Singing to Echo

This chapter argues that in both “Il Penseroso” and A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, John Milton experiments with what the new terms “lonely” and “loneliness” might make possible, and as a result, offers two powerful models for later lonely poets. The Lady, in her loneliness, functions as a foil to Il Penseroso. The Masque grapples with the problem that melancholy poses to lonely figures in just the same way that the shorter poem does, albeit more subtly. It also dwells on how the gender of a literary character defines the way their loneliness functions. Both “Il Penseroso” and A Masque respond directly to Robert Burton's pronouncements on the dangers of solitude in the Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Milton's representation of the way that the Lady wrestles with melancholy in her loneliness complicates the more simplistic series of oppositions he had previously made between Melancholy and Mirth in his companion poems “Il Penseroso” and “L'Allegro.” In this acknowledgement of the challenges that loneliness produces in A Masque, and the way the Lady's song to Echo allows her to confront these difficulties, Milton offers a model of literary loneliness that future poets would not forget.