Study guide
Comus (A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle)
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Overview
- Full title
- A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (1637); 'A Mask' in Poems (1645) and 1673. The title 'Comus' is not Milton's: it became current through John Dalton's stage adaptation of 1738, with music by Thomas Arne
- Performed
- Michaelmas night, 29 September 1634, at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, the seat of the Council in Wales and the Marches
- Occasion
- The arrival in office of John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgewater, as Lord President of the Council in Wales (appointed 1631)
- Performers
- The Earl's children: Lady Alice Egerton (15) as the Lady, John, Viscount Brackley (about 11) as the Elder Brother, Thomas Egerton (about 9) as the Second Brother; Henry Lawes as the Attendant Spirit (Thyrsis). The players of Comus and Sabrina are unknown
- Music
- Henry Lawes, music tutor to the Egerton children; his settings of five of the songs survive
- Author
- John Milton, then 25 and living in study at his father's house at Hammersmith; he had earlier written Arcades for the Countess of Derby, the children's grandmother
- Texts
- Trinity Manuscript (Milton's autograph drafts, Trinity College, Cambridge); Bridgewater Manuscript (an acting text kept by the family); first edition 1637, published anonymously by Lawes; revised in Poems (1645) and Poems (1673)
- Length
- 1,023 lines in the standard numbering of the 1645 text
- Form
- Masque: blank verse dialogue, with songs and lyric passages chiefly in tetrameter couplets; three scenes (a wild wood, Comus's palace, Ludlow town and castle) and closing dances
- This edition
- The Poetry Codex text prints the 1645 version, with notes on the readings of 1637, 1673 and the manuscript
Context
In 1631 John Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater, was made Lord President of the Council in Wales and the Marches, the royal court that governed Wales and the English border counties from Ludlow Castle. When he took up residence in 1634 his household marked the occasion with a masque, performed on Michaelmas night, 29 September. Henry Lawes, a musician of the royal household and the music teacher of the Egerton children, composed the songs and played the guardian spirit; three of the children played the leading parts. The words were by John Milton, aged 25, a Cambridge graduate living in studious retirement with his father, who had already written a shorter entertainment, Arcades, for the children's grandmother, the dowager Countess of Derby (Brown 1985) (Lewalski 2000) (Campbell 2008).
The masque was the characteristic entertainment of the Stuart court. In the form perfected by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, an antimasque of grotesque or disorderly figures gives way to a masque of noble performers, who embody an ideal order and at the end dance with the spectators in the revels; the whole honours the monarch, whose presence completes it (Orgel 1965) (Lindley 1984). Milton knew the tradition well. His enchanter Comus, son of Bacchus and Circe, takes his name from the Greek komos, revelry, and had appeared as a god of the belly in Jonson's Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618). But Milton's masque was written for a provincial household rather than the court, its noble performers were children, and it gives far more room than any court masque to argument (Norbrook 1984) (Brown 1985).
The story is simple. A Lady and her two brothers travel through a dark wood to their father's new seat. Separated from her brothers, the Lady is lured by Comus, disguised as a villager, to his palace, where she is fixed in an enchanted chair and resists both his arguments and his cup. Her brothers, guided by the Attendant Spirit, break in but let Comus escape with his wand; the Lady is freed only by Sabrina, the nymph of the river Severn, and the children are presented to their parents in a final dance. Behind the story lie Homer's Circe, Spenser's chaste heroines, the Platonic philosophy of the soul, and the pastoral conventions in which Lawes appears as the shepherd Thyrsis (Tuve 1957) (Fletcher 1971).
The text has a complicated history. Milton's working drafts survive in his own hand in the Trinity Manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge; the Bridgewater Manuscript, a copy kept by the family, preserves a version close to what was acted, with some passages shorter and part of the epilogue sung at the beginning. Lawes published the masque anonymously in 1637, explaining in his dedication to Lord Brackley that the demand for copies had worn out his pen; the printed text is longer than the acting version and contains passages not found in it, among them the Lady's lines on 'the Sun-clad power of Chastity' and the epilogue's lines on Adonis and on Cupid and Psyche. Milton reprinted it under his own name in Poems (1645), with a letter of praise from Sir Henry Wotton, and again, lightly revised, in 1673 (Sprott 1973) (Carey 1997).
Much modern criticism reads the masque in its household and political setting. In 1631, the year of Bridgewater's appointment, the husband of the Countess of Bridgewater's sister, the Earl of Castlehaven, was tried and executed for sexual crimes committed in his own household, and Barbara Breasted argued that a masque about a daughter's chastity, performed by the Bridgewater children, should be read against that scandal (Breasted 1971). Others have read it alongside the Council's work as a court in Wales, the Laudian church and the controversy over Sunday pastimes, and as an early statement of the ideal of chastity that Milton later described as central to his own youth (Marcus 1983) (Marcus 1986) (Kerrigan 1983).
Plot overview
The Attendant Spirit descends into a wild wood and explains that he has been sent by Jove to protect the children of the noble peer who now governs the western part of Britain. They must pass through a wood haunted by Comus, son of Bacchus and Circe, whose cup turns travellers' faces into the heads of beasts. The Spirit puts on the clothes of the shepherd Thyrsis and vanishes as Comus arrives with his rout of monsters, celebrating night and the rites of the goddess Cotytto. Sensing a chaste footstep, Comus breaks off the dance and prepares to deceive.
