John Milton and ME: A new play in progess

I've been working on a new play. Looks like it will be a one act, two person play. It is about John Milton, author of Paradise Lost and many other poems and essays. Paradise Lost is perhaps the most famous English epic poem read by almost nobody anymore. I began to read it a few years ago and was struck by how some of it resonated with me. So I began to read more about the man who wrote it and found he was a rebel with many causes, some political, some religious and others social.

His bride, half his age and a Royalist, left him and moved back with her parents, stimulating him to write a defense of divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. He criticized the Church of England for its bishops and its dissimilarity to the early church of Biblical times. He wrote an impassioned plea for the right to express opinions and argued for freedom of the press. He supported the English revolution and wrote a justification for the trial and execution of the king if he were tyrannical and unjust. All of this in the 17th century when there was no freedom of speech and once could have his ears cut off and worse for saying such things.

He was fluent in all the European languages as welas in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. He supported Oliver Cromwell who made him his secretary of foreign affairs..

After the death of Cromwell, and the restoration of the monarchy many of the supporters of Cromwell and advocates of the regicide were arrested, imprisoned, and often hung, drawn and quartered by the Royalists. Somehow John Milton simply spent some time in prison.

So my play finds Milton, old and blind, in prison, writing Paradise Lost. A younger poet and friend, Andrew Marvell visited him daily to record Milton's words on paper. Marvell had connections in high places and was advocating Milton be spared and released from prison so he could continue to write.

But even while in prison for doing so, Milton continued to write his radical ideas. Marvell tried to reason with John in order to get his old friend to tone it down if he ever hoped to get out of jail. He thought what John was writing would be seen as blasphemous and critical of the governement. This may seem odd to you because Paradise Lost was John Milton's retelling the Bible's story about Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden. Ah, there's the rub. Who the hero of Paradise Lost is unclear. Many have thought John Milton's protagonist is Satan himself. Certainly, there has been no more engaging and intelligent fictional character in all of literature. Milton's Lucifer even rivals the "villains" of the Batman stories.

Milton most often calls Satan by his other name: Lucifer. Lucifer, literally the bringer of light, or the enlightened one. Lucifer was also the ancient name of the planet Venus, the harbinger of light, the brightest star in the pre-dawn sky, announcing the Suns' arrival.

Although Angels are occasionally mentioned in the old testament, they are not mentioned in Genesis. It seems they were not part of the initial creation, and yet Satan must have preexisted or how could he tempt Eve with the apple? To Milton, he and other angels existed before the creation of the world. Much of what contemporary believers in angels think about angels may very well come from Milton's own pen and not from the Bible itself. At any rate, Milton wrote an account of a tremendous celestial war between Lucifer with his multitude of followers one the one hand and the angels that were loyal to God on the other. I found myself identifying with and rooting for Lucifer while reading Milton's description of this sky-shaking battle.

So, here we have a man who rebelled against the powers that be and justified a regicide, a killing of a king, writing about a rebellious angelic army attempting a Deicide, the killing of a god. Hardly a coincidence, is it?