Is Milton Better than Shakespeare?

Champagne, Claudia M.

Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? By Nigel Smith. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-674-02832-6. Pp. xvii + 214. $22.95.

With his unfortunately titled book Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? Nigel Smith, Professor of English at Princeton University, has made his contribution to the spate of scholarly works and popular considerations provoked by the four-hundredth anniversary of John Milton's birth on December 9, 1608. Smith answers the titular question unequivocally in the affirmative: due to Milton's persistent challenge to "the dominant moral, religious, and political orthodoxies of his time" and our own in both his prose and his poetry, "the reach of Milton's achievement is far greater than Shakespeare's" (7). This value judgment creates in the reader an expectation of a comparative study of the two great writers, culminating in a well-proven conclusion that, like the first Adam and the second in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, Shakespeare is a "great" writer but Milton is "greater," probably the Christ-like greatest. But that expectation is not fulfilled. Far from weighing the value of each equally, Smith mentions Shakespeare only briefly in a smattering of references throughout his book. His argument is that Milton holds the preeminent place in the literature, history, and political philosophy of not only British but also American and, in fact, all of Western culture.

Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? is a compact but dense volume, with an introduction and seven chapters. Smith's organization is basically chronological, following the events of Milton's long and eventful life, both in public and in private, and the publication dates of his prose tracts. Chapters 1 through 6 are focused on key subjects and themes in Milton's prose works, which are discussed and quoted at some length, followed by extensive analysis of the ways in which these ideas are embedded in Milton's poetry, especially the major works: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. The final chapter celebrates the man as well as the poet and reveals the impetus of Smith's book.

In his introductory chapter, Smith argues that Milton is not only relevant to twenty-first century American society but also "still of use to us in our current predicaments" (5), particularly in America's struggle against the Islamic fundamentalist terror campaign of Al-Qaeda, which Smith likens to the "violent bigotry" (2) of the Puritans in Milton's time. Paradoxically, Smith notes, the Christian conservatives in America who support the war against terrorism because it threatens American liberties are also like the Puritans in their denial of those very civil liberties to anyone not matching a proper American profile. Milton's defense of freedom in his prose writings not only influenced the architects of the American Revolution in the eighteenth century but continues to be "quintessentially American" (4) today. Smith calls Milton a "libertine, ... a poet who dares to speculate" (6) and praises Milton's emphasis on the dialectical "struggle for truth through the apprehension of contrarieties" (8). Smith rejects the views of noted Milton scholar Stanley Fish that Milton's purpose was didactic and moral (in Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, 2nd ed., 1998) and that Milton defended an orthodox perspective (in How Milton Works 2001). Making the bold claim that he has discovered a method of "reading Milton as he should be read" (14), Smith offers his view of Milton the libertine as a "path of restitution" whereby American republicanism may be reclaimed from its current imperialistic tendencies.

In chapter 1, "Poetics and Poetic Strategies," Smith reviews Milton's early poetry and prose works. Perhaps his most jarring characterization is that Milton's Comus "offers a kind of rap poetry against the sobriety of the Lady and the Attendant Spirit" (21). This is not the first or the last of Smith's gratuitous references to contemporary popular American culture in an apparent attempt to prove that Milton is "hip." (Witness the opening of chapter 6: "Space: the final frontier" [132].) Such foolishness detracts and distracts from Smith's serious scholarly purpose. Smith quotes at length from several of Milton's early influential prose tracts: Of Reformation (1641), The Reason of Church Government (1642), Areopagitica (1644), and Eikonoklastes (1649). In these works, Milton describes both the ideal church and commonwealth: "The perfected body is both image and reality, and the result of the vision of the inspired poet" (31). This "politics of bodies" is embodied in Milton's mature long poetry--in Satan's Leviathan-like body on the burning lake in Hell at the beginning of Paradise Lost; in the allusions to biblical themes emphasized by the Puritans in Paradise Regained; and in the "violent solutions in a violent world" offered in his "tragedy purified," Samson Agonistes (38).

In chapter 2 on "Divorce," Smith declares that "Sexuality is never absent from Milton's poetry" (40). Focusing on the second book of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1644), Smith defines Milton's highly modern argument in favor of divorce but on the grounds of "spiritual incompatibility" rather than the modern sense of "emotional incompatibility" (47). Divorce becomes a remedy for the sexual excesses to which an unhappy marriage might lead a man. Milton's view of marriage as based on "mutuality" is tested in the union of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost as "one flesh," exemplifying ideal "innocent sexuality" (53-54). Adam's refusal to "divorce" Eve following her fall reflects his "fusing of emotions, passions, and flesh" (55), and instead he chooses to divorce himself from God. In contrast, the decidedly postlapsarian marriage of Samson and Dalila has already ended in divorce, and Samson resists her efforts "to pick up the pieces of a wrecked marriage" (57). In concluding this chapter, Smith offers perhaps his most startling interpretation: he calls Eve's narrative of her infatuation with her own image before being led to Adam "an amazing account of same-sex desire ... the story of the lesbian's denial at the very birth of her self-consciousness" (62). Smith seems to be straining to showcase the political scientist-poet's proleptic modernism and therefore his relevance to twenty-first century gender polemics.

