“A Quick Immortal Change”: Milton’s Metamorphosed Virtue in A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Milton’s A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 presents a young poet agonistically seeking balance between his classical poetic influences—particularly Ovid—and his Christian poetic purpose. The text presents Milton’s syncretism at a formative stage of development as he actively responds to the Medieval allegorical tradition of reading classical characters as Christian types. Endowing his pagan characters with grand classical and historical lineages, Milton engages in his own acts of poetic metamorphoses through his appropriations of antiquity. Disparate functions of Ovidian allusion suggest a psychic tension within the authorial persona and advance two Miltonic ideals: the virtuous poet and the poetry of virtue. In the “Lady” Alice, Milton constructs an Ovidian vates, or poet-priest, his virtuous poet who seeks a slutary relation to poetic influence and who, in her rhetoric, presents Milton’s metamorphosed virtue. In Sabrina, a Spenserian and Ovidian character, Milton baptismally initiates Alice into the world of syncretic Christian verse, the poetry of virtue.