Women directing Milton: Feminist stagings of miltonic seduction

This chapter examines the staging of two of Milton’s works in the archetypal indoor Jacobean theatre constructed in 2014 at Shakespeare’s Globe, both performances providing a feminist reception of Milton’s poetry. Primarily focusing on the ways in which Miltonic seduction is interpreted by female directors in twenty-first century theatre, it opens with the notion of architectural poetics to suggest how Milton’s art revelled in the fluency and poetic utility of performative and dramatic material and how it can be put to use in telling what he felt was humankind’s most important story. It first explores the role of performance and theatricality in Milton’s writing and then conducts an analysis of two performances of his work in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse: Comus, staged in the winter season of 2016-2017, directed by Lucy Bailey, and Paradise Lost, adapted by Eric Langley into a five-act play, co-directed by Emma Whipday and Farah Karim-Cooper in May 2018.