A single word serves as the pivot point in Satan's temptation of Eve at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: the word “indeed.” In using this word, Satan not only cunningly echoes Eve's own prior “indeed” but also exploits some of the peculiar properties of this word, from its grammatical roles to its rhetorical and semantic potential as it morphs from Eve's initial use to Satan's interrogative repetition. This pivot point vividly recalls a similar use of “indeed” in Shakespeare's Othello, where Iago uses the word to ignite his temptation of Othello, thus propelling both himself and Othello into a tragic arc that ends on a stage brimming with death. The recent identification of a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio as Milton's, bearing Milton's annotations and marginalia, suggests Milton may have recalled this specific scene in Shakespeare's play as he crafted the serpent's temptation. This point of connection can also illuminate the way Othello and Eve adopt the performative and ultimately dissimulating behaviors of their tempters, which in turn may lead to a deeper understanding of how Milton ultimately transforms the “tragic notes” of Book 9 of Paradise Lost into the redemption that Eve, unlike Othello, will accept. Serpent, we might have spared our coming hither, Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to excess, The credit of whose virtue rest with thee, Wondrous indeed, if cause of such effects. But of this Tree we may not taste nor touch; God so commanded, and left that command Sole daughter of his voice; the rest, we live Law to ourselves, our reason is our law. Indeed? Hath God then said that of the fruit Of all these garden trees ye shall not eat, Yet lords declared of all in earth or air? (9.647–58)1 What to make of Satan's toxic “Indeed”? In the final chapter of his book on Milton's complex words, Paul Hammond identifies three primary forms of questions: 1) requests for knowledge; 2) “catechistical” questions “designed primarily to teach the reader by eliciting an appropriate answer either from another character or, sotto voce, from the reader himself”; and 3) rhetorical questions, “the figure known as erotema.” These rhetorical questions can range from “an exclamatory insistence” anticipating a single answer when no other answer is even thinkable, to those questions that “seek … to persuade, deceive, and corrupt, to manipulate the hearer into hasty, unconsidered agreement.” Hammond notes that Satan is “usually the master of the rhetorical question, which usefully thwarts any attempt by his hearers to examine its terms or to formulate alternative responses.” Yet as Hammond also observes, Satan's rhetorical questions are also a means of self-deception and self-justification: “because the rhetorical question always implies its answer, and does not invite alternative paths, it becomes in soliloquy a mode of self-enclosure, and therefore a form of despair. In this respect, its opposite is the openness of prayer.” At the same time, Hammond concedes that erotema is also “a prime means of self-discovery” for Satan, whose “soliloquies are built from … self-interrogations which are intermittently perceptive” (437–38). Interestingly, when Hammond analyzes Satan's initial questions to Eve in Book 9 about whether God has commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of any of “these Garden trees,” calling these instances of erotema “a way of seducing Eve into taking the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge,” he concludes that these questions “imply a muted opposition to what God has commanded” (438, 447). In his catalog of these questions, however, he omits the question that begins the series that follows, the question that does not imply muted opposition but cunningly masquerades as a real question, one that appears to seek clarity but in fact leads to the crucial disobedience the poem names from its very outset. Satan's “indeed,” a stealthy, complex, and transformative echo of Eve's own diction, is the trigger for the discourse that follows. Grammarians tell us that the adverb “indeed” can be analyzed both as an “intensifier” and an “attitudinal disjunct” (Quirk 440–44, 666). As an “emphasizer,” a subcategory of intensifiers, “indeed” has a “scaling” or “heightening effect” that is “more obvious with adjectives” (441). Eve's “wondrous indeed” clearly exhibits this kind of scaling effect, while at the same time she employs “indeed” as an attitudinal disjunct, a word that conveys not only an observation but also a comment or attitude toward that observation (666). Eve's “indeed,” then, emphasizes the “wondrous” nature of the fruit, but only if it is the cause of such effects as she observes in the serpent. That “if” works backward and forward, as words often do in