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 been Satan, or that Satan was using a serpent as a mouthpiece, although there is no mention of this identification in the Torah and it is not held in Judaism. Conservative Protestants typically interpret as defining humanity's original parents as Adam and Eve who disobeyed God's prime directive that they were not to eat "the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (NIV). When they disobeyed, they committed a major transgression against God and were immediately punished, which led to "the fall" of humanity. Thus, sin and death entered the universe for the first time. Adam