Act I All's Well That Ends Well

The play by William Shakespeare

Introduction
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Script / Text of Act I All's Well That Ends Well

ACT I
SCENE I. Rousillon. The COUNT's palace.

Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS of Rousillon, HELENA, and LAFEU, all in black
COUNTESS
In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.

BERTRAM
And I in going, madam, weep o'er my father's death
anew: but I must attend his majesty's command, to
whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection.

LAFEU
You shall find of the king a husband, madam; you,
sir, a father: he that so generally is at all times
good must of necessity hold his virtue to you; whose
worthiness would stir it up where it wanted rather
than lack it where there is such abundance.

COUNTESS
What hope is there of his majesty's amendment?

LAFEU
He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose
practises he hath persecuted time with hope, and
finds no other advantage in the process but only the
losing of hope by time.

COUNTESS
This young gentlewoman had a father,--O, that
'had'! how sad a passage 'tis!--whose skill was
almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so
far, would have made nature immortal, and death
should have play for lack of work. Would, for the
king's sake, he were living! I think it would be
the death of the king's disease.

LAFEU
How called you the man you speak of, madam?

COUNTESS
He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was
his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.

LAFEU
He was excellent indeed, madam: the king very
lately spoke of him admiringly and mourningly: he
was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge
could be set up against mortality.

BERTRAM
What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of?

LAFEU
A fistula, my lord.

BERTRAM
I heard not of it before.

LAFEU
I would it were not notorious. Was this gentlewoman
the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?

COUNTESS
His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my
overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that
her education promises; her dispositions she
inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer; for where
an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there
commendations go with pity; they are virtues and
traitors too; in her they are the better for their
simpleness; she derives her honesty and achieves her goodness.

LAFEU
Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.

COUNTESS
'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise
in. The remembrance of her father never approaches
her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all
livelihood from her cheek. No more of this, Helena;
go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect
a sorrow than have it.

HELENA
I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.

LAFEU
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
excessive grief the enemy to the living.

COUNTESS
If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess
makes it soon mortal.

BERTRAM
Madam, I desire your holy wishes.

LAFEU
How understand we that?

COUNTESS
Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father
In manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue
Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness
Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be cheque'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will,
That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down,
Fall on thy head! Farewell, my lord;
'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord,
Advise him.

LAFEU
He cannot want the best
That shall attend his love.

COUNTESS
Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram.

Exit

BERTRAM
[To HELENA] The best wishes that can be forged in
your thoughts be servants to you! Be comfortable
to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her.

LAFEU
Farewell, pretty lady: you must hold the credit of
your father.

Exeunt BERTRAM and LAFEU

HELENA
O, were that all! I think not on my father;
And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him. What was he like?
I have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favour in't but Bertram's.
I am undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. 'Twere all one
That I should love a bright particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table; heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?

Enter PAROLLES

Aside

One that goes with him: I love him for his sake;
And yet I know him a notorious liar,
Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him,
That they take place, when virtue's steely bones
Look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see
Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

PAROLLES
Save you, fair queen!

HELENA
And you, monarch!

PAROLLES
No.

HELENA
And no.

PAROLLES
Are you meditating on virginity?

HELENA
Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you: let me
ask you a question. Man is enemy to virginity; how
may we barricado it against him?

PAROLLES
Keep him out.

HELENA
But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant,
in the defence yet is weak: unfold to us some
warlike resistance.

PAROLLES
There is none: man, sitting down before you, will
undermine you and blow you up.

HELENA
Bless our poor virginity from underminers and
blowers up! Is there no military policy, how
virgins might blow up men?

PAROLLES
Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be
blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with
the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It
is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to
preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational
increase and there was never virgin got till
virginity was first lost. That you were made of is
metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost
may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is
ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with 't!

HELENA
I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAROLLES
There's little can be said in 't; 'tis against the
rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity,
is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible
disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin:
virginity murders itself and should be buried in
highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate
offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites,
much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very
paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach.
Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of
self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the
canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but loose
by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make
itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the
principal itself not much the worse: away with 't!

HELENA
How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

PAROLLES
Let me see: marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it
likes. 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with
lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with 't
while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request.
Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out
of fashion: richly suited, but unsuitable: just
like the brooch and the tooth-pick, which wear not
now. Your date is better in your pie and your
porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity,
your old virginity, is like one of our French
withered pears, it looks ill, it eats drily; marry,
'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better;
marry, yet 'tis a withered pear: will you anything with it?

HELENA
Not my virginity yet [ ]
There shall your master have a thousand loves,
A mother and a mistress and a friend,
A phoenix, captain and an enemy,
A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world
Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms,
That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he--
I know not what he shall. God send him well!
The court's a learning place, and he is one--

PAROLLES
What one, i' faith?

HELENA
That I wish well. 'Tis pity--

PAROLLES
What's pity?