The Lady enters, lost and alone: her brothers went to look for fruit and have not returned. She calls on faith, hope and chastity, sees a cloud's silver lining, and sings to Echo to ask where her brothers are. Comus, moved by her song, approaches disguised as a villager, claims to have seen two young men, and offers to lead her to a safe cottage. She trusts him and follows.
The brothers, searching for her, debate her danger. The Second Brother fears the worst; the Elder Brother argues that chastity is a strength no evil can overcome. The Attendant Spirit, as Thyrsis, finds them, tells them who Comus is and that he has seen him with their sister, and gives them haemony, a root that protects against enchantment. In Comus's palace the Lady sits fixed in an enchanted chair. Comus urges her to drink, arguing that nature's bounty is meant to be enjoyed and that beauty must not be hoarded; she answers that nature intends her gifts for the temperate, and that she could speak of the 'serious doctrine of Virginity' if he were fit to hear it.
The brothers rush in, break Comus's glass and drive off his crew, but fail to seize his wand, so the Lady remains bound. The Spirit invokes Sabrina, a virgin princess who became goddess of the Severn; she rises and frees the Lady with drops of water. The Spirit leads the children out of the wood to Ludlow town and castle, where country dancers give way to the children, who are presented to their parents. The Spirit's epilogue describes the gardens of Hesperus and the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, and ends by telling mortals to love virtue.
Part by part
Part 1: The Attendant Spirit's Prologue
1–92
Summary
The first scene shows a wild wood. The Attendant Spirit descends and describes his home before the threshold of Jove's court, in a calm air far above the smoke of earth, where men live confined in a 'pin-fold' and forget the crown that virtue gives after death. He comes down only for those who aspire to the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.
He then explains the occasion in mythological terms. Neptune has divided the islands among his sea-gods, and the western tract of Britain is in the charge of a noble peer who governs an old and proud nation; his children are travelling through this wood to attend their father's new state. Here lives Comus, son of Bacchus and Circe, who offers travellers a cup that changes their faces into the heads of beasts, while they, not perceiving their disfigurement, think themselves more handsome than before. The Spirit takes the dress of a shepherd who serves the household and is skilled in music, and becomes invisible as Comus approaches.
Analysis
The prologue sets out the masque's moral and cosmic order before any action begins. Its geography is vertical: the Spirit's home in the pure air, the 'dim spot' of earth, and the wood of trial between. The language is Platonic and Christian at once: the soul imprisoned in the body, the 'mortal change' of death, the 'Sainted seats' of the blessed. Virtue is defined from the start as an ascent 'by due steps', a phrase that prepares for the Elder Brother's philosophy and for the epilogue's final climb (Fletcher 1971) (Woodhouse 1941).
At the same time the speech performs the masque's social duty. The compliment to Bridgewater is graceful and exact: he governs 'with temper'd awe' a nation 'proud in Arms', and his children come to attend 'their Fathers state, / And new-entrusted Scepter'. The Spirit's claim to tell 'What never yet was heard in Tale or Song' introduces Milton's own invention, the parentage of Comus, which joins two classical myths of intoxication and transformation. The detail that Comus's victims do not know that they have become beasts is the moral centre of the myth: intemperance destroys the very judgement that could recognise it (Tuve 1957).
The Spirit's disguise is also a theatrical joke. The shepherd whose 'soft Pipe, and smooth-dittied Song' can still the winds is Henry Lawes, the household's musician, who was playing the Spirit; the audience would have recognised the compliment (Brown 1985) (Evans 1941).
Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that Golden Key That ope's the Palace of Eternity:
The masque's moral programme in brief: virtue as a gradual ascent toward heaven.
A noble Peer of mickle trust, and power Has in his charge, with temper'd awe to guide An old, and haughty Nation proud in Arms:
The compliment to Bridgewater as Lord President, ruling the Welsh with power tempered by restraint.
And they, so perfect is their misery, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely then before
Comus's victims do not know what they have become: vice blinds the judgement it corrupts.
Part 2: Comus and His Rout
93–169
Summary
Comus enters with a charming rod and a glass, followed by a rout of monsters, men and women with the heads of beasts, carrying torches and making a riotous noise. In rapid tetrameter couplets he welcomes the night: the sun has set, Rigour and Advice and Strict Age are asleep, and he and his followers, 'of purer fire', imitate the dance of the stars. He calls on Cotytto, a goddess of secret nocturnal rites, to protect their revels until the morning reveals them.
The rout dances a measure. Comus breaks it off when he senses the 'different pace' of a chaste footstep. He sends his crew into hiding, casts a dazzling powder into the air to deceive the eye, and plans to win the stranger's trust with courteous words, appearing as a harmless villager.
Analysis
This is the masque's antimasque, the disorderly spectacle that precedes and sets off the masque proper. In a court masque the antimasque was usually performed by professional actors and dancers and was grotesque, comic or monstrous; Milton's monsters fit the convention (Orgel 1965). But Comus himself is not grotesque. His verse is the most seductive in the masque, a brilliant imitation of the pastoral and festive lyric of the period, and his claim that he and his crew 'Imitate the Starry Quire' borrows the language of cosmic harmony that belongs to the good spirits. The audience is meant to feel the attraction of what it is also meant to reject (Norbrook 1984).
Two lines sum up his philosophy: 'Tis onely day-light that makes Sin', and night's 'dun shades will ne're report'. For Comus sin is a matter of being seen; morality is merely social exposure. Against this the masque will set a virtue that sees by its own inward light. His sudden change from revel to calculation, and his plan to use 'well plac't words' and 'reasons not unplausible', also announce that the decisive contest will be one of rhetoric.
