Milton, John
Milton, John (1608–74),political pamphleteer, Latin secretary to the Council of State under Cromwell, and the greatest poet of the 17th century. His first published work was the sonnet ‘On Shakespeare’, included without attribution among the commendatory verses in the Second Folio (1632). It appeared definitively as Milton's only in the 1673 Poems, where it is dated 1630. In it, the 22-year-old Milton credits Shakespeare with ‘easy numbers’ and ‘delphic lines’. A year later, in ‘L'Allegro’, the delphic element had disappeared, and Milton's cheerful man heard ‘Sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child | Warble his native woodnotes wild’. The many echoes of Shakespeare in the Masque … at Ludlow (Comus, 1634), however, reveal a much broader appreciation of the complexity and depth of Shakespearian verse—Comus greets the Lady with the words of Ferdinand greeting Miranda, and his seductive arguments speak a...
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