Debate
Milton uses “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” to make two specific arguments, and also to explore what it means to make an argument. Together his poems model the speeches students were taught to perform at Cambridge, where they proved their ability in rhetoric by arguing both sides of a debate. By setting two arguments against each other, Milton drains both poems of their ammunition. More than they’re trying to convince you to lead one life or the other, they’re demonstrating how a good speechmaker can blind you with rhetoric. Together, the poems are warning against the sort of politicians that appear in Milton’s later poetry.
Chaos
In Milton’s exploration of Mirth, his speaker is always on the point of frenzy. The line “trip it as you go / On the light fantastic toe" describes the feeling exactly. His speaker is moving so quickly, so wildly, that he is always on the point of tripping and falling over. If this is a party, it’s the kind that could end with someone hurtling down a ravine. As Milton imagines his speaker tripping along with Mirth and Liberty, he formally echoes their chaotic dance through his uneven meter. “L’Allegro” breaks out of iambic pentameter all the time, causing the rhythm to stop and start, so that the reader trips along with the speaker. The poem moves along like a long drunken song, out of meter and out of key.
Abandon
The speaker in “L’Allegro” tries to forget himself completely as he pursues a life full of joy. Unlike the speaker in “Il Penseroso,” who is constantly reflecting on himself and his place in the world, the speaker in “L’Allegro” makes it easy to forget that he plays a part in the scenes he describes. He pays so little attention to his physical self that it is often difficult to imagine how he gets from one scene to another. The poem jolts along from one setting to the next without formal transitions, the slowness of leaving and walking and arriving. It is enough for the speaker’s eye to fall on a peasant's house for him to be there instantaneously. Though the words “I” and “me” appear 11 times in “Il Penseroso,” they only appear four times in “L’Allegro.” In his poem of joy, the speaker doesn’t want to have a self. His aim is to dissolve the static state of a solid identity—to be all verb.
