Paradise Regained, performance and the beeb

Well hello once again, dear blog! Unfortunately, I have avoided posting here for far, far too long. Perhaps I am blog-shy, who knew? Whatever, I’ve decided to break the web silence in media res of the longest piece of research I am yet to embark upon, which is, of course, based on the work of John Milton.

A subject that has for a long while tickled my fancy is now becoming quite a substantial itch – is Milton a dramatist? Did he truly want the unstaged closet drama, Samson, to stay in the closet forever, or is it about time Samson came out? Luckily there have been some wonderfully convincing arguments (including fully staged productions) of Samson to show it’s performable qualities.

I’m currently concerned with the performable nature of the brief epic to which Samson is appended. As a blind poet, dictating in the epic form, Milton is never so close to the classics as when creating his epics. That said, such creation comes from a dictating poet, and both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are born through a kind of oral performance.

Of course, I was incredibly excited to see BBC Radio 7 were putting on a nine-part radio play of the brief epic; I almost fell off my seat when it was introduced as “drama from John Milton”! For here we have an epic demonstrating its utterly performable oral form, whilst Milton’s lyrical styling shines both as wonderfully dramatic and tantalisingly enthralling to a twenty-first century audience.

And I’m waiting for the reprimand to come for being too irreverent, BUT – although the vocal performances for the beeb radio play were excellent, the whole production still created what I felt was a somewhat rigid and lofty grandeur. True, it fits with Milton’s canonical status; and there’s nothing quite like grandeur when listening to a conversation in heaven. However, does the same apply for lines spoken by a man wandering in a wilderness landscape, sleeping under trees and stars, on a spiritual journey of discovery? Yes, I know that Jesus is God – and Milton certainly doesn’t downplay that fact. But there is something fundamentally human about Milton’s Jesus, a human element that jars with lofty vocal presentations of the character.

Milton’s Jesus is never more human than when he admits his need and desire to learn. In fact, if we read the entirety of PR as a demonstration of teaching and learning, then the smiling Father allows Satan to tempt Jesus in order “to exercise [Jesus] in the wilderness” (I.156). Indeed, the Father has great trust in his Son’s abilities: “His weakness shall o’ercome Satanic strength/And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh” (I.161-2). However, the first time the reader encounters the Son, he is trusting the Spirit that has led him into the world, but is still scratching his head as to exactly what he will do:

O what a multitude of thoughts at once

Awakened in me swarm, while I consider

What from within I feel myself, and hear

What from without comes often to my ears,

Ill sorting with my present state compared. (I.196-200)

The Son that the Father has so much trust in appears, not as a grand victor prepared for his battle against sin and the devil, not as a ready conqueror, but as a simple, trusting man, ready for the divine to lead and instruct him in the work that he is destined to do. It is this more down-to-earth depiction of the Son that lofty vocal performances do not present.