HELENA
That wishing well had not a body in't,
Which might be felt; that we, the poorer born,
Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
Might with effects of them follow our friends,
And show what we alone must think, which never
Return us thanks.

Enter Page

Page
Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you.

Exit

PAROLLES
Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I
will think of thee at court.

HELENA
Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.

PAROLLES
Under Mars, I.

HELENA
I especially think, under Mars.

PAROLLES
Why under Mars?

HELENA
The wars have so kept you under that you must needs
be born under Mars.

PAROLLES
When he was predominant.

HELENA
When he was retrograde, I think, rather.

PAROLLES
Why think you so?

HELENA
You go so much backward when you fight.

PAROLLES
That's for advantage.

HELENA
So is running away, when fear proposes the safety;
but the composition that your valour and fear makes
in you is a virtue of a good wing, and I like the wear well.

PAROLLES
I am so full of businesses, I cannot answer thee
acutely. I will return perfect courtier; in the
which, my instruction shall serve to naturalize
thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier's
counsel and understand what advice shall thrust upon
thee; else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and
thine ignorance makes thee away: farewell. When
thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast
none, remember thy friends; get thee a good husband,
and use him as he uses thee; so, farewell.

Exit

HELENA
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
What power is it which mounts my love so high,
That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes and kiss like native things.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose
What hath been cannot be: who ever strove
So show her merit, that did miss her love?
The king's disease--my project may deceive me,
But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me.

Exit

SCENE II. Paris. The KING's palace.

Flourish of cornets. Enter the KING of France, with letters, and divers Attendants
KING
The Florentines and Senoys are by the ears;
Have fought with equal fortune and continue
A braving war.

First Lord
So 'tis reported, sir.

KING
Nay, 'tis most credible; we here received it
A certainty, vouch'd from our cousin Austria,
With caution that the Florentine will move us
For speedy aid; wherein our dearest friend
Prejudicates the business and would seem
To have us make denial.

First Lord
His love and wisdom,
Approved so to your majesty, may plead
For amplest credence.

KING
He hath arm'd our answer,
And Florence is denied before he comes:
Yet, for our gentlemen that mean to see
The Tuscan service, freely have they leave
To stand on either part.

Second Lord
It well may serve
A nursery to our gentry, who are sick
For breathing and exploit.

KING
What's he comes here?

Enter BERTRAM, LAFEU, and PAROLLES

First Lord
It is the Count Rousillon, my good lord,
Young Bertram.

KING
Youth, thou bear'st thy father's face;
Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,
Hath well composed thee. Thy father's moral parts
Mayst thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris.

BERTRAM
My thanks and duty are your majesty's.

KING
I would I had that corporal soundness now,
As when thy father and myself in friendship
First tried our soldiership! He did look far
Into the service of the time and was
Discipled of the bravest: he lasted long;
But on us both did haggish age steal on
And wore us out of act. It much repairs me
To talk of your good father. In his youth
He had the wit which I can well observe
To-day in our young lords; but they may jest
Till their own scorn return to them unnoted
Ere they can hide their levity in honour;
So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness
Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,
His equal had awaked them, and his honour,
Clock to itself, knew the true minute when
Exception bid him speak, and at this time
His tongue obey'd his hand: who were below him
He used as creatures of another place
And bow'd his eminent top to their low ranks,
Making them proud of his humility,
In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times;
Which, follow'd well, would demonstrate them now
But goers backward.

BERTRAM
His good remembrance, sir,
Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;
So in approof lives not his epitaph
As in your royal speech.

KING
Would I were with him! He would always say--
Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words
He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them,
To grow there and to bear,--'Let me not live,'--
This his good melancholy oft began,
On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,
When it was out,--'Let me not live,' quoth he,
'After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses
All but new things disdain; whose judgments are
Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies
Expire before their fashions.' This he wish'd;
I after him do after him wish too,
Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,
I quickly were dissolved from my hive,
To give some labourers room.

Second Lord
You are loved, sir:
They that least lend it you shall lack you first.

KING
I fill a place, I know't. How long is't, count,
Since the physician at your father's died?
He was much famed.

BERTRAM
Some six months since, my lord.

KING
If he were living, I would try him yet.
Lend me an arm; the rest have worn me out
With several applications; nature and sickness
Debate it at their leisure. Welcome, count;
My son's no dearer.

BERTRAM
Thank your majesty.

Exeunt. Flourish

SCENE III. Rousillon. The COUNT's palace.

Enter COUNTESS, Steward, and Clown
COUNTESS
I will now hear; what say you of this gentlewoman?

Steward
Madam, the care I have had to even your content, I
wish might be found in the calendar of my past
endeavours; for then we wound our modesty and make
foul the clearness of our deservings, when of
ourselves we publish them.

COUNTESS
What does this knave here? Get you gone, sirrah:
the complaints I have heard of you I do not all
believe: 'tis my slowness that I do not; for I know
you lack not folly to commit them, and have ability
enough to make such knaveries yours.

