I am a third-year PhD student at the University of Manchester and my thesis is concerned with the ideas of prayer and performance in Milton’s poetry and prose works. Following current critical debates on early modern subjectivity, on devotional practice, and on the relationship between religion and drama, I examine moments in Milton’s writings where his intense preoccupation with performance is not limited to the strictly theatrical but expands to include the exercise of prayer. I argue that in his understanding of prayer as a performance (with a spectator, an audience, and a script), Milton articulates a petitionary model not of inaccessible interiority but of combined physicality and spirituality. I am also interested in closet drama, devotional manuals, and the elusive nature of hypocrisy.