Milton, to shape Eve's “indeed” as both recognition and continuing inquiry, the latter a second type of “wonder” that keeps the question open. Eve's sang-froid before the Tree exhibits a bracing confidence, especially because she follows her observation by repeating the essential prohibition. At this moment, the agency of this human being is both imperiled and heightened as never before, and Eve's language reveals both her moral certainty and her openness to new and surprising experience. It is that openness, that freedom, that Satan seeks to manipulate, turning Eve's liberty into license while inculcating a self-consideration that will be corrupted by his own perverse theatricality. Satan's reply to Eve's “indeed” amplifies both the word's intensification and its attitudinal disjunctiveness, answering Eve's observation and curiosity with a deceptively rhetorical question, a faux-naïve response pervaded with guileful contempt Eve does not detect. Here, too, “indeed” exhibits its semantic range. As an attitudinal disjunct, “indeed” can “express conviction on the truth of what is being said.” Yet “indeed” also belongs to a class of attitudinal disjuncts that “are often used to contradict a prior statement” (Quirk 666). Moreover, The Oxford Historical Thesaurus of the English Language links the interrogative “indeed” to questions of verification—“Is that real? Did that happen?”—and to extreme states of irony or even contempt, as befits an attitudinal disjunct (“Indeed”). Thus in Satan's “indeed?” we find semantic strands of action (the root word “deed”), confirmation, and doubt, a triune complexity vividly demonstrating what is at stake in this critical moment, an observation I will return to below. Satan follows his “indeed?” with a second question that appears to ask for clarification but ironically, perhaps even to the reader's astonishment, conveys what appears to be a complete misunderstanding of what Eve has just said. That a creature who has supposedly ascended the great chain of being and acquired the gift of speech should ask a question that gets Eve's straightforward declaration exactly backward is hardly less of a wonder than the putative virtue of the forbidden fruit. Can the serpent be that dimwitted? In raising the curtain on a performance of colossal misunderstanding, the tempter's guileful “indeed?” might have elicited even more healthy skepticism on Eve's part. Instead, Eve innocently takes the question as merely a request for more information, and thus repeats the prohibition—a hopeful sign, until we see that her repetition cues Satan's most intensely theatrical performance yet, one Milton explicitly signals as a role the guileful tempter adopts.2 Think, my lord! By heaven, he echoes me As if there were some monster in his thought Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something. I heard thee say even now thou lik‘st not that, When Cassio left my wife. What didst not like? And when I told thee he was of my counsel In my whole course of wooing, thou cried‘st ‘Indeed?’ And didst contract and purse thy brow together, As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain Some horrible conceit. (3.3.93b-117)3 Non-verbal “brackets” and “scorings” are, by far, the most prevalent kind of scribal notation in the Free Library First Folio. Given the partiality of the evidence they supply, it would be very unwise to take them as a straightforward guide to Milton's reading of Shakespeare … But when all the necessary caveats have been issued, these graphic traces still yield some insight into practices and patterns of reading that help to solidify the idea that Milton made them … It is hard not to see density of marking as offering some sense of Milton's rising or falling interest in a play, with horizontal or shoulder strokes indicating points where that interest has reached a peak. (43, 45, my emphasis) These markings suggest an interest in the “gulling” scene in Othello.4 With this evidence, and the strong verbal resemblance already described, there is warrant to explore further how Milton might have imagined the characters of Eve and Satan (in his guise as the serpent) in terms of Othello and Iago during these particular crises of faith—and in the crises that follow in both poem and play. Interestingly, Milton scholarship seems largely silent on Satan's resemblance to Iago, in this scene or elsewhere in Paradise Lost. Perhaps Satan's resemblance to Shakespeare's tragic heroes is so strong as to obscure the relationship. In “Milton's Satan and the Theme of Damnation in Elizabethan Tragedy,” for example, Helen Gardner judges that “There would be no difficulty if Satan were simply an Iago; the difficulty arises because he is a Macbeth” (120). Dame Gardner's judgment is puzzling; it is unclear what “simply an Iago” might mean, or