Clown
'Tis not unknown to you, madam, I am a poor fellow.

COUNTESS
Well, sir.

Clown
No, madam, 'tis not so well that I am poor, though
many of the rich are damned: but, if I may have
your ladyship's good will to go to the world, Isbel
the woman and I will do as we may.

COUNTESS
Wilt thou needs be a beggar?

Clown
I do beg your good will in this case.

COUNTESS
In what case?

Clown
In Isbel's case and mine own. Service is no
heritage: and I think I shall never have the
blessing of God till I have issue o' my body; for
they say barnes are blessings.

COUNTESS
Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.

Clown
My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on
by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.

COUNTESS
Is this all your worship's reason?

Clown
Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons such as they
are.

COUNTESS
May the world know them?

Clown
I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and
all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry
that I may repent.

COUNTESS
Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness.

Clown
I am out o' friends, madam; and I hope to have
friends for my wife's sake.

COUNTESS
Such friends are thine enemies, knave.

Clown
You're shallow, madam, in great friends; for the
knaves come to do that for me which I am aweary of.
He that ears my land spares my team and gives me
leave to in the crop; if I be his cuckold, he's my
drudge: he that comforts my wife is the cherisher
of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh
and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my
flesh and blood is my friend: ergo, he that kisses
my wife is my friend. If men could be contented to
be what they are, there were no fear in marriage;
for young Charbon the Puritan and old Poysam the
Papist, howsome'er their hearts are severed in
religion, their heads are both one; they may jowl
horns together, like any deer i' the herd.

COUNTESS
Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave?

Clown
A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the next
way:
For I the ballad will repeat,
Which men full true shall find;
Your marriage comes by destiny,
Your cuckoo sings by kind.

COUNTESS
Get you gone, sir; I'll talk with you more anon.

Steward
May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen come to
you: of her I am to speak.

COUNTESS
Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman I would speak with her;
Helen, I mean.

Clown
Was this fair face the cause, quoth she,
Why the Grecians sacked Troy?
Fond done, done fond,
Was this King Priam's joy?
With that she sighed as she stood,
With that she sighed as she stood,
And gave this sentence then;
Among nine bad if one be good,
Among nine bad if one be good,
There's yet one good in ten.

COUNTESS
What, one good in ten? you corrupt the song, sirrah.

Clown
One good woman in ten, madam; which is a purifying
o' the song: would God would serve the world so all
the year! we'ld find no fault with the tithe-woman,
if I were the parson. One in ten, quoth a'! An we
might have a good woman born but one every blazing
star, or at an earthquake, 'twould mend the lottery
well: a man may draw his heart out, ere a' pluck
one.

COUNTESS
You'll be gone, sir knave, and do as I command you.

Clown
That man should be at woman's command, and yet no
hurt done! Though honesty be no puritan, yet it
will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of
humility over the black gown of a big heart. I am
going, forsooth: the business is for Helen to come hither.

Exit

COUNTESS
Well, now.

Steward
I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman entirely.

COUNTESS
Faith, I do: her father bequeathed her to me; and
she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully
make title to as much love as she finds: there is
more owing her than is paid; and more shall be paid
her than she'll demand.

Steward
Madam, I was very late more near her than I think
she wished me: alone she was, and did communicate
to herself her own words to her own ears; she
thought, I dare vow for her, they touched not any
stranger sense. Her matter was, she loved your son:
Fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put
such difference betwixt their two estates; Love no
god, that would not extend his might, only where
qualities were level; Dian no queen of virgins, that
would suffer her poor knight surprised, without
rescue in the first assault or ransom afterward.
This she delivered in the most bitter touch of
sorrow that e'er I heard virgin exclaim in: which I
held my duty speedily to acquaint you withal;
sithence, in the loss that may happen, it concerns
you something to know it.

COUNTESS
You have discharged this honestly; keep it to
yourself: many likelihoods informed me of this
before, which hung so tottering in the balance that
I could neither believe nor misdoubt. Pray you,
leave me: stall this in your bosom; and I thank you
for your honest care: I will speak with you further anon.

Exit Steward

Enter HELENA

Even so it was with me when I was young:
If ever we are nature's, these are ours; this thorn
Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong;
Our blood to us, this to our blood is born;
It is the show and seal of nature's truth,
Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth:
By our remembrances of days foregone,
Such were our faults, or then we thought them none.
Her eye is sick on't: I observe her now.

HELENA
What is your pleasure, madam?

COUNTESS
You know, Helen,
I am a mother to you.

HELENA
Mine honourable mistress.