What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love.
Comus's invitation to the revels of night; the tetrameter lyric of seduction.
'Tis onely day-light that makes Sin Which these dun shades will ne're report.
Sin reduced to being seen: the creed that the Lady and her brothers will answer.
Baited with reasons not unplausible Wind me into the easie-hearted man, And hugg him into snares.
Comus plans a seduction by argument, which prepares for the debate in his palace.
Part 3: The Lady Lost: The Echo Song
170–330
Summary
The Lady enters, drawn by the noise of what she takes to be rustic revellers giving thanks to Pan 'amiss'. She explains that her brothers left her resting to fetch berries and have not come back. Alone in the dark, she feels a throng of fears, of calling shapes and tongues that speak men's names in deserts, but she says they cannot overwhelm a mind attended by conscience. She greets faith, hope and chastity as if she saw them, and is comforted by a cloud that turns its silver lining on the night.
Unable to shout, she sings a song to Echo, asking the nymph to tell her where her brothers are. Comus, listening, is moved: he has heard Circe and the Sirens sing in ways that lulled the senses, but never a song of such 'sober certainty of waking bliss'. He greets her as a goddess of the woods. In a passage of one-line exchanges he learns her situation, claims to have seen two young men of more than human beauty, and offers to guide her to a safe cottage. Praising the honest courtesy of lowly sheds over that of courts, she follows him.
Analysis
The Lady's soliloquy is the first full portrait of the virtue the masque celebrates. She is frightened and admits it; her fears are vivid and literary. What she shows is not fearlessness but a mind that can name and order its fears. The triad she greets replaces the usual Pauline faith, hope and charity with faith, hope and chastity, a substitution that has been much discussed: some read it as a sign of how central chastity is to the masque's theology, others as a limitation that the epilogue later corrects with an image of love (Woodhouse 1941) (Kerrigan 1983).
The Echo song, sung by Alice Egerton to Lawes's music, was the first song of the performance and one of its most admired moments. It asks for an answer that never comes; the only voice that replies is Comus's. His response shows that he can recognise holiness even as he plans to exploit it, and his contrast between the Sirens' song, which robs the sense of itself, and the Lady's, which wakes it, states the difference between false and true enchantment that runs through the masque (Fletcher 1971).
The Lady's trust in a courteous villager is not simple folly. Her praise of the courtesy 'sooner found in lowly sheds' than in 'Courts of Princes' is a pointed remark in a courtly genre, and her mistake is the error of a good mind that assumes goodness in others. Her final prayer, that Providence should match her trial to her strength, defines the action as a test (Brown 1985).
Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire, And airy tongues, that syllable mens names On Sands and Shoars and desert Wildernesses.
The Lady's fears, drawn from travellers' tales and romance; she names them and masters them.
O welcom pure-ey'd Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hovering Angel girt with golden wings. And thou unblemish't form of Chastity,
Chastity takes the place of charity in the familiar triad of virtues.
But such a sacred, and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss I never heard till now.
Comus distinguishes the Lady's song from the Sirens': it wakes the soul instead of lulling it.
Part 4: The Brothers' Debate on Chastity
331–658
Summary
The two brothers grope through the dark. The Second Brother imagines his sister cold, frightened, or in the grasp of hunger or lust. The Elder Brother rebukes him: virtue sees by its own light, and 'He that has light within his own deer brest' enjoys bright day in darkness. When the Second Brother insists that beauty needs a dragon to guard it, the Elder Brother reveals the 'hidden strength' he trusts: chastity, which arms its possessor like steel, awes savage creatures and evil spirits, is attended by angels, and gradually turns the body itself toward the soul's immortal essence; lust, by contrast, clots and imbrutes the soul. The Second Brother exclaims at the charm of 'divine Philosophy'.
They hear a halloo. It is the Attendant Spirit, disguised as Thyrsis, their father's shepherd. He tells them about Comus and how, sitting on a bank at evening, he heard first the roar of the rout and then the Lady's song, and saw that the enchanter had already met her. The Elder Brother reaffirms that virtue may be assailed but never hurt, and vows to attack Comus with his sword. The Spirit warns that a sword is useless against such charms and gives them haemony, a small unsightly root with a golden flower in another country, more powerful than the moly that Hermes gave Ulysses. With it they are to break Comus's glass and seize his wand.
Analysis
The debate is the masque's most philosophical scene and also, perhaps, its most gently comic. The younger brother speaks for common sense and fear, the elder for confident Platonism. The Elder Brother's long speech on chastity draws on the Phaedo's account of souls weighed down by bodily desire and haunting tombs, and on Neoplatonic ideas of the body refined by contemplation; it is magnificent, but it is spoken by a boy, and the action that follows tests his confidence. The Lady is in real danger, and the brothers' own intervention fails (Woodhouse 1941) (Tuve 1957).
Thyrsis's narrative is a set piece of pastoral poetry and a compliment to Lawes, whose music had been heard in the house. It also introduces the masque's chief crux, haemony. The root's description, dark and prickly here but golden-flowered elsewhere, despised by the dull swain who treads it, invites allegory, and critics have read it as divine grace, as Christian revelation or as the discipline of temperance, among other things. The comparison with Homer's moly signals that the masque is rewriting the Circe episode of the Odyssey in Christian terms (Carey 1997) (Tuve 1957).
The scene also prepares the masque's lesson about force. The Elder Brother's 'just sword' is honourable, but the Spirit tells him it 'can do thee little stead'; what is needed is a different kind of power.
