In the second book of Of Reformation (1641), Milton describes the telos of a Christian monarchy in clearly Aristotelian terms:
They teach not that to govern well is to train up a Nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which springs from thence magnanimity, (take heed of that) and that which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness to God, which in one word we call godlines, & that this is the true flourishing of a Land, other things follow as the shadow does the substance: to teach thus were meer pulpitry to them. This is the masterpiece of a modern politician, how to qualifie, and mould the sufferance and subjection of the people to the length of that foot that it to tread their necks […] To make men governable in this manner their precepts mainly tend to break a nationall spirit, and courage by count’nancing upon riot, luxury, and ignorance, till having thus disfigur’d and made men beneath men, as Juno in the Fable of Iö, they deliver up the poor transformed heifer of the Commonwealth to be stung and vext with the breese, and goad of oppression under the custody of some Argus with a hundred eyes of jealousie. […] Alas Sir! a Commonwelth ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth, and stature of an honest man, as big, and compact in vertue as in body; for looke what the grounds, and causes are of single happiness to one man, the same yee shall find them to a whole state, as Aristotle both in his ethicks,
and politiks, from the principles of reason layes down. (CPW I:571-2; underlining mine)
In his first anti-prelatical tract, Milton alludes to The Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics to remind his readers of the connection between private and public virtue; virtuous citizens are needed to form a healthy commonwealth. The passage compares the “modern politician’s” Machiavellian molding of citizens for subjection, to Aristotle’s stated goal of politics in the Ethics: “political science is concerned most of all with producing citizens of a certain kind, namely, those who are both good and the sort to perform noble actions” (1099b).12 To follow this main precept of political science, the
legislator ought to urge virtue through his laws and punish those who behave viciously. More importantly, for Aristotle, the legislation of a good polis is meant to make possible the right form of education and thus allow its citizens to become habituated in the virtues: “[I]f one has not been reared under the right laws it is difficult to obtain from one’s earliest years the correct upbringing for virtue, because the masses, especially the young, do not find it pleasant to live temperately and with endurance. For this reason, their upbringing and pursuits should be regulated by laws, because they will not find them painful once they have become accustomed to them” (1179b). This is the model of a
12 All quotes from the Ethics are from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. Roger Crisp (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000). Citations from this work will be given parenthetically in the text throughout the dissertation.
good legislator that Milton wants his readers to remember as he develops his argument for a Presbyterian Church polity in Of Reformation.
Moreover, to drive home the importance of good politicians, Milton uses the description of the commonwealth as transformed-Io to recall the language of slavery in The Politics. In Book I, Aristotle addresses the question of whether slavery is right or against nature (1254a-1255a).13 In answering that slavery is indeed natural—that in fact
“from their hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule” (1254a)—Aristotle creates a parallel between soul and body, man and animal, and master
and slave:
Where there is such a difference as between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sorts are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. […] And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life. (1254b)
The connection between the body, animals, and those who “are by nature slaves” recalls the discussion in book ten of The Nicomachean Ethics on happiness and sensual pleasures. There, Aristotle begins by considering whether a life of amusements can be called
happy:
13 All quotes are from Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Jonathan Barnes, ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988). Citations from this work will be given parenthetically in the text throughout the dissertation.
pleasurable amusements also seem [worthy of choice in themselves]; for people do not choose them for the sake of other things, since they are more harmed than benefited by them, through failing to take care of their bodies and their property. And most of those called happy have recourse to pastimes like this, which is why those who are adroit in them are highly esteemed at the courts of tyrants; they offer themselves as pleasant purveyors of what the tyrants are after, and the tyrants want people like this. And so these amusements seem to be connected with happiness, because those in positions of power spend their leisure time on them. (1176b)
While these sorts of amusements may at first seem desirable for their own sakes, that is, they may seem to be true goods, Aristotle quickly dismisses them as not capable of giving real happiness. Sensual enjoyments can be had by anyone, even slaves, and therefore they cannot possibly lead a citizen to happiness: “absolutely anyone, a slave no less than the best people, can enjoy the bodily pleasures; but no one attributes a share in happiness to a slave, unless he also attributes to him a share in the life we live” (1177a).
Just as a free citizen of the polis could not possibly learn how to live happily by imitating an ox, neither could he achieve happiness by indulging in the kind of entertainments that would please a slave. Virtue is a necessary component in a full human life.