COUNTESS
Nay, a mother:
Why not a mother? When I said 'a mother,'
Methought you saw a serpent: what's in 'mother,'
That you start at it? I say, I am your mother;
And put you in the catalogue of those
That were enwombed mine: 'tis often seen
Adoption strives with nature and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign seeds:
You ne'er oppress'd me with a mother's groan,
Yet I express to you a mother's care:
God's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood
To say I am thy mother? What's the matter,
That this distemper'd messenger of wet,
The many-colour'd Iris, rounds thine eye?
Why? that you are my daughter?

HELENA
That I am not.

COUNTESS
I say, I am your mother.

HELENA
Pardon, madam;
The Count Rousillon cannot be my brother:
I am from humble, he from honour'd name;
No note upon my parents, his all noble:
My master, my dear lord he is; and I
His servant live, and will his vassal die:
He must not be my brother.

COUNTESS
Nor I your mother?

HELENA
You are my mother, madam; would you were,--
So that my lord your son were not my brother,--
Indeed my mother! or were you both our mothers,
I care no more for than I do for heaven,
So I were not his sister. Can't no other,
But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?

COUNTESS
Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law:
God shield you mean it not! daughter and mother
So strive upon your pulse. What, pale again?
My fear hath catch'd your fondness: now I see
The mystery of your loneliness, and find
Your salt tears' head: now to all sense 'tis gross
You love my son; invention is ashamed,
Against the proclamation of thy passion,
To say thou dost not: therefore tell me true;
But tell me then, 'tis so; for, look thy cheeks
Confess it, th' one to th' other; and thine eyes
See it so grossly shown in thy behaviors
That in their kind they speak it: only sin
And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue,
That truth should be suspected. Speak, is't so?
If it be so, you have wound a goodly clew;
If it be not, forswear't: howe'er, I charge thee,
As heaven shall work in me for thine avail,
Tell me truly.

HELENA
Good madam, pardon me!

COUNTESS
Do you love my son?

HELENA
Your pardon, noble mistress!

COUNTESS
Love you my son?

HELENA
Do not you love him, madam?

COUNTESS
Go not about; my love hath in't a bond,
Whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose
The state of your affection; for your passions
Have to the full appeach'd.

HELENA
Then, I confess,
Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,
That before you, and next unto high heaven,
I love your son.
My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love:
Be not offended; for it hurts not him
That he is loved of me: I follow him not
By any token of presumptuous suit;
Nor would I have him till I do deserve him;
Yet never know how that desert should be.
I know I love in vain, strive against hope;
Yet in this captious and intenible sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love
And lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,
Let not your hate encounter with my love
For loving where you do: but if yourself,
Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,
Did ever in so true a flame of liking
Wish chastely and love dearly, that your Dian
Was both herself and love: O, then, give pity
To her, whose state is such that cannot choose
But lend and give where she is sure to lose;
That seeks not to find that her search implies,
But riddle-like lives sweetly where she dies!

COUNTESS
Had you not lately an intent,--speak truly,--
To go to Paris?

HELENA
Madam, I had.

COUNTESS
Wherefore? tell true.

HELENA
I will tell truth; by grace itself I swear.
You know my father left me some prescriptions
Of rare and proved effects, such as his reading
And manifest experience had collected
For general sovereignty; and that he will'd me
In heedfull'st reservation to bestow them,
As notes whose faculties inclusive were
More than they were in note: amongst the rest,
There is a remedy, approved, set down,
To cure the desperate languishings whereof
The king is render'd lost.

COUNTESS
This was your motive
For Paris, was it? speak.

HELENA
My lord your son made me to think of this;
Else Paris and the medicine and the king
Had from the conversation of my thoughts
Haply been absent then.

COUNTESS
But think you, Helen,
If you should tender your supposed aid,
He would receive it? he and his physicians
Are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him,
They, that they cannot help: how shall they credit
A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools,
Embowell'd of their doctrine, have left off
The danger to itself?

HELENA
There's something in't,
More than my father's skill, which was the greatest
Of his profession, that his good receipt
Shall for my legacy be sanctified
By the luckiest stars in heaven: and, would your honour
But give me leave to try success, I'ld venture
The well-lost life of mine on his grace's cure
By such a day and hour.

COUNTESS
Dost thou believe't?

HELENA
Ay, madam, knowingly.

COUNTESS
Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave and love,
Means and attendants and my loving greetings
To those of mine in court: I'll stay at home
And pray God's blessing into thy attempt:
Be gone to-morrow; and be sure of this,
What I can help thee to thou shalt not miss.

Exeunt

John Milton - A biography.

John MiltonThe life of the second great English poet almost exactly coincides with the rise, development, and decline of the great outburst of English Puritanism, which followed the authorized version of the Bible in 1611.