Vertue could see to do what vertue would By her own radiant light, though Sun and Moon Were in the salt sea sunk.
The Elder Brother's doctrine of the inner light of virtue.
'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity: She that has that, is clad in compleat steel,
The 'hidden strength' of the Lady, figured as armour.
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, But in another Countrey, as he said, Bore a bright golden flowre, but not in this soyl:
Haemony: unsightly in this world, golden in another; the masque's most debated symbol.
Part 5: The Temptation in Comus's Palace
659–813
Summary
The scene changes to a stately palace with soft music and tables spread with dainties. The Lady sits in an enchanted chair; Comus offers his glass, and when she tries to rise he warns that a wave of his wand will turn her to alabaster. She replies that he can bind her body but not touch the freedom of her mind. Comus offers his cordial julep and reproaches her for being cruel to her own body, which nature lent for gentle use.
The Lady denounces his deception. Comus answers with a great speech on nature's bounty: nature poured out her riches with an unwithdrawing hand to be enjoyed, and if all lived in temperance the earth would be choked with its own fertility; beauty is nature's coin and must circulate, and the rose left on the stalk withers. The Lady replies that nature intends her gifts for those who live by temperance, and that if wealth were justly shared there would be no excess. She will not try to explain the 'Sun-clad' power of chastity and the mystery of virginity to one unfit to hear it, though if she did, the earth itself would shake his palace down. Comus, shaken, recognises a superior power in her words, but dismisses them as 'moral babble' and presses the cup once more.
Analysis
The temptation is a formal debate, and its classical model is the choice of Hercules between Pleasure and Virtue. Comus's speech is a version of the carpe diem argument of Renaissance love poetry, enlarged into a philosophy of nature as prodigal abundance. It is brilliant and some of it is true: nature is generous, and the Lady never denies it. Her answer turns the argument from consumption to distribution, from 'vast excess' for 'som few' to a 'moderate and beseeming share' for every just man, giving the debate a social edge rare in a masque (Norbrook 1984) (Woodhouse 1941).
The Lady's lines on 'the Sun-clad power of Chastity' and 'the sage / And serious doctrine of Virginity' (779–806 in the standard numbering, including Comus's shaken reply) are not in the Bridgewater acting text; they first appear in the printed version of 1637. Their absence from the performance and the Lady's refusal within them to unfold the doctrine have made them central to arguments about the Lady's voice, about the distinction between chastity and virginity, and about Milton's developing sense of his own vocation (Sprott 1973) (Woodhouse 1941) (Kerrigan 1983).
The scene's central image is the Lady's immobility. She is physically bound, unable to rise, while her mind remains free; her first words in the scene assert exactly this distinction. Whether her stillness is a figure of the soul's freedom within the body, an image of a girl's vulnerability to male power, or both, has been a major question in feminist criticism (Shullenberger 2008) (Guillory 1983).
Thou canst not touch the freedom of my minde With all thy charms, although this corporal rinde Thou haste immanacl'd, while Heav'n sees good.
The body bound, the mind free: the Lady's first answer and the scene's governing distinction.
Beauty is natures coyn, must not be hoorded, But must be currant,
Comus's carpe diem argument in the language of money and circulation.
If every just man that now pines with want Had but a moderate and beseeming share Of that which lewdly-pamper'd Luxury Now heaps upon som few with vast excess,
The Lady turns Comus's praise of abundance into an argument for just distribution.
Part 6: Sabrina and the Spirit's Epilogue
814–1023
Summary
The brothers rush in with drawn swords, break the glass and drive off the rout, but Comus escapes with his wand. The Spirit rebukes them: without the wand reversed the Lady cannot be freed. He remembers another means, learned from the old shepherd Meliboeus: Sabrina, daughter of King Locrine, who fled from her stepmother Guendolen into the Severn and was made goddess of the river by Nereus. She loves maidenhood and will help a virgin in need if rightly invoked in song.
The Spirit sings 'Sabrina fair' and calls on her by the gods of the sea. Sabrina rises with her water-nymphs, sprinkles the Lady with drops from her fountain, touches the chair with chaste, cold palms, and breaks the spell. The Spirit blesses her river, then leads the children out of the wood. The scene changes to Ludlow town and castle; country dancers are dismissed for the courtly dancing of the children, whom the Spirit presents to their parents as having triumphed over 'sensual folly, and Intemperance'. In the epilogue he flies to the gardens of Hesperus, where Adonis recovers from his wound and Cupid holds Psyche, destined to bear the twins Youth and Joy. He ends: 'Love vertue, she alone is free'.
Analysis
The brothers' failure is deliberate. The masque does not let human force, however just, complete the rescue. Release comes from a female deity of the local river, called down by music, and her cure is cleansing water applied to 'thy rubied lip' and to a chair 'Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat'. Sabrina's story comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth's British history by way of Spenser, but Milton changes it so that she flees instead of being drowned and becomes a protector of virgins. The Severn flowed through the region the Lord President governed; the rescue is given a British and a Welsh-border setting (Carey 1997) (Brown 1985).
The return to Ludlow brings the masque into the hall where it was performed. The children dance before their parents, and the Spirit's song makes their journey an allegory of education: Heaven has 'timely tri'd their youth'. This presentation replaces the court masque's culminating tribute to the king with a tribute to a family (Brown 1985) (Orgel 1965).
