ABSTRACT
How did John Milton, the greatest non-dramatic poet in English, regard the greatest dramatic poet in English? Surprisingly little of substance has been said on the matter, despite the fact that Milton’s first published poem, ‘An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare’ (later re-titled ‘On Shakespear. 1630’ in Milton’s 1645 Poems), appeared in the second Shakespeare Folio of 1632.1 When Milton’s attitude towards Shakespeare has been discussed, it has tended to be in adversarial terms, whether in relation to poetic example or political position. So in John Guillory’s influential argument, Shakespeare comes to represent for Milton the dangerous secularizing force of ‘imagination’ against which Milton pits Spenserian ideas of prophetic inspiration; while for Nigel Smith, Shakespeare’s association with the Stuart court and alleged status as Charles I’s favourite reading provoked Milton to regard Shakespeare, or at least his works, as ‘participat[ing] in the fount of evil’, and to expel the Shakespearian ‘from his dramatic inventiveness’ in Samson Agonistes (1671).2