Much more orthodox is Smith's discussion of "Free Will" in chapter 3. He quotes Areopagitica in support of the Arminian view "of postlapsarian man's potential to exercise his own free will" (64) and against Calvinist predestination. He also quotes the expected passages from God the Father's discussion with the Son in Book 3 of Paradise Lost, in which he explains the superiority of giving man and the angels free will rather than requiring their forced obedience, a view echoed by Adam in the "Separation Scene" of Book 9 when Eve exerts her right to leave his side if she so chooses. Milton's championing of freedom of speech in Areopagitica results from his argument that speaking or writing the truth without being censored produces "a collective establishment of the truth" (71). Smith calls Milton's emphasis (like Eve's) on the necessity of testing and trial through making choices between good and evil "one of the most influential statements in all of Milton" (72). This chapter includes two examples of Smith's disappointing efforts at modern glibness: "Now Satan is a jealous guy" (78), and "Eve serves salad-bar supper" to Adam and Raphael (83).

Chapter 4, "Tyranny and Kingship" and chapter 5, "Free States," focus specifically on Milton's political views during the English Civil War and in regard to the execution of King Charles I in 1649. In The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), Milton defined the ways in which monarchs in general can become tyrants and justified the removal of tyrants. In Eikonoklastes (1649), Milton directly attacked Charles I as a tyrant and concluded that, due to his love of Shakespeare's plays, Charles was educated in tyranny by characters such as Richard III. In Paradise Lost, Satan, claiming to be a rebel against a tyrant king, ironically becomes a despot himself when he ascends his throne at the beginning of Book 2. Yet it is the Son who is "the true king on earth ... his reward for his willingness to atone for man's sins" (105), and Satan's refusal to submit to a legitimate ruler is ultimately unjustified. During the 1650s, as Secretary for Foreign Tongues in Cromwell's government, Milton argued the need for "a republican sublime" (117) in both English politics and "literary culture" (116), exemplified by the Son's rejection of imperialism in Paradise Regained. In two prose tracts published in 1659, shortly before the Restoration of the monarchy and Milton's brief imprisonment, he advocated the total separation of church and state as a prerequisite for preserving every citizen's right to freedom of religion.

Chapter 6, "Imagining Creation" is a departure from Smith's critical method since, having brought Milton chronologically into the private life of his last years, there are no prose works to cite or quote on the theme at hand. (Smith refers to De Doctrina Christiana, begun in 1655, only briefly.) Rather, the author has apparently arbitrarily seized upon a subject he finds interesting: Milton's depiction of creation, primarily in Paradise Lost. The anthropomorphism of God in the poem has long been recognized. Smith argues that Milton's foregrounding of the Son's role in the creation of the world supports his association with the English Socinians, an anti-Trinitarian sect, especially because God the Father and God the Son are distinctly different characters in the poem. Smith also discusses here the creation of Adam and Eve, as well as the "anticreation" (143) of Sin and Pandemonium.

In his final chapter--"The Lover, the Poem, and the Critics"--Smith argues compellingly in favor of Milton's lasting relevance and importance as both political thinker and poet: "Through the perpetuation of these works and their extended appreciation over time, the forces of tyranny and empire, of censorship, manipulation, and exploitation, are to be challenged, overcome even, with the teachings of free will" (166). Paradise Lost is, in effect, the Bible retold mythopoeically, as "a literary Bible" (167). Finally, Smith responds to the discussion in the 2005 volume (#44) of Milton Studies among three eminent Miltonists--Stanley Fish, Barbara K. Lewalski, and Joseph Wittreich--in their separate essays on the topic of "Why Milton Matters." Smith agrees with Lewalski's conclusion that Milton's political ideas, particularly about freedom of speech and the dangers of censorship, are especially relevant in the twenty-first century. Indeed, Smith's book seems to be the fulfillment of Lewalski's contention that Milton's political theories are present in his poetry, since this is what his book illustrates. Smith rejects Fish's opposite view that it is a disservice to Milton's poetic genius to foreground polemics at the expense of literary interpretation and aesthetic appreciation. Smith concludes, "How can aesthetics and politics be so readily dissociated? Such a coalescence makes Milton more remarkable as a poet, not less" (183).

Smith's book is an interesting and valuable work. Milton's public life at the center of the Puritan revolution, perhaps the most dramatic and significant period in English history, cannot be divorced from his poetry. Paradise Lost is, at heart, a story about rebellion against authority, with the important distinction that God is not King Charles I. But Smith's book is not a coherent study of Milton's poetry. It is a haphazard compilation of passages and episodes, mainly from the major poems, that seem to catch his eye in connection with the political theme at hand. As the oft-mentioned Stanley Fish noted in "Happy Birthday, Milton" on his New York Times blog (July 13, 2008), Smith's "published work is more historical than literary."

And so I return to that unfortunate and misleading title: Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? In the same blog posting, Fish concluded that "the title is a publisher's teaser and the answer to the question (as Smith knows) is, No, he's different." To ask whether Milton is better than Shakespeare is akin to asking if Beethoven is better than Mozart or Leonardo da Vinci is better than Michelangelo. All are artistic geniuses, but each is different, uniquely and wonderfully different--not better. Smith's title may tease, but it does not satisfy.

Claudia M. Champagne

Our Lady of Holy Cross College