The epilogue, in its printed form, ends on a vision of heavenly love. Above the earthly Venus mourning Adonis is the 'Celestial Cupid' with Psyche, the soul, whose wandering labours end in marriage. In Apuleius the child of Cupid and Psyche is Voluptas, Pleasure; Milton gives them twins, Youth and Joy. Many critics, following Woodhouse, see here the masque's final perspective: chastity is not opposed to love but leads to its highest form, and the Lady's virginity is a stage on a way that ends in a heavenly marriage (Woodhouse 1941) (Fletcher 1971).
Sabrina fair Listen when thou art sitting Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,
The invocation of the river goddess, sung by Lawes as the Spirit.
Next this marble venom'd seat Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat I touch with chaste palms moist and cold,
Sabrina's cure: cold, chaste water against the heat of Comus's seat.
She can teach ye how to clime Higher then the Spheary chime; Or if Vertue feeble were, Heav'n it self would stoop to her.
The last lines: virtue ascends, and heaven descends to aid it.
Characters
The Egerton children
- The Lady
- Played by Lady Alice Egerton, aged 15. Lost in the wood, she trusts the disguised Comus and is held in his enchanted chair, where she refuses his cup and answers his arguments. She is frightened but never confused, and her defence of temperance and chastity is the intellectual climax of the masque. She is also curiously passive: she cannot free herself, and after her release she does not speak again. Her role was written for a girl's voice, and she sings the song to Echo.
- The Elder Brother
- Played by John Egerton, Viscount Brackley, the heir, aged about 11. A confident young Platonist, he delivers the great speech on the 'hidden strength' of chastity and insists that virtue may be assailed but never hurt. His readiness to fight Comus with his sword is brave but misdirected, and he fails to seize the wand.
- The Second Brother
- Played by Thomas Egerton, aged about 9. He speaks for practical fear: beauty needs a guard, and a lone girl in a wild place is in danger. His objections draw out his brother's philosophy, and his delighted praise of 'divine Philosophy' gives the debate a touch of comedy.
Spirits and powers
- The Attendant Spirit (Thyrsis)
- A guardian spirit sent by Jove, played by Henry Lawes, the composer of the music. He speaks the prologue and the epilogue, takes the disguise of the shepherd Thyrsis, gives the brothers haemony, invokes Sabrina and leads the children home. He links the heavenly and the earthly orders, and his songs carry much of the masque's music.
- Sabrina
- Nymph of the river Severn: once the daughter of Locrine, son of Brutus, she fled from her stepmother Guendolen into the river and was made a goddess. Invoked in song, she frees the Lady with water from her fountain. She is the only power in the masque who can undo Comus's spell.
- Meliboeus
- An old shepherd, 'the soothest Shepherd', from whom the Spirit learned of Sabrina. The pastoral name is often taken as a compliment to Spenser, who had told Sabrina's story in The Faerie Queene.
- The shepherd lad
- A young shepherd skilled in herbs who loved Thyrsis's singing and gave him haemony. Some readers have seen in him a figure of Milton's friend Charles Diodati, a student of medicine; the suggestion is speculative.
Comus and his rout
- Comus
- Son of Bacchus and Circe, a sorcerer who lives in the wood and changes travellers into beast-headed monsters with his cup. He is eloquent, musical and capable of recognising holiness in the Lady's song. Disguised as a villager he leads her to his palace, where his speech on nature's bounty is the masque's great temptation. He is not defeated in a fight but escapes with his wand.
- Comus's rout
- Comus's followers, men and women with the heads of beasts, who dance the antimasque measure. They do not know they have been transformed and think themselves more comely than before.
The audience
- The Earl and Countess of Bridgewater
- John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgewater, Lord President of the Council in Wales, and his wife Frances, née Stanley. They do not act but are addressed as 'Noble Lord, and Lady bright' when their children are presented to them in the last scene.
Themes
Chastity and virginity
Chastity is the masque's central virtue, but its meaning is not simple. For the Elder Brother it is a protective power that awes evil and refines the body toward the soul. For the Lady it is a 'Sun-clad power' and part of a higher 'doctrine of Virginity' that she declines to unfold. In Christian moral theology chastity meant sexual virtue appropriate to one's state, including faithful marriage, while virginity was a particular form of it; A. S. P. Woodhouse made the distinction the key to the masque, arguing that it moves from chastity as a natural virtue to virginity as a state of grace (Woodhouse 1941).
The epilogue complicates any simple praise of renunciation by ending with a heavenly marriage. Milton himself, in An Apology against a Pamphlet (1642), the so-called Apology for Smectymnuus, later described his youthful devotion to chastity, learned from romance, Plato and Scripture, while denying that marriage is a defilement; critics have read the masque in the light of that account (Kerrigan 1983) (Lewalski 2000).
Temperance and nature
The debate in Comus's palace turns on the meaning of nature. For Comus, nature's abundance is a command to consume; to refuse it is ingratitude to the giver. For the Lady, nature is a 'good cateress' who provides for those who live by 'her sober laws', and the problem is not scarcity of enjoyment but unjust distribution. Temperance, the classical virtue of moderation, is therefore both a personal and a social virtue.
The masque's closing song presents the children's triumph as one 'O're sensual folly, and Intemperance', and the transformations of Comus's followers show intemperance as the loss of the human image itself (Tuve 1957) (Woodhouse 1941).
Trial and education
The masque is an action of testing. The Lady prays that Providence should 'square my triall / To my proportion'd strength', and the Spirit tells the parents that Heaven has 'timely tri'd' their children's youth. Performed by children before their parents, the masque functions as a display of their education: the children speak verse of moral philosophy and show their accomplishment in song and dance (Brown 1985).