A Maske also highlights the Aristotelian connection between freedom and virtue that is found in Of Reformation. The issue of freedom is raised most urgently in Comus’s palace. The description of the setting is telling and recalls Aristotle’s palace of tyrants as much as the court of Charles I: “The scene changes to a stately palace, set out with all manner of deliciousness: soft music, tables spread with all dainties” (Milton’s stage
directions, after line 658). It is in this “stately palace” that Comus tries to tempt the Lady with his magic cup: “Comus appears with his rabble, and the Lady set in an enchanted chair, to whom he offers his glass, which she puts by, and goes about to rise” (stage directions, ibid.). As she attempts to leave the chair, the Lady is prevented by Comus who threatens her with his occult powers: “Nay, Lady, sit; if I but wave this wand/ Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster” (659-60). The Lady’s response to Comus’s threat opposes her inner strength and freedom to his binding of her body: “Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind/ With all thy charms, although this corporeal rind/ Thou hast immanacled” (663-5). The freedom of the mind is, to use Stanley Fish’s words, “everything that matters” to Milton, and this becomes evident when the Lady has been stripped of every other support.14 But how exactly is her freedom of the mind related to
her unshakable virtue?
Milton’s praise of freedom has often been taken as a sign of a form of
antinomianism. Notably, Stanley Fish argues that, in the masque and thus as early as the 1630s, the poet does not construct rigid categories of virtuous versus vicious actions, but rather assigns ethical values based on moral status of the agent: “The Lady is not good because she does X; rather, X is good because she does it. And exactly the reverse is true of the actions and offers of Comus, which are intended (by Milton) less to persuade than
to supply the other pole of the two worldviews the mask is always contrasting.”15 In this
view, the work of the masque is to stage for its audience a representation of free virtue in action. Even the intervention of Sabrina at the behest of the brothers is meant “to underline the freedom of virtue, which is as independent (in its own sphere) of heavenly intervention as it is immovable before the lure of earthly temptations.”16 The masque’s
fit audience can learn from its performance by understanding and recognizing that virtue does not consist in doing a set of specific actions, but rather in having internalized a certain “hierarchy of loyalties.”17 It is this ordering of values that allows the Lady to
correctly reason about and interpret the dark woods, Comus’s offer, and the proper use of Nature’s bounty. In Reviving Liberty, Joan Bennett refines this understanding of the antinomian Milton and argues that, at least by the time of the writing of the late poems, the role of Miltonic right reason is “to balance all applicable laws in a noncontradictory hierarchy consistent with the unified divine purpose, with ‘natural law,’ ultimate truth. This rational balancing is a normal activity of the divine spirit within us,” akin to the Aristotelian notion of striving for the mean.18 Thus, while any particular commandment
may be broken, this can only be done “in deference to a rationally understood higher
15 Ibid., 157. 16 Ibid., 159. 17 Ibid., 156.
18 Joan S. Bennett, Reviving Liberty: Radical Christian Humanism in Milton’s Great Poems (Cambridge, MA:
purpose of the whole law.”19 This balancing act is the proper use of human reason and
free will as created in the image of divine rationality.20 It is this view of Miltonic reason
and freedom as Aristotelian that I would like to question.
At the beginning of A Maske, Milton illustrates the consequences of having lost the freedom of one’s mind. To the audience of the masque, the dangers of drinking from the charmed cup would have been apparent even before Comus’s entrance on the stage. The Attendant Spirit, in his first speech, describes the dangers of the “sweet poison of misused wine” (47) and warns that all those who drink of it “through fond intemperate thirst” (67) are turned into “brutish form” (70). The Spirit’s depiction of the rioters is confirmed by the physical appearance of the revelers once they do step onto the stage. Comus’s first speech begins by sounding benign enough, if unruly: “welcome joy, and feast,/ Midnight shout, and revelry,/ Tipsy dance, and jollity” (102-4). His speech only turns ominous once Comus invokes Cotytto: “Hail goddess of nocturnal sport,/ Dark- veiled Cotytto” (128-9). However, while the beginning of Comus’s speech may have sounded innocuous to the audience, the appearance of the cast of rioters would have contradicted these words and anticipated the invocation of Cotytto. His company is
19 Loc. Cit.
20 Ibid., 9-11. For Bennett, Milton is the heir of Hooker and a tradition of Christian humanism that values
reason not as a limited instrument that can only be applied to the material world, but as right reason. She argues that the Anglican support of the Stuart doctrine of divine right is a repudiation of Hooker’s understanding of human free will as based on the rational nature of God (Reviving Liberty, 6-32).
described as “a rout of monsters headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts” (Milton’s stage directions; after line 92). The effects of intemperance are thus made clear to the audience twice: once by the introductory speech of the Attendant Spirit, and the second time by the actual appearance of Comus and his followers. The audience has a privileged view and therefore should not be deceived by the enchanter’s “dazzling spells” (154) and “glozing courtesy” (161). The Lady, on the other hand, will be denied exactly this visual revelation of the effects of “intemperate thirst” (64) on Comus’s followers.