John Milton was a descendant of a family of substantial yeomen long settled inn Oxfordshire. His father, John Milton, having been disinherited as a Protestant, came to London and established himself as a scrivener in Bread Street, Cheapside. There the poet was born, December 9, 1608, ten years after the death of Spenser, and eight years before the death of Shakespeare. He received a most careful education, being from early boyhood an impetuous devourer of books. He was a scholar of St. Paul's School at the age of 10, and entered at 16 as a pensioner at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he remained seven years, taking his degree of M.A. at the age of 24. At school and at college he was distinguished by his passion for classical poetry, by independence and reserve of spirit, a pure and simple life, and strong love for one or two chosen friends. He left Cambridge in 1632, eight years before the Long Parliament met, a master of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Hebrew, skilled in fencing and other exercises of a gentleman. He then retired to his father's rural retreat at Horton, near Windsor, resolved to devote his whole life to poetry, and filled with the grand projects and ideals which he rehearses in his noble second sonnet. It was the peculiar fortune of Milton to find in his excellent father a man of rare sense and much culture, a parent who was quite willing to aid the aspirations of his son towards a life of self-training for high art. For six years the poet remained in profound retirement, absorbed in study, meditation, and poetry.

It has been well said by Mark Pattison that "Milton's life is a drama in three acts. The first discovers him in the calm and peaceful retirement of Horton, of which L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas are the expression. In the second act he is breathing the foul and heated atmosphere of party passion and religious hate, generating the lurid fires which glare in the battailous canticles of his prose pamphlets. The three great poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, are the utterance of his final period of solitary and Promethean grandeur, when, blind, destitute, friendless he testified of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, alone before a fallen world." His six years at Horton were spent, as he tells us, in "turning over the Latin and Greek authors," in systematic study of poetry, history, Hebrew and modern languages, the cultivation of music, and in writing the exquisite lyrics. These in Lycidas touch the highest point of lyrical perfection that the English language has ever reached, so that therein the spiritual passion of Puritanism seems transposed into the melancholy music of Petrarch.

At the age of thirty, in 1638, the poet set forth on a journey through France and Italy to Rome. He was absent about sixteen months, and visited Grotius, Manso, the patron of Tasso, Diodati, and Galileo; and was received with delight by the most cultured and learned societies of France, Italy, and Geneva. He was home in 1639 by the sad prospect of imminent civil war. "I thought it base," he said, "whilst my countrymen were fighting for liberty, that I should be travelling abroad to improve my mind." For twenty years (1640-1660), from the opening of the Long Parliament until the restoration of the monarchy, the poet was absorbed in the advocate and then in the servant of the Commonwealth. First, he dedicated his time to education and political pamphleteering; in 1649 he was made "Secretary for Foreign Tongues" under the Commonwealth government, a post in which he laboured regularly for ten years till the downfall of the Protectorate. He was there in close relation with Cromwell and other leaders of the Republic; but his services were purely literary, and nothing is known of any closer intercourse.

It is the last fourteen years of his life, when the republican poet, blind, deserted, ruined, and broken-hearted, had withdrawn into austere retirement, that we owe the two great epics and Samson. Since the age of 43, the insatiable student of books had been totally without sight. He had buried his first wife, Mary Powell, an uncongenial spouse, in 1652; his second wife, Katherine Woodcock, died after a short term of married life in 1658; and the poet in 1663, then 55, with three little girls, married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, a very worthy woman, who survived him. The last thirty years of his life were passed in London, except for a visit, during the plague, to Chalfont St. Giles, where the only house which he inhabited that remains is still to be seen unaltered. Here partly, and in his residences in the city, in Bunhill Fields, the later poems were composed.

Paradise Lost was published in 1667, but it had been completed some years earlier; it was seriously begun nearly ten years before, and it had haunted the mind of the poet for at least thirty years. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were published together in 1670, and were completed in the five years preceding. The poet lived four years more; but he wrote no more verse. He died in 1674, at the age of nearly 66, and was buried in St. Giles, Cripplegate, revered by his intimates, and even already famous, in the spot where his grave--long (alas!) desecrated--is still marked and often visited. With all his sorrow, afflictions, and disappointments, both public and private, his life was one of absolute dedication to his great purpose and high calling.

Both the Lyrics and the Paradise Lost were included by Comte in the Positivist Library; and, with reference to the revolutionary and critical storm which gave it inspiration, he does not scruple to speak of "the inimitable epic" as "the highest measure of Man's poetic powers." The three chief lyrics have almost every quality of poetry in literal perfection. No other 500 lines in English soar to so lofty and faultless a level, without a jarring note or a feeble phrase: so that they have become part of the very thought and language of all cultured Englishmen. The Paradise Lost has music and conceptions even more sustained and enthralling, such as Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer alone can match. It is evident, however, that the epic has not the incomparable perfection of the lyrics. There are in it incongruities, vagueness, monotony, limitations of human types, which are never felt in presence of the three masters, and seldom even in Virgil, Ariosto, Calderon, or Goethe. It is plain that Puritanism and an abortive revolution forced this consummate poet to turn away both from Past and Present, and to search for the subject of his epic in his own meditations on the Hebrew Bible. He treated this withh extreme freedom, and not without a disputatious dogmatism; but even Milton could not shake himself free from its obsolete theology and its barren cosmogony. That a great poet, under such conditions and in such an age, should have done so much with the Hebrew Pentateuch as his inspiration is one of the noblest triumphs of human genius.