Milton's later prose returned to the idea that virtue must be tried; in Areopagitica (1644) he refused to praise a virtue that runs from its adversary instead of meeting it. The masque is an early version of that conviction, though here the trial ends in rescue rather than in the free choice of a mature mind.
Rhetoric and the power of speech
Comus wins the Lady's trust with 'well plac't words', and his speech in the palace is a masterpiece of persuasion. The Lady hates 'when vice can bolt her arguments, / And vertue has no tongue', and her reply shows that virtue can argue too. Yet she also refuses to argue further, saying that her opponent is unfit to hear. The masque thus asks what eloquence can and cannot do, and what kind of speech can overcome enchantment: in the end it is song, not argument, that frees the Lady (Guillory 1983) (Fletcher 1971).
Music and harmony
The masque was a musical work, and music is also one of its themes. The Spirit's art can still the winds; the Lady's song creates 'sober certainty of waking bliss'; Comus's revels parody the dance of the stars; Sabrina is called by 'warbled Song'. Behind these lies the Platonic and Pythagorean idea of the music of the spheres, which the epilogue invokes when it promises that virtue can climb 'Higher then the Spheary chime' (Fletcher 1971) (Evans 1941).
Household, office and political order
The masque celebrates a family and an office. Bridgewater's government of Wales is described as a share of Neptune's sea empire, and the children's journey to 'attend their Fathers state' becomes a moral journey. The final presentation at Ludlow ties the cosmic order of the prologue to the social order of the castle. Critics have read the masque both as a compliment to aristocratic authority and as a reformed, Protestant version of the courtly form that measures that authority by virtue (Brown 1985) (Norbrook 1984) (Marcus 1986).
Motifs
Light and darkness
The masque takes place at night, and its moral contrasts are drawn in light: the Spirit's 'glancing Star', the cloud's silver lining, the Elder Brother's virtue that sees 'By her own radiant light', Comus's claim that only daylight makes sin, and the dawn that Comus fears will expose his rites.
Transformation
Comus's cup changes faces into beasts' heads; Daphne was turned into a tree; Sabrina underwent 'a quick immortal change'; chastity can turn the body 'by degrees to the souls essence'. The masque imagines change downward to the brute and upward to the divine.
The wood as labyrinth
The Lady calls the wood 'this heavy Labyrinth', and its 'perplex't paths' and 'blind mazes' make it a place of moral error in the tradition of Spenser's Wood of Error. Shullenberger reads the whole action as a rite of passage through the labyrinth (Shullenberger 2008).
Pastoral disguise
The Spirit dresses as a shepherd; Comus pretends to be a villager; the Lady praises the courtesy of lowly sheds; the final scene dismisses the country dancers for the dancing of the court. The pastoral world is both a refuge of honest goodness and a mask that the deceiver can wear.
Symbols
Comus's glass
The cup of Circe in a new form: it offers refreshment and joy but destroys the human image. The brothers break it, but its power over the Lady lies in her refusal, not in its destruction.
The wand and the enchanted chair
Comus's wand binds the body; the chair holds the Lady 'In stony fetters fixt'. Because the brothers fail to seize the wand, the spell can only be undone by a power from outside. The image of a chaste woman bound to a seat recalls Spenser's Amoret in the house of Busirane.
Haemony
The root given by Thyrsis, dark and prickly in this soil but golden-flowered in 'another Countrey'. It is Milton's version of Homer's moly, and its meaning (grace, revelation, reason, temperance or something else) has been debated for centuries.
The Severn
Sabrina's river runs through the lands of the Council in Wales. Its cool, pure water answers the heat of Comus's seat, and the Spirit's blessing of the river ties the masque's moral victory to the landscape of the Lord President's government.
Critical debates
Masque or anti-masque? Milton's reform of the genre
Is the work a true masque or a criticism of the form? It has the essential features: noble performers, an antimasque of monsters, scene changes, songs and closing dances, and a compliment to a great man. But it differs from the court masque in ways that critics have found significant. Its central episode is a debate rather than a spectacle; the villain is not banished by the mere appearance of virtue but escapes; the revels are the children's dance before their parents rather than a dance joining masquers and courtiers in the king's presence.
David Norbrook argued that Milton, like other Protestant poets in the tradition of Spenser, was reforming the masque, turning a form of courtly self-celebration toward moral and religious instruction and implicit criticism of the court's luxury (Norbrook 1984). Maryann McGuire similarly read it as a 'Puritan masque' (McGuire 1983). Cedric Brown placed it instead among aristocratic household entertainments, arguing that its seriousness suits a pious family and an educational occasion rather than an opposition to aristocratic culture as such (Brown 1985). Stephen Orgel's account of the Jonsonian masque remains the standard description of the form against which Milton's departures are measured (Orgel 1965).
Chastity, the Lady's silence and gender
The Lady is the heroine, but she is fixed in a chair, cannot rescue herself, declines to unfold the 'doctrine of Virginity', and says nothing after her release. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics have debated what these features mean. William Kerrigan read the masque's preoccupation with chastity in relation to Milton's own psychology and his idealisation of his virginity in youth (Kerrigan 1983). John Guillory connected the Lady's chastity and her withheld speech with Milton's sense of poetic vocation and authority (Guillory 1983).
