stones into bread—both for personal survival, but also to feed the hungry. “Man does...

While not as famous as Paradise Lost , Milton’s Paradise Regained is not only comparable in artistic quality but continues the expansion of perspective that began in the last two books of Paradise Lost , from tragic fall to divine comedy. Milton’s theory of the “brief epic,” a form that has no Classical model. Paradise Regained is a recreation of the Temptation in the wilderness of Christ by Satan...

The expansion of vision from tragedy to spiritual comedy. Numerical symbolism of the 12 books. From law to gospel, the letter to the spirit, type to antitype: the vision of Biblical history as one of progressive internalization. The internalization of paradise for Adam and Eve—and also for us.

Michael takes Adam to a high mountain and gives him a panoramic view of both space and time. The continuing aftermath of the Fall. Death: the murder of Abel by Cain. Sickness: the vision of the Lazar House. The mysterious episode of the sons of God mating with the daughters of men. The coming of war, and God’s eventual decision to wipe out all but a saving remnant in the Deluge, the end of the fir...

The question of why Paradise Lost does not end with Book 9, the fall, or at least with Book 10, the aftermath.  The story of Adam and Eve is a tragedy—but the vision of Christianity is a divine comedy, and the poem’s last two books, 11 and 12, will turn the perspective inside out. But that reversal begins with Adam and Eve hitting rock bottom emotionally. Adam’s dark soliloquy and the painful...

The fall of Adam and the Corruption of Human Nature. Scenes from a marriage: Adam and Eve’s lust and subsequent marital brawl. Book 10: the Son of God confronts Adam and Eve. Satan returns to hell, triumphant—he thinks. The humiliation of the devils, changed into serpents.

Book 9, the climax of Paradise Lost , an epic without a true epic hero, which is why Milton will have to go on to Paradise Regained . Satan returns, no longer the titanic rebel, reduced to animal disguise and low cunning. A scene of marital discord as Eve insists in going off alone. She is accosted by the talking serpent, beguiled, and eats the fruit. The immediate corruption of her nature.

The unexpectedly jarring end of Adam’s conversation with Raphael, where he confesses an emotional dependency upon Eve and is sharply criticized for it. It is this hidden weakness that brings about the Fall. The superior sex life of angels, with their spiritual bodies. The Invocation of Book 9, the moment of the Fall. Milton’s methods of composing poetry. The old conundrum: who is the hero of Parad...

Book 8 falls into symmetrical halves, one concerned with unanswered questions about cosmology, the other with the creation of Adam and his relationship with Eve. These are unified by the theme of education, a primary theme in all Milton’s work. Raphael tells Adam that what matters is not speculative learning but life learning. Adam tells Raphael of his creation, but, strikingly, what it felt like...