Satan expelled from heaven, 1825

John Martin

Satan addressing his legions, 1825

John Martin

Click here to download the full script

Satan, 1866

Gustave Doré

“Be then His love accursed, since love or hate

To me alike it deals eternal woe!

Nay cursed be thou since against His thy will

Chose freely what it now so justly rues.

Me miserable! Which way shall I fly

Infinite wrath and infinite despair?

Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell,

And in the lowest deep a lower deep

Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide,

To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.

O then at last relent! Is there no place

Left for repentance, none for pardon left?

None left but by submission . . .”

- Paradise Lost, Book IV, lines 69-81

The colors of Satan’s world, as used in the first production of Red Providence

I say show me your pain, and I will show

You the maddeningly myriad colors

That compose the true sum of human life.

The strange mauve of love-hate relationships,

The bottomless ochre of mania,

Migraine green and daddy-issue fuchsia,

Gunmetal grief, or rage, lovely rage, wide

And bold in glorious technicolor.

- Red Providence

“Show me your pain and I’ll teach you to cherish it. Your pain’s what makes you who you are. To be delivered of you pain is mere oblivion, loss of self, loss of pride. Who of the great tragic heroes would be truly great, or truly tragic, healed of their pain? Can you see it? Dido, Cleopatra, Carmen, Othello - all meekly lined up in the therapist’s waiting room?”

- Justin Butcher, The Devil’s Passion

THE DEVIL’S PASSION or Easter in Hell a divine comedy written & performed by Justin Butcher, directed by Guy Masterson, music & sound by Jack C. Arnold.

Sympathy for the Devil, 1968

The Rolling Stones

Angry, 2023

The Rolling Stones

An image of Lucifer as described in Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. The depiction of Satan as a leviathan trapped in ice, forced to eternally chew the bodies of Judas, Brutus, and Gaius Cassius, was temporarily an inspiration for a few of Satan’s lines in an early draft of Red Providence.

Pandemonium, 1825

John Martin

“Slow, friend, I fain wish to maim thee. Instead

To change thee. Thou knowest of me, I am

The Arch-Enemy, the Antagonist

Of Heaven, Hell's Dread Emperor, the Fiend.

I bade thee once level spear beside me,

To strike fierce against the adamant gate,

Yet befouled we were, by the almighty's

Righteous cleave we tumbled through sky and stone.

Permit me now,”

- An unfinished section from an early draft of Red Providence, where Satan is speaking to a fellow demon.

Satan, sin, and death, 1825

John Martin

Scribe it there, all of it. A better read

Than His book, I'm sure. I'm interesting.

Sin herself crawled, fully formed, from my scalp,

And I impregnated her, do not write

This down, and we bore a son and that son

Was Death. That's plot. Do you know how boring

The Bible gets once Jesus comes around?

-A section from a later draft of Red Providence, where Satan divulges information about his relations to Sin and Death. This was ultimately cut from the final piece.

Lines cut from an early draft of Red Providence

“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.”

- William Blake

The Nightmare (1781)

Henry Fuseli

St Michael Vanquishing the Devil (1530)

Bonifazio Veronese

Chernobog from Disney’s Fantasia, originally a Slavic deity, later associated with the Christian devil.

Sam Smith dressed as Satan during his performance for the 65th GRAMMY awards in February, 2023.

Harvey Keitel as ‘Dad’ in the 2000 comedy Little Nicky, about Satan’s children.

Tim Curry as ‘Darkness’ from the 1985 fantasy adventure film Legend.

Witches Sabbath (1797-98)

Francisco Goya

Satan Calling up His Legions (1802)

Henry Fuseli

After all, what is the point of temptation if it is not, well, tempting?

- Darren Oldridge, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Worcester and author of The Devil: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press: 2012)