“Cambridge... for Seven Years” 1625–1632L’Allegro is a praise of youthful mirth, innocent joy, lighthearted pleasure, free-
dom from care. The prologue banishes this speaker’s conception of melancholy,
“loathed Melancholy,” the disease caused by an imbalance of black bile and associ-
ated with depression and madness. Then the speaker invites and praises Mirth,
personified as the youthful Grace Euphrosyne and associated with Neoplatonic
interpretations of the three Graces as exfoliations of Venus, as in Botticelli’s Primavera.
Milton reworks the myth of her origin, setting aside her more usual derivation from
Bacchus and Venus (intimating wanton sensuality and excess) for the “sager” myth
deriving her from purer sources evocative of Springtime: Zephyr, the West Wind,
and Aurora, the Dawn.^112 Her associates are Jests, Sports, and Laughter; her special
companion and defining quality is “The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty” (l. 36).
The sociable daytime pleasures of Mirth’s devotee are portrayed at length, in a
series of delightful pastoral scenes that mix classical shepherds and shepherdesses –
Corydon, Thyrsis, Phillis – with the sights and sounds, the sunshine holidays, and
the folk-tales of rural England. Then the speaker details in briefer compass the
nocturnal but still sociable pleasures l’Allegro seeks in “Towred Cities”: festivals,
knighly jousts, court masques, stage comedies.
Il Penseroso celebrates Melancholy, portrayed as the saturnine temperament which
seeks solitude, the scholarly life, and religious contemplation.^113 Again, a ten-line
prologue banishes this speaker’s conception of Mirth – “vain deluding joyes.” The
speaker then invites and praises Melancholy: she is sage and holy with a majestic
stateliness and a rapt soul; her visage is saintly and black, “staid Wisdoms hue” –
something like the figure in Albrecht Dürer’s famous engraving Melancholia – and
her parents are Saturn and Saturn’s daughter, Vesta. Her companions are calm Peace
and Quiet, Spare Fast, and Silence; and her chief associate and defining characteris-
tic is “The Cherub Contemplation” (l. 54). Reversing L’Allegro, this poem de-
scribes at greatest length the nocturnal pleasures of Melancholy’s man – philosophical
studies, and “Gorgeous Tragedy” in the theater. During the day il Penseroso hides
himself from the Sun, enjoying “twilight groves,” “shadows brown,” and sleep
filled with mysterious dreams.
Milton contrasts and evaluates these modes of life as imagined ideals, adum-
brated through literary kinds. There might seem to be surprising affinities with
the Cavalier poets in l’Allegro’s pastoralism, his apparent elitist denial of rural
labor, and his attendance at masques and stage plays. And even more surprising
affinities with Roman Catholic or Laudian ritual might seem to be registered in il
Penseroso’s fondness for the architecture, art, and organ music of cathedrals and
his final retreat to a monastic hermitage.^114 But Milton’s project uses these images
to quite another purpose: to define and evaluate lifestyles in terms of literary
modes, and to reclaim genres and art forms from debased to valid uses. Milton
does not, here or elsewhere, repudiate pastoral, stage plays, or masques because he
thinks Cavaliers have debased them, or church music and art because he thinks
Laudians use them in the service of idolatry. Rather, these poems reclaim such art