Royalist Dryden, though a political antagonist of Republican Milton, admired Paradise Lost immensely, and wrote the libretto for a planned musical version of the epic in 1674: The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man (it wasn't published until 1677). Apparently the music was never composed to accompany this, nor were the King's Company players or the staff of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane especially eager to put the thing on. Here is the opening stage direction. A touch over-ambitious and expensive, perhaps, in terms of stagecraft and special effects?
All that's missing here is a giant hologram of Sir Laurence Olivier's head.
If Hell was a set-dresser's nightmare (sample stage direction: 'A Palace rises, where sit, as in Council, Lucifer, Asmoday, Molock, Belial , Beelzebub and Sathan'), Eden seems to have been a lot more modestly conceived. A bit of moss. A small rock.
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