At the same time, this great citizen and heroic soul, being forced back upon his own heart for his ideal of Man in presence of Nature and its Creator, produced from the depths of his pure and rich imagination a marvellous picture of Humanity in all its naked essentials, before History had loaded its memories, or civilization had clothed its life with conventions. The aim of Milton is thus analogous to Dante; and, in simple majesty and unity of scheme, for a time it seems even superior; until the rigid limits of Scripture and inevitable want of varied human interest compel us to admit that the close of the Paradise Lost is hardly equal to its sublime exordium and the earlier acts in the great drama of Man's Creation, Fall, and Salvation. Yet the originality, power, and eternal meaning of Milton's poem gain fresh significance as civilization advances; and we see that since the work of Dante there has been no such approach to the ideal epic of Humanity. Like Dante, like Homer, Milton has given us a living, and not a literary, Epic. It is Dante amongst the moderns, and Virgil amongst the ancients, whom, in sustained moral purpose and in religious consciousness of being the inspired voice of his age, Milton most nearly resembles, as also he resembles these in lifelong dedication to his task as prophet of a social regeneration to be. It is the lasting glory of English Puritanism that it could join in one work such a creative statesman as Cromwell with so supreme a poet as Milton.

TO THE LADY MARGARET LEY

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

AUGHTER to that good Earl, once President
Of Englands Counsel, and her Treasury,
Who liv'd in both, unstain'd with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content,
Till the sad breaking of that Parlament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chæronèa, fatal to liberty
Kil'd with report that Old man eloquent,
Though later born, then to have known the dayes
Wherin your Father flourisht, yet by you
Madam, me thinks I see him living yet;
So well your words his noble vertues praise,
That all both judge you to relate them true,
And to possess them, Honour'd Margaret.

ON TIME

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

LY envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t'whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,
Attir'd with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.

ON HIS HAVING ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

OW soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossow shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven.
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

VENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

'On the Late Massacre in Piedmont' is reprinted from English Poems. Ed. Edward Chauncey Baldwin. New York: American Book Company, 1908.

ON HIS BLINDNESS

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

HEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
'Doth God exact day labor, light denied?'
I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent
That murmur soon replies, 'God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.'

'On His Blindness' is reprinted from English Poems. Ed. Edward Chauncey Baldwin. New York: American Book Company, 1908.

LIGHT

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

AIL holy light, ofspring of Heav'n first-born,
Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam
May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,
And never but in unapproachèd light
Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap't the Stygian Pool, though long detain'd
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
With other notes then to th' Orphean Lyre
I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that rowle in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quencht thir Orbs,
Or dim suffusion veild. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Cleer Spring, or shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee Sion and the flowrie Brooks beneath
That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equal'd with me in Fate,
So were I equal'd with them in renown.
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old.
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud in stead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the chearful waies of men
Cut off, and for the Book of knowledge fair
Presented with a Universal blanc
Of Natures works to mee expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdome at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou Celestial light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.

THE FIRST LOVE OF ADAM AND EVE

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

HUS talking, hand in hand alone they passed
On to their blissful bower. It was a place
Chosen by the sov'reign Planter, when he framed
All things to Man's delightful use; the roof
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade,
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side
Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub,
Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower,
Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine,
Rear'd high their flourished heads between, and wrought
Mosaic; under foot the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
Broidered the ground, more coloured than the stone
Of costliest emblem: Other creature here,
Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none;
Such was their awe of Man. In shadier bower
More sacred and sequestered, though but feigned
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph,
Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs,
Espousèd Eve decked first her nuptial bed
And heavenly quires the hymenean sung,
What day the genial Angel to our sire
Brought her, in naked beauty more adorned,
More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods
Endowed with all their gifts, and, O! too like
In sad event, when to the unwiser son
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnared
Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire.
Thus at their shady lodge arrived, both stood,
Both turned, and under open sky adored
The God that made both sky, air, earth and heaven
Which they beheld, the moon's resplendent globe,
And starry pole: "Thou also madest the night,
Maker Omnipotent; and thou the day,
Which we in our appointed work employed,
Have finished, happy in our mutual help
And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss
Ordained by thee; and this delicious place,
For us too large, where thy abundance wants
Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground.
But thou hast promised from us two a race
To fill the earth, who shall with us extol
They goodness infinite, both when we wake
And when we seek, as now, the gift of sleep."