Other readers have stressed the Lady's strength: she out-argues Comus, and her words make him tremble. William Shullenberger read the masque as a rite of initiation in which the Lady's passage through the labyrinth leads to an adult female identity, and Sabrina's intervention as a sign that her rescue must come from a female power (Shullenberger 2008). The question is whether chastity in the masque is a form of female agency, a protection imposed by a patriarchal household, or both.
The Castlehaven scandal
In 1631 Mervin Touchet, second Earl of Castlehaven, was tried by his peers and executed for sodomy and for assisting in the rape of his own wife. His wife was the sister of the Countess of Bridgewater, Alice Egerton's mother. Barbara Breasted argued that the scandal, which had disgraced the family only three years before, gives the masque's insistence on the chastity of a daughter of the house a particular point, and that the revisions of the text may reflect sensitivity to it (Breasted 1971).
Leah Marcus added a different local context: a rape case from Shropshire that came before Bridgewater's council and was mishandled by local justices, which she connected with the masque's concern with the protection of a young woman and the duties of a judge (Marcus 1983). Others have doubted that a festive entertainment for the family would have alluded to its own disgrace: John Creaser argued that the scandal is irrelevant to the masque, and Brown is cautious about the connection (Creaser 1984) (Brown 1985). The case shows the strengths and the risks of historical reading: the scandal is real, but its presence in the text can only be inferred.
Manuscripts and printed texts: what was performed?
The masque survives in several states. The Trinity Manuscript contains Milton's autograph drafts with many revisions; the Bridgewater Manuscript is a scribal copy close to the acting version; the 1637 edition, published by Lawes, presents a longer literary text; the 1645 and 1673 Poems make further small changes. S. E. Sprott's edition prints the earlier versions side by side (Sprott 1973).
The differences are significant for interpretation. The acting text lacks the Lady's lines on 'the Sun-clad power of Chastity' and 'the sage / And serious doctrine of Virginity' (779–806), and its version of the epilogue, sung at the beginning, lacks the passage on Adonis and on Cupid and Psyche. Some of the masque's most quoted statements about virginity and heavenly love therefore belong to Milton's revision for readers, not to what Alice Egerton spoke in 1634. Critics debate whether the additions clarify an idea already present or change the masque's emphasis, perhaps in response to the circumstances of performance (Sprott 1973) (Breasted 1971) (Carey 1997).
What is haemony?
The Spirit's account of haemony (629–641) has produced more commentary than almost any other passage. Its name has been derived from Haemonia, an old name for Thessaly, the land of witches, so that it would be a magical herb turned against magic; or from Greek words for blood or for skill. Its appearance, unsightly and prickly here but bearing a golden flower in another country, and its neglect by the 'dull swayn' who treads on it, have suggested Christian grace or revelation, despised in this world and glorious in the next. Others read it as reason, temperance or the knowledge that comes from education (Carey 1997) (Woodhouse 1941) (Tuve 1957).
Interpretation is complicated by the action. Haemony allows the brothers to resist Comus's charms, but it does not free the Lady; that requires Sabrina. Any allegory of haemony must therefore account for its limits as well as its power.
Politics: the Council in Wales and the Laudian church
The masque was written for the head of a royal court of justice and government, and it was performed in the years of Charles I's personal rule and Archbishop Laud's reforms. In 1633 the King reissued the Book of Sports, which permitted dancing and pastimes on Sundays and holy days, against Puritan objection. Leah Marcus read the masque's treatment of festivity, from Comus's nocturnal rites to the country dancers of the final scene, in relation to that controversy (Marcus 1986).
Norbrook and McGuire saw in the Lady's speech on distribution and in the masque's suspicion of courtly luxury an early sign of the Puritan and republican Milton (Norbrook 1984) (McGuire 1983). Brown emphasised Bridgewater's own piety and the masque's harmony with the values of a godly aristocratic household (Brown 1985). The question is whether the masque anticipates Milton's later opposition to the monarchy and the bishops, or whether that reading projects his later career onto a work of 1634.
Platonism and the epilogue
The masque draws throughout on Platonic ideas: the soul imprisoned in the body, virtue seeing by an inner light, the music of the spheres, and the transformation of the body by contemplation. The epilogue gathers these themes in a vision of the gardens of Hesperus and of Cupid and Psyche. Woodhouse read it as the key to the masque's structure, a movement from nature to grace in which the Lady's virginity points toward a heavenly marriage (Woodhouse 1941); his essay is reprinted, with other classic studies, in John Diekhoff's collection A Maske at Ludlow (Diekhoff 1968). Angus Fletcher described the work as a 'transcendental masque', whose music and imagery aim to lead the audience beyond the world of the senses (Fletcher 1971).
Other critics have questioned how far the epilogue, added or expanded for the printed text, should govern the meaning of the performance, and have seen in its sensuous gardens a recovery of the pleasure that Comus offered in a purified form. Rosemond Tuve's study of the masque's images traces how its traditional symbols carry these meanings (Tuve 1957).
Key passages
Before the starry threshold of Joves Court My mansion is, where those immortal shapes Of bright aereal Spirits live insphear'd
The opening lines place the Spirit's home above the earth and give the masque its vertical order of heaven, earth and the wood of trial between. The language of spheres and pure spirits is Platonic, and it prepares for the epilogue's return to the heavenly gardens.
Com, knit hands, and beat the ground, In a light fantastick round.
Comus calls his rout to the antimasque dance. The verse is light, musical and attractive, which is the point: the masque presents the pleasures of revelry as genuinely seductive, so that the Lady's resistance has something to resist.
Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
After calling on faith, hope and chastity, the Lady sees moonlight break through a cloud, and takes it as a sign of providential care. The image of the silver lining has passed into common speech from this passage.