what difficulties this argument would ease in considering the character of Satan. By contrast, Neil Forsyth acknowledges that Milton's Satan resembles “those great Shakespearean villains, Richard III or Iago,” and “becomes a fine actor, and knows how to play to his audience” (12). Yet Forsyth cites Gardner's assessment as part of his own analysis and, following Gardner, analyzes Satan in terms of rebellion against a king in the manner of a Macbeth or a Hamlet or even a Henry IV: “For Satan's rebellion itself, Milton surely imitates the wounded pride of the Shakespearean aristocrat faced with the success of another, when the favor of the king is turned elsewhere” (61).5 Forsyth's analysis of Satan concentrates on what he takes to be his paradoxical and ironic role as an agent of humankind's eventual redemption, a tragic role that would seem to exclude any strong resemblance to the character of Iago and perhaps lead one's attention away from the possible parallels with Iago in Paradise Lost Book 9.6 My second approach is theological criticism—that is, words about God, or, if you prefer, Christian myth criticism: its Iago is motivated by the fact that he is Satan or a figuration of Satan, eternally fixed in a posture of hatred of God and envy of man. He wins the souls of men by promising to gratify their desires: Rodorigo's sic for Desdemona, Cassio's for his return to favor, Othello's for certainty (perhaps the certainty of guilt). The Satanic note begins strongly in the play's first scene. Iago describes Cassio to Rodorigo as “A Fellow almost damn’d in a faire Wife,” and whatever that mysterious description may mean in the play (since Cassio is not married) its meaning is clear in this context: that Cassio has a weakness, in Iago's opinion, which invites perdition … ‘I am not what I am,’ quoted in its context earlier, is not only the stage villain's revelation of his duplicity; its deeper meaning is that this villain is Satan in disguise. (29)8 More recently, Harold Bloom writes that Iago “suffers from what John Milton's Satan, who owes much to Iago, calls a ‘sense of Injured Merit’” (3–4). Bloom then extends this argument in his analysis of Othello's loss of faith: “Iago directs Othello, step-by-step, into the borderland of doubt. The pacing is an intricate dance movement, where only the instructor is adept” (41). Even more strikingly, Bloom analyzes Iago as “a grandly negative theologian whose aim is to wound a god and, by degrees, to degrade the divinity to nothing” (47). Returning to the explicit comparison between Iago and Satan, Bloom comments that “Milton's Satan, Iago's son, hates Milton's God and seeks some way to grieve him. War in heaven has been fought and lost. In Iago's mode, Satan resolves to prey upon ignorance” (71).10 when now more bold The tempter, but with show of and and at his part and as to and in as of some to As when of some In or where to some great cause in himself while the in as no Of his of or to The tempter all thus It is only because a has been up that the can take on this It is not merely of their that the are to a of truth in Iago's to even in the sense of being than Othello to the of and they are still to it even if it them Iago all the as the play it to The serpent's extreme of the God say you eat any fruit from this up a in this to Eve into about Milton may be on the characters of Othello and Iago to make the very of a is, a an essential the scene between Eve and Satan the of argument Iago, one that Satan's in part from his use of a similar of a that, as the scene deeper questions in the nature and of those questions, and by that word “indeed,” that Eve's attention and her This is not simply a of Satan's Eve with rhetorical questions in his theatrical as Hammond Satan does that of The deeper than Satan Eve into a more complex and of the meaning and of the itself, as it her own and especially the and between what she has what she is, and what she is What is this like? What do the she both now and up to this moment, have to teach Eve about and as a In what does the And how should she the of both Iago's and the serpent's to illuminate Milton's which I now more before to These questions are Satan, Iago before does not ask them in of but he his prey to a and more moral a of and surprising experience. Eve is in what calls where suggests both a of and a of the of virtue That Satan Eve to his of the “indeed” to the “indeed?” might have been another for a coming from a or the very means of moral Adam to Eve in Book as he her she from her into the of god or and so and or The when Eve is to use the of Satan's “indeed?” up to her as an to of a kind of ironic moral the Satan for his own as most in his soliloquy on As the of Eve's temptation we and as she on the fruit and the of Milton us that the serpent's with her and