This said unanimous, and other rites
Observing none, but adoration pure
Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
Handed they went; and eased the putting off
Those troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid; nor turned, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused:
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity, and place, and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain
But our destroyer, foe to God and Man?
Hail, wedded Love, mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In Paradise, of all things common else!
By thee adult'rous love was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range; by thee,
Founded in reason, loyal, just and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother, first were known.
Far be it that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think the unbefitting holiest place
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,
Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced,
Present or past, as saints and patriarchs used!
Here love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared,
Casual fruition: nor in court amours
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenade, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
These lulled by nightingales embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flow'ry roof
Showered roses, which the morn repaired. Sleep on,
Blest pair! and, O! yet happiest if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more!

"The First Love of Adam and Eve" is reprinted from Paradise Lost. John Milton. London: S. Simmons, 1671.

AT A SOLEMN MUSICK

AT A SOLEMN MUSICK

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

LEST pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav'ns joy,
Sphear-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Vers,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ
Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce,
And to our high-rais'd phantasie present,
That undisturbèd Song of pure content,
Ay sung before the saphire-colour'd throne
To him that sits theron
With Saintly shout, and solemn Jubily,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud up-lifted Angel trumpets blow,
And the Cherubick host in thousand quires
Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires,
With those just Spirits that wear victorious Palms,
Hymns devout and holy Psalms
Singing everlastingly;
That we on Earth with undiscording voice
May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportion'd sin
Jarr'd against nature chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair musick that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway'd
In perfect Diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
O may we soon again renew that Song,
And keep in tune with Heav'n, till God ere long
To his celestial consort us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endles morn of light.

Some Important Extracts taken from THE AREOPAGITICA

St. Lawrence Institute
for the Advancement of Learning

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THE AREOPAGITICA
John Milton

In 1644 the English poet and man of letters, John Milton, published the Areopagitica as an appeal to Parliament to rescind their Licensing Order of June 16th, 1643. This order was designed to bring publishing under government control by creating a number of official censors to whom authors would submit their work for approval prior to having it published. Milton's argument, in brief, was that precensorship of authors was little more than an excuse for state control of thought. Recognizing that some means of accountability was necessary to ensure that libellous or other illegal works were kept under control, Milton felt this could be achieved by ensuring the legal responsibility of printers and authors for the content of what they published.

In this essay, attacks on Catholicism should be read with the context of the English Civil War kept in mind. Although the English had had some form of censorship since about 1530, Milton tried to shame Parliament into adopting his views by claiming it a recent Catholic import, a product of the King's Star Chamber, which so recently had been abolished (1641), and which had been the principal opponent of the Protestant Parliament. While the Licensing Order had as its official intent the restoration of the legal protection of the Stationer's Company monopoly on printing, Milton saw as its byproduct the return of state control over publishing in general. His own experience in having to get his writings on divorce published without license, reinforced his views that a new dogmatic authority was replacing the old.

While knowledge of this context is important to an understanding of the nature of Milton's passion in writing this pamphlet, it is not essential to a modern appreciation of its contents. Milton's words are just as powerful today in their call for freedom of thought as they were in his own. The issue he is addressing is still with us: the debate between legitimate societal control and freedom - whether of printing, speech, or thought - is on-going, and will continue to be of central importance in our media-dependent culture.

The following extracts should, it is hoped, bring out the vision that was Milton's, and make clear why this pamphlet is, to this day, an important part of English letters, and will hopefully provide grounds for fruitful reflection on this, its 351st anniversary. Editorial comments have been inserted prior to some sections, using italics to differentiate them from Milton's own words.

Sid Parkinson, Editor, Discourse

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THE AREOPAGITICA
John Milton

On the human condition

Many there be that complain of divine Providence for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking object ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence. Wherefore did he create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue? They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin; for, besides that it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing, though some part of it may for a time be withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in such a universal thing as books are; and when this is done, yet the sin remain entire. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left: ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste that came not thither so: such great care and wisdom is required to the right managing of this point.

Why freedom is necessary

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament of, we rather should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reassume the illdeputed care of their religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity might win all these diligences to join and unite in one general and brotherly search after truth, could we but forego this prelatical tradition of crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men.

On the value of intellectual diversity and debate,
and of its contribution to the
overall advancement of learning.

And if the men be erroneous who appear to be the leading schismatics, what withholds us but our sloth, our self-will, and distrust in the right cause, that we do not give them gentle meetings and gentle dismissions, that we debate not and examine the matter thoroughly with liberal and frequent audience; if not for their sakes, yet for our own? -- seeing no man who hath tasted learning but will confess the many ways of profiting by those who, not contented with stale receipts, are able to manage, and set forth new positions to the world. And were they but as the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they may yet serve to polish and brighten the armoury of Truth, even for that respect they were not utterly to be cast away. But if they be of those whom God hath fitted for the special use of these times with eminent and ample gifts, and those perhaps neither among the priests nor among the pharisees, and we in the haste of a precipitant zeal shall make no distinction, but resolve to stop their mouths, because we fear they come with new and dangerous opinions, as we commonly forejudge them ere we understand them; no less than woe to us, while thinking thus to defend the Gospel, we are found the persecutors.

