“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642Filled with additions and interlineations, these pages offer a revealing insight into
Milton’s way of identifying and imagining possible subjects at this stage; some top-
ics anticipate elements of his major poems written nearly thirty years later. The first
page contains two lists of characters – crossed out – under the title Paradise Lost, and
a longer sketch developing that topic. Other Old Testament subjects from Genesis
through Daniel fill out that page and the next, and several on Samson reveal Milton’s
early attraction to that subject.^14 Titles are listed in two columns, usually with cita-
tion of biblical chapter and verse and occasionally a summary sentence or two.^15
Under the heading “British Trag[edies],” the third and fourth pages list, in order
and by number, thirty-three topics from the Roman Conquest to the Norman
Conquest, often with cross reference to a chronicle source^16 and sometimes with a
very brief plot summary. The fifth and sixth pages contain expanded summaries (a
half-page or so each) of four topics Milton evidently thought most promising:
“Baptistes,” on John the Baptist; “Abram from Morea, or Isaak redeemd”; “Sodom,”
renamed as he worked on it “Cupids funeral pile. Sodom Burning”;^17 and a fourth
version of the Fall story, titled “Adam unparadiz’d.” The last page contains five
brief sketches of early Scottish history under the heading “Scotch stories or rather
brittish of the north parts.” Crowded in on the last two pages are seven topics from
Christ’s life, with a brief sketch of the last, “Christus patiens.”
The two longer versions of the Fall tragedy are conceived as some fusion of
classical tragedy, miracle play, and masque: five acts, a Euripidean prologue, the Fall
occurring offstage, a mix of biblical and allegorical characters, and a “mask of all the
evills of this life & world.”^18 Edward Phillips saw several verses for the beginning of
a “Fall” tragedy, including ten lines that Milton later used in Satan’s speech on
Mount Niphates (PL IV, 32–41).^19 The other extended drafts of tragedies are more
strictly classical, with historical events and characters, choruses, messengers, and
pathetic speeches.^20 The longest of them, “Sodom Burning,” explicitly invites a
parallel to contemporary affairs: “Then, calling to the thunders, lightning, and fires,
he [the Angel] bids them hear the call of God to come and destroy a godless nation
... with some short warning to other nations to take heed.”^21
During his first year home Milton watched the political crisis worsen. Both the
king and his chief adviser, the Earl of Strafford, attracted fierce animosity for seek-
ing heavy subscriptions and extra-legal taxes to renew war with the Scots. On April
13, 1640 the king convened the Short Parliament, so named because he suspended
it three weeks later for attending to the redress of grievances rather than funds for
the war. Some days later the Convocation of Clergy, at Laud’s behest, issued new
and soon notorious canons requiring conformity in liturgy and preaching and re-
quiring that all clergymen take the infamous “et cetera” oath: to refuse any change
in “the government of this Church by Archbishops, Bishops, Deans and Archdea-
cons, etc. as it now stands established and by right ought to stand.” All this led to
riots in the City for several days in May. Charles launched the Second Bishops’ War
that summer, but when the king’s troops faced off against the Scots army near