further describes as with to her but the of Eve's potential the with Eve about the truth she or is she perhaps a we see the states of temptation Milton in that can and with all her and and and and that which is he is the with all her and is in play with the there is truth to warrant not only but a into an even one that that which is more than merely a That Eve so in the of this before her might have for fine to and thus the of that way What is to to no the in it is that if the human is their may in the serpent's It is one of Paradise that the serpent Eve has already been as a perhaps even if she and Adam and to being of observes that “There are for Eve's but the is, at in in a to of an the of a Garden or whose is a Adam and Eve have before the to have though to as the in In its was with and to and that which is to however, of these the of In a and is not to or do that which is The and by God in the of all human the and is for to and that which is When this and is from and to and do that which is not the of between and in and in Milton's Paradise also help to illuminate the between will and I am reading of the will to the idea of the that he in the the of to the for can I my By contrast, the of on which on the for Milton echoes this latter idea with his in that God he to for reason is but or, in Paradise Lost with an argument he to the also is In her then, in a Eve's to the against the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and to her of on the of is to up some of her for freedom, to her of the reason that also is Eve's of as creature in of only in by the the serpent In other words, when Eve God, she in the action that it is still her to As John “Milton's Adam and Eve thus of and innocently almost from the first of When they however, they by in an new they is, by means of the they do as is a of which suggests that also is a of that Milton's Adam and Eve to … As they to and the they but up until the they into the forbidden By contrast, that Milton was to a kind of in his of as Adam and Eve not have been to have though to is he Adam and Eve already have human before they can on the course of that leads to their to it another they already be before they can to But Milton's theological is at more and more than of the poem Eve's before the the in which but a is not is a a kind of we have in Paradise Lost. Adam is not what is to is not what is to Eve is not what to make of her or how to or to a serpent who to have up the chain of being because of the forbidden essential Satan a she in much the same way the Satan's for for to The question “indeed?” that echoes all that follows Satan's initial question may a kind of such the and Adam to also has a potential in moral The question points to Milton's to the of which of course would be essential for a with his for Paradise Lost I thee The of this of may be the scene in Book in which Adam to Eve that not thee Eve is by his terms of argument as a of and is not there at the and of such largely because we are no both in will and and very often find one or the other to reason and experience. Here, however, up until the she the forbidden fruit, Eve in will and in as Eve the from will to we perhaps Eve see those essential more than at any other until the in which she one Eve is still to answer the serpent's by the question into an a of the certainty of her initial in the sense of being to and that which is and then to do a between and my but you shall make all He not in the there my and A most I would do much for the I to the as I they do command Cassio in his Eve and Othello to of for their As to the on by Iago the of a motivated by his on what identifies as his use of as a for He observes in Othello a and ultimately idea of and that becomes a of Othello becomes his own and on himself as an ironic of the as an of his own Othello, Eve, to the of the Othello's that It where it does is from his the that both Othello's and Eve's Milton may have these in for his of Eve just the she has the fruit, Eve's is similar to what one might the performative of Othello's as Eve with more than a of how she might play in the role she will now for to Adam in what I By the of this Eve has to the fruit to even if it means his then I Adam shall with me in or does Eve her to By on her stage what she calls her own for may even can I live thee, how and so live in these This further I though all by me is favor I am By me the shall all At the of Book 9 of Paradise Milton the reader that he now these notes to have Milton to be a kind of at this moment, one that recalls his to a The verbal and with Othello here would another to Milton's one that might and our own about the and meaning great into our These at the of our may our own with what calls “the of of is, not simply but the and of
Gardner Campbell (Sun,) studied this question.