On the importance of even wrong ideas

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil.

On the value to be placed upon officially sanctioned thought

And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hidebound humour which he calls his judgment? -- when every acute reader, upon the first sight of a pedantic license, will be ready with these like words to ding the book a quoit's distance from him: "I hate a pupil teacher; I endure not an instructor that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing fist. I know nothing of the licenser, but that I have his own hand here for his arrogance; who shall warrant me his judgment?" "The State, sir," replies the stationer, but has a quick return: "The State shall be my governors, but not my critics; they may be mistaken in the choice of a licenser, as easily as this licenser may be mistaken in an author; this is some common stuff." And he might add from Sir Francis Bacon, that "Such authorized books are but the language of the times." For though a licenser should happen to be judicious more than ordinary, which will be a great jeopardy of the next succession, yet his very office and his commission enjoins him to let pass nothing but what is vulgarly received already.

Truth will win out

And now the time in special is, by privilege to write and speak what may help to the further discussing of matters in agitation. The temple of Janus with his two controversal faces might now unsignificantly be set open. And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears what praying there is for light and clearer knowledge to be sent down among us, would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabriced already to our hands.

Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose, if it comes not first in at their casements. What a collusion is this, whenas we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence, "to seek for wisdom as for hidden treasures" early and late, that another order shall enjoin us to know nothing but by statute! When a man hath been labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument; for his opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power: give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound, but then rather she turns herself into all shapes except her own and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be adjured into her own likeness.

Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes than one. What else is all that rank of things indifferent wherein Truth may be on this side or on the other, without being unlike herself? What but a vain shade is the abolition of "those ordinances, that handwriting nailed to the cross," what great purchase is Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a day or regards it not, may do either to the Lord. How many other things might be tolerated in peace and left to conscience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief stronghold of our hypocrisy to be ever judging one another! I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks; the ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us.

A final caution

For if they fell upon one kind of strictness, unless their care were equal to regulate all other things of like aptness to corrupt the mind, that single endeavour they knew would be but a fond labour: to shut and fortify one gate against corruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about wide open. If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing of dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows also, and the balconies, must be thought on; there are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale: who shall prohibit them, shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebec reads, even to the balladry and the gamut of every municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman's Arcadias and his Monte Mayors.

Areopagitica By John Milton

Areopagitica is a speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England is a 1644 prose polemical tract by English author John Milton against censorship. Areopagitica is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression, which was written in opposition to licensing and censorship and is regarded as one of the most eloquent defences of press freedom ever written.

Publication
Areopagitica was published November 23, 1644, at the height of the English Civil War. It is titled after a speech written by the Athenian orator Isocrates in the 5th century BC. (The Areopagus is a hill in Athens, the site of real and legendary tribunals, and was the name of a council whose power Isocrates hoped to restore.) Like Isocrates, Milton had no intention of delivering his speech orally. Instead it was distributed via pamphlet, defying the same publication censorship he argued against.

Milton, though a supporter of the Parliament, argued forcefully against the Licensing Order of 1643, noting that such censorship had never been a part of classical Greek and Roman society. The tract is full of biblical and classical references which Milton uses to strengthen his argument. The issue was personal for Milton as he had suffered censorship himself in his efforts to publish several tracts defending divorce (a radical stance which met with no favour from the censors).

Interestingly, Milton is not completely libertarian in Areopagitica and argues that the status quo ante worked best. According to the previous English law, all books had to have at least a printer's name (and preferably an author's name) inscribed in them. Under that system, Milton argues, if any blasphemous or libellous material is published, those books can still be destroyed after the fact.

Quotations
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his Apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming [...]

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Areopagitica and its context
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Milton's concepts are ones which mirror the modern Christian world, and his justification for the freedom of the press is God's Will as expressed in John 8:32: ". . .the truth will make you free." All of the defences he gives are predicated on this traditional and strongly theological defense of the need to seek the truth in all matters. Milton's theological views do not obstruct the true goal of Areopagitica, or the natural progression that stemmed from its interpretation: to relentlessly pursue freedom of speech in all its forms.

The argument of Areopagitica is for a purposive liberty: the Christian Liberty of the Puritan saint searching after God's partially revealed truth.

Milton is not arguing for the freedom of speech for everybody: indeed, he excludes some Catholics from having freedom of unlicensed printing.[citation needed] Rather he argues for a way to further the truth of God (the truth which we are in search of). It is one which we will never know, but which we will approximate to by allowing some freedom of exchange so that we can learn more. As he puts it,

There must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built.

With his celebration of books and free expression, "Milton's work.., according to the National Library of New Zealand, ...has shone like a beacon to book artists and publishers through the centuries". A quotation from Areopagitica – "A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life" – is still prominently displayed over the entrance to the renovated Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library.