Milton, however, does not always give the audience a privileged view in A Maske. While in her first encounter with Comus, the Lady is fooled by his disguise and spells, in her first appearance in the masque, she is granted a vision denied to the audience. Approaching the place of Comus’s revels, the Lady begins to fear that the sounds of “riot and ill-managed merriment” (172) heard in the woods are signs of danger. Imagining a “thousand fantasies” (205), she is afraid, but her fear lasts only a moment:
These thoughts may startle well, but not astound The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion Conscience.— O welcome pure-eyed Faith, white handed Hope, Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings, And thou unblemished form of Chastity, I see ye visibly, and now believe
That he, the Supreme Good, t’whom all things ill Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
To keep my life and honor unassailed. (210-20; emphasis mine)
While the spectator of the masque has been given a privileged view into the true nature of Comus and the rioters, the audience does not see the virtues invoked by the Lady in this passage. What the masque does not explicitly present is an allegorical embodiment of the Faith, Hope, and Chastity. Their personifications are called to mind by the Lady’s speech, but they are not physically present on the stage.
By way of contrast we need only recall one of the many entertainments offered to King James earlier in the century. Among the “sports” alluded to by Sir John Harington in the letter quoted in the epigraph to this chapter, we find a performance in which Faith, Hope, and Charity address James I in a (misfired) compliment:
Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity: Hope did assay to speak, but wine renderd her endeavours so feeble that she withdrew, and hope the King would excuse her brevity: Faith was then all alone, for I am certain she was not joined with good works, and left the court in a staggering condition: Charity came to the King’s feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of sins her sisters had committed; in some sorte she made obeisance and brought giftes, but said she would return home again, as there was no gift which heaven had not already given his Majesty. She then returned to Hope and Faith, who were both sick and spewing in the lower hall.21
21The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington, 119. My attention was first drawn to this letter by Leah S.
Marcus’s quoting this passage in The Politics of Mirth (10). The use of allegorical figures was of course common in masques and their roles were at times acted, at least during the reign of Charles I, by the King and Queen themselves (see, for instance, Lewalski, Barbara, “Milton’s Comus and the Politics of Masquing,” 296-7).
There is no such allegory in A Maske. Strikingly, while sin is made evident in the visage of the rioters who, almost like Dante’s sinful souls, embody their own debauchery, there are no personifications of the virtues in A Maske. The three virtues are shown only to the Lady, who is given the ability to see what no spectator can. The virtues’ presence, however, is evidenced by the effects that they bring about in the Lady. For her, Faith, Hope, and Chastity appear “visibly” (216), and, immediately, evoke a belief in the active agency of providence: “I see ye visibly, and now believe” (216; emphasis mine). Having “seen” the virtues once, the Lady never swerves from her steady faith in providence. She is not afraid of following Comus disguised as a shepherd because she believes that her moral strength will not be tested beyond its abilities: “Eye me blest Providence, and square my trial/ To my proportioned strength. Shepherd lead on” (329-30). Having been given the pattern of the virtues “visibly,” the Lady knows herself capable of correctly measuring all temptations against them.
Is she right? The Lady of course resists temptation. At no point do we believe that she will give in to Comus’s offers and taste his “cordial julep” (672). It is clear that she is capable of matching the enchanter’s eloquence; she can supply Virtue with the “tongue to check [Vice’s] pride” (761). At the same time, her encounter with Comus indicates a tension between her first belief that a “glist’ring guardian” would appear to keep her “life and honor unassailed” (219-20) and her subsequent trust in Providence to
only send trials “proportioned to her strength” (330). In her second statement, she no longer claims that her virtue is not “unassailed.” What resources does she have to withstand Comus’s temptations? And does the masque tell us how she has acquired such resources? A Maske is an example of a genre particularly concerned with instructing its audience, but, according to Stanley Fish, Milton gives a very limited answer to the question of what we can learn from the Lady. In How Milton Works, Fish argues that the Lady’s trial is an illusion. She does not actually do anything. Her only duty is to bear witness to virtue: “Her moment of trial (or, more properly, of self-
explification) requires an affirmation, and we are required to comprehend it; the text for both is the same: ‘Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.’”22 Indeed, according to
Fish, in all of Milton’s early works, there is no real growth towards virtue:
In the early poetry and prose, we meet the members of these two categories [regenerate and unregenerate] already fully formed and forever alien to one another […]. There is no sense of possible movement in either direction, and consequently there is no genuine role for time, which is imagined not as the vehicle for change but as a succession of spaces in which agents already constituted (either in truth or in its opposite) testify to what they are and what they are not.23
In this reading then, the Lady’s transition from fear at hearing the noise from Comus’s revels to belief at her vision of Faith, Hope, and Chastity is simply a self-recognition of her own “freedom of the mind.” That is, whatever carries her through her trial is already
22 Stanley Fish, How Milton Works, 153. 23 Ibid., 215-6.
present in her at the start of the masque. Moreover, the reader who is not already regenerate cannot learn how to become so from the Lady’s defense of virtue. In How Milton Works, A Maske is viewed as a spectacular example of what is celebrated by the Chorus of Marvell’s “A Dialogue, Between the Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasure”: