ABSTRACT
One of the central problems of assimilating Paradise Lost to the epic tradition is the problem of finding an adequate epic vocabulary for its powerful dramatic effects. A further dramatic example, even closer to Paradise Lost, appears in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The actions of the characters are always being measured for meaning in Paradise Lost; but drama depends on some feeling for action as spontaneous. In these terms the drama of the particular can be seen to be eventually reconcilable with the doctrine and narrative of the whole. To argue too committedly for either dramatic freedom or narrative control is to distort the experience of reading the poem. It is hard to imagine a comment less attuned to what we like to call the realities of drama. But it might also be argued that willingness to believe in what we see is of central theatrical as well as doctrinal importance.
