Milton, gutbuster

I'm an inveterate Google stalker. And shameless, too--I'll often stun people by rattling off stuff I know about them through the internet. In one of my creepy e-stalking sessions, I ran across a random tidbit from Aaron Kunin (who plays the genius angle as convincingly as anyone in their thirties possibly could; almost disappointingly, he seems like a really nice, sincere person to boot). Kunin declares that Milton is a rare case of someone whose loss of humor can be dated rather precisely--to 1659. 

Kunin seems to be one of those people with whom I'd be sincerely nervous to disagree--rather than prove him wrong, my disagreement would most likely reveal how my brain waves operate a couple of registers below his. And surely the claim that jolly young Milton (you know, the one who found the death of Cambridge's carrier pretty funny shit) turned into a dour old man seems pretty unobjectionable. Just take a look at what occasions Milton's God to yuck it up in Paradise Lost: the astronomical quandaries created by his perspective-bending solar system; linguistic and political confusion after the fall of Babel. Grim. 

A tiny bit funnier but no less grim is the joke Milton's letter to Peter Heimbach in 1666: "One of those Virtues has not so pleasantly repaid to me the charity of hospitality, however, for the one you call Policy (and which I would prefer you call Patriotism), after having allured me by her lovely name, has almost expatriated me, as it were." Get it? Patriotism? Almost expatriated him? Sigh. Well, if you were blind, had been briefly imprisoned, and had had to hide for a while when you weren't sure you'd be hanged or not, maybe this'd be the level of etymological humor you'd be able to muster. 

Still, there are some funny moments in Milton's later writings. I particularly enjoy the joke with the long setup in Book IV of PL, which goes on and on about how carefully and strategically Eden has been situated with defense in mind. And then Satan with "one slight bound high over leaped all bound." Hey, Milton's no Eddie Izzard, but this joke shows some real attention to comedic timing. My current favorite late Milton joke is in Paradise Regained. In Book II, Satan solicits suggestions regarding how to tempt Jesus. Belial chimes in with his advice: "Set women in his eye." Satan quickly dismisses this ("Belial, in much uneven scale thou weigh'st / All others by thyself; because of old / Thou thyself dot'st on womankind") and declares the need for "manlier objects" to tempt Jesus. A couple hundred lines later, we learn what Satan really had in mind: the ensuing temptation features "Tall stripling youths rich-clad, of fairer hue / Than Ganymede or Hylas" in addition to some really hot (if chaste and forbidding) babes. In retrospect, we learn what Satan was really saying to Belial: "Listen, fratboy, not everyone's a breeder jock like you."

Come to think of it, there was a discussion on the Milton-L listserv about Miltonic humor. But I unsubscribed a while ago--that list wasn't funny anymore.