SOURCE: "Roads of Excess," in William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Chelsea House Publishers, 1987, pp. 103-17.

In this essay, originally published in 1985, Gleckner studies The Marriage's allusions to Spenser and Milton to determine when Blake is speaking ironically and when he is speaking "in his own voice. "

Frye's fine essay entitled "The Road of Excess" was succeeded a year later by Martin Price's book To the Palace of Wisdom. Although the latter does not refer to the former, both titles come from one of Blake's famous Proverbs of Hell in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Frye's allusion, in his half of the proverb, is to the extremity of "Blake's statements about art," which demands "some kind of mental adjustment to take them in." Price, on the other hand, says that the proverb reminds us "that...