Pastoral and Masque at Ludlow

NANCY LINDHEIM Pastoral and Masque at Ludlow Our two major categories for defining Milton's Ludlow Maske- as masque and as pastoral - do not coexist very comfortably. The generic Isplif between them only appears to be solved by subordinating one kind to the other (Rosemond Tuve, for example, even says, 'given the genre, we expect pastoral elements' [133]). As a description, 'pastoral masque' harbours paradox if not actual contradiction. The theory behind both the poetic and moral absolutes of the masque is Neoplatonism; with its sharp dichotomy between body and soul and its clear rejection of this world for another. Pastoral, on the other hand, builds its meanings in this world, most notably on the relationships among the creatures (usually menl shepherds) who live here. The masque's emphasis on 'things subjected to understanding ... [above] those which are objected to sense'I predisposes use ofa personification allegory based on emblematic or other iconographical material that facilitates a rather simple didacticism.2 Pastoral, by reinforcing a second or counter-impulse of the masque, the drive to sodal integration that represents its formal closure, becomes in effect a way of complicating and even interrogating the stark outlines of the masque's aesthetic project. From its inception in Theocritus, pastoral has been a complex form with some kind of antithetical 'other' either explicitly or implicitly operating to create its meanings. The product of the sophisticated urban culture of Alexandria, it has always 'framed' the shepherds of its poems with other attitudes. In so far as we can determine the literary program behind its genesis, pastoral seems to have situated itselfin a friendly agonistic relation with the Odyssey, taking its metre from epic and giving aesthetic values to an Alexandrian reading of some of the material surrounding one of Homer's characters, the swineherd Eumaeus.3 It therefore defined itself by means of implicit contrast with assumptions that can only be glimpsed through its seemingly clear surface. Whereas the strong thematic demarcation of our usual descriptions of pastoral antithesis (for example, court or 1 See Jonson, 209, on the nature of the masque. 2 See Gordon, ch I, cmd Lindley, 5. Both call attention to the audience's apparent lack of understanding. 3 See Halperin, J74, 224; Griffiths, 49· The stcribcd: lilies replace roses, and instead of still-exuding odours and wine, loose trains are knitted up into sweet-smelling order. Sensual becomes sensuous. 82 Shakespeare gave Milton the verb, but Ariel presumably sucks nectar from flowers. The bilingual unmetaphoring is Milton's own cffect. 8) More usual 'golden ages' are worried about feeding people and so think of blossom and harvest - a feature of the lows fi1JlOCnU5 since the gardens of Alcinous in the Odyssey. The conjunction of hyacinths and roses is rClther common in pastoral elegy and other poetry, though other flowers are usually present as well; the imClge i5 thus available for this kind of interpretation without insisting on it. PASTORAL AND MASQUE AT LUDLOW Milton's account of his education in the biblical material can be tnc}ll~~n[ :a~iQ--a2.J. The lack ofinvidious ..."".........LU insists on QH;Cflmln.:ltlIDn. takes over almost all the material aaaltlOIlS in fact transform the whole into an '-'.......... '-~" ...... u' I am to say that with the unmediated, Yet mode paral:IO:XlC:au.v results in a less reflexive than it was. of course I think the real interest for in the Garden of Adonis material resides in its Ai'"t'Orl'nLT carved it on But far above in sheen Celestial her famed son Make her his eternal And from her fair side Two blissful twins are to be born, Youth and so reward without the for The sensuous pVlnPT'lt:>Tlt"t:> so ............,...,........"" .... 84 See my 'Milton's Garden of ' 22-2), rind tre~ltment of this material in the of Milton's time words - 'after,' '\Clbors to both the cancellation of time for Adonis This is discussed at , 'tilt' 'to be born,' 'hath sworn' noted above and the essential r'Jrl ...·'I~" the in my 'Milton's Garden of 664 NANCY LlNDHEIM conduct of the work more or less ceases with the shift to the new mode. (,List mortals...