The State of Innocence The State of Innocence The State of Innocence was intended to be performed as an opera, with the libretto written in 1674, (first published in 1677) by John Dryden. It is basically a musical stage adaptation of John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost", a tribute to Milton rather than a satire of the poem. That Dryden was an admirer of Milton's is surprising as the two men were politically opposed. Milton was against the restoration of the British monarchy, while the royalist Dryden was created England’s first Poet Laureate by the restored Charles II. So great an admirer of Milton
Adam and Eve she shall desire her husband, he will rule over her. The man's penalty results in God cursing the ground from which he came, and the man then receives a death oracle, although the man has not been described, in the text, as immortal. Abruptly, in the flow of text, in , the man names the woman "Eve" (Heb. "hawwah"), "because she was the mother of all living". God makes skin garments for Adam and Eve (). The chiasmus structure of the death oracle given to Adam in , is a link between man's creation from "dust" () to the "return"