He that has light within his own deer brest May sit i'th center, and enjoy bright day, But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the mid-day Sun;
The Elder Brother answers his brother's fears with a doctrine of inner light: virtue is its own illumination, and vice is darkness even at noon. It is the masque's answer to Comus's claim that only daylight makes sin.
Vertue may be assail'd, but never hurt, Surpriz'd by unjust force, but not enthrall'd,
Hearing that his sister is in Comus's power, the Elder Brother restates his faith. The distinction between assault and harm anticipates the Lady's own claim that Comus can bind her body but not her mind.
Wherefore did Nature powre her bounties forth, With such a full and unwithdrawing hand, Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,
Comus's great speech presents nature as overflowing generosity that demands to be enjoyed. Its eloquence makes it the strongest temptation in the masque, and the Lady must answer it in its own terms.
I hate when vice can bolt her arguments, And vertue has no tongue to check her pride:
The Lady decides to speak, and so makes the temptation a contest of reason. To 'bolt' is to sift, as flour is sifted: vice refines its arguments, and virtue must be able to answer them.
The sublime notion, and high mystery That must be utter'd to unfold the sage And serious doctrine of Virginity,
In lines added for the printed text the Lady speaks of a higher doctrine than temperance, but refuses to explain it to Comus. The phrase 'sage and serious' has become a shorthand for Milton's idealism, and the passage is central to debates about chastity and virginity in the masque.
Heav'n hath timely tri'd their youth. Their faith, their patience, and their truth
Presenting the children to their parents, the Spirit makes their adventure a trial sent by Heaven and passed. The masque ends as a celebration of a family and of the children's education in virtue.
Mortals that would follow me, Love vertue, she alone is free,
The last lesson of the epilogue: only virtue is free. Freedom here means not doing as one likes, as Comus would define it, but the soul's liberation from the bondage of sense, the freedom the Lady claimed in the enchanted chair.
Questions for study
How does the masque present the attractions of Comus and his world? Why might Milton have given him such persuasive verse?
Look at Comus's opening lyric, his response to the Lady's song and his speech on nature's bounty.
Compare the two brothers' views of their sister's danger. Is the Elder Brother right?
Consider what actually happens to the Lady, and the Spirit's warning that the sword 'can do thee little stead'.
What is the difference between chastity and virginity in the masque, and why does the Lady refuse to unfold the 'doctrine of Virginity'?
Think about Woodhouse's distinction, the audience of the performance, and the fact that these lines were added in 1637.
How does the Lady answer Comus's argument from nature? Is her reply an argument about sex, about society, or both?
Look closely at 762–779 and its language of sharing, excess and gratitude.
Why can the brothers not free the Lady, and why is Sabrina able to do so?
Consider the failure to seize the wand, Sabrina's history as a virgin, the local river and the role of song.
What might haemony represent? Does any single interpretation account for what it does and does not achieve?
Compare it with Homer's moly and note that it protects the brothers but does not release the Lady.
In what ways does the masque follow the conventions of the court masque, and in what ways does it depart from them?
Think about the antimasque, the scene changes, the revels, the audience and the place of argument.
How far should the Castlehaven scandal shape our reading of the masque?
Weigh Breasted's argument against the nature of a family entertainment and the evidence of the textual revisions.
What does the epilogue add to the masque's view of love and chastity?
Consider Venus and Adonis, Cupid and Psyche, the twins Youth and Joy, and whether the passage was part of the performance.
How is music used in the masque, both as performance and as a theme?
Think of the Echo song, Comus's response to it, Thyrsis's pastoral music, the invocation of Sabrina and the music of the spheres.
Further reading
- Breasted, Barbara. "Comus and the Castlehaven Scandal." Milton Studies 3 (1971): 201–224.
- Brown, Cedric C. John Milton's Aristocratic Entertainments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
- Campbell, Gordon, and Thomas N. Corns. John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Carey, John, ed. Milton: Complete Shorter Poems. London: Longman, 1968; 2nd ed. London: Longman, 1997.
- Creaser, John. "Milton's Comus: The Irrelevance of the Castlehaven Scandal." Notes and Queries 31 (1984): 307–317.
- Diekhoff, John S., ed. A Maske at Ludlow: Essays on Milton's Comus. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1968.
- Evans, Willa McClung. Henry Lawes, Musician and Friend of Poets. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1941.
- Fletcher, Angus. The Transcendental Masque: An Essay on Milton's Comus. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971.
- Guillory, John. Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
- Kerrigan, William. The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
- Lewalski, Barbara K. The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
- Lindley, David, ed. The Court Masque. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.
- Marcus, Leah S. "The Milieu of Milton's Comus: Judicial Reform at Ludlow and the Problem of Sexual Assault." Criticism 25 (1983): 293–327.
- Marcus, Leah S. The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
- McGuire, Maryann Cale. Milton's Puritan Masque. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983.
- Norbrook, David. "The Reformation of the Masque." In The Court Masque, edited by David Lindley, 94–110. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.
- Orgel, Stephen. The Jonsonian Masque. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
- Shullenberger, William. Lady in the Labyrinth: Milton's Comus as Initiation. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008.
- Sprott, S. E., ed. John Milton, A Maske: The Earlier Versions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973.
- Tuve, Rosemond. Images and Themes in Five Poems by Milton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957.
- Woodhouse, A. S. P. "The Argument of Milton's Comus." University of Toronto Quarterly 11 (1941): 46–71.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.