“Cambridge... for Seven Years” 1625–1632brought family changes. February, 1631, saw the death of the niece Elizabeth whose
prospective birth Milton had heralded in the “Fair Infant.” In August Milton’s
brother-in-law (Anne’s husband Edward Phillips) died and about two months later
John Phillips, the other nephew who was to be Milton’s pupil, was born. On
January 5, 1632, Anne married Thomas Agar, a friend of her first husband and his
successor as deputy clerk of the crown in the Court of Chancery.^95 Milton may
have attended the wedding.
In the final year of his academic career (1631–2) Milton spent some time at
Cambridge meeting the formal requirements for his Master of Arts degree, which
had been reduced in practice to one or two Responsions and a single College
Oration. That year he again passed up an opportunity to celebrate a royal birth
(Princess Mary) and a royal visit. If he was in Cambridge in March, he may have
seen King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria and viewed the two English com-
edies presented for their entertainment, The Rival Friends by Peter Hausted of Queens’
(a crashing failure), and The Jealous Lovers by Thomas Randolph of Trinity (a great
success). And he was surely shocked by the news of Vice-Chancellor Butts’s suicide
on Easter Sunday, 1632; Butts was said to be despondent over the king’s criticism of
his use of funds, and over the court’s dislike of Hausted’s comedy which he had
sponsored.^96 In 1642 Milton spoke harshly of collegiate playacting, countering charges
that he attended theaters in London by denouncing the authorized but demeaning
plays performed at the university by ordained or prospective ministers. He admits
attending those, sometimes, but only as a scoffing critic:
In the Colleges [they]... have bin seene so oft upon the Stage writhing and unboning
their Clergie limmes to all the antick and dishonest gestures of Trinculo’s, Buffons,
and Bawds;... they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools, they
made sport, and I laught, they mispronounc’t, and I mislik’t, and to make up the
atticisme, they were out, and I hist.... If it be unlawfull to sit and behold a mercenary
Comedian personating that which is least unseemely for a hireling to doe, how much
more blamefull is it to indure the sight of as vile things acted by persons either enter’d,
or presently to enter into the ministery. (Apology, CPW I, 887–8)Whether or not this passage represents Milton’s attitude toward dramatic produc-
tions while at Cambridge, clearly he came to regard much playacting as degraded
and unworthy recreation. Yet even in the year Puritans closed the theaters, Milton
distanced himself with a subjunctive – “if” – from the ordinance making stage plays
unlawful.
Milton’s seventh and most elaborate prolusion (1632?), “Learning brings more
Blessings to Men than Ignorance,” was presumably his Master’s oration; he de-
fended the title proposition in the college chapel for perhaps an hour. Summing up
his Cambridge experiences and looking forward, he presented himself before the
audience of students and fellows as scholar and poet, not prospective clergyman.