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Milton's Comus
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY WILLIAM BELL- M.A.
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1634
About the author
John Milton
3,836 books2,332 followersPeople best know John Milton, English scholar, for
Paradise Lost
, the epic poem of 1667 and an account of fall of humanity from grace.
Beelzebub, one fallen angel in Paradise Lost, of John Milton, lay in power next to Satan.
Belial, one fallen angel, rebelled against God in Paradise Lost of John Milton.
John Milton, polemicist, man of letters, served the civil Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote in blank verse at a time of religious flux and political upheaval.
Prose of John Milton reflects deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. He wrote in Latin, Greek, and Italian and achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644) in condemnation of censorship before publication among most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and the press of history.
William Hayley in biography of 1796 called and generally regarded John Milton, the "greatest ... author," "as one of the preeminent writers in the ... language," though since his death, critical reception oscillated often on his republicanism in the centuries. Samuel Johnson praised, "with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the ... mind," though he, a Tory and recipient of royal patronage, described politics of Milton, an "acrimonious and surly republican."
Because of his republicanism, centuries of British partisanship subjected John Milton.
Beelzebub, one fallen angel in Paradise Lost, of John Milton, lay in power next to Satan.
Belial, one fallen angel, rebelled against God in Paradise Lost of John Milton.
John Milton, polemicist, man of letters, served the civil Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote in blank verse at a time of religious flux and political upheaval.
Prose of John Milton reflects deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. He wrote in Latin, Greek, and Italian and achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644) in condemnation of censorship before publication among most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and the press of history.
William Hayley in biography of 1796 called and generally regarded John Milton, the "greatest ... author," "as one of the preeminent writers in the ... language," though since his death, critical reception oscillated often on his republicanism in the centuries. Samuel Johnson praised, "with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the ... mind," though he, a Tory and recipient of royal patronage, described politics of Milton, an "acrimonious and surly republican."
Because of his republicanism, centuries of British partisanship subjected John Milton.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
January 12, 2018
Going through Milton's work chronologically, this is his most impressive work thus far. A masque on the virtue of Chastity, the poetry is good enough for Shakespeare to be proud of it. Like his other works, Milton makes enough classical allusions to send even the most learned Greek and Roman scholar to the notes in back, but they aren't quite as tiresome as they can be in his other works. The masque teems with energy and vibrance similar to Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Milton or Shakespearean literature.
February 6, 2017
Perhaps it's best to read Milton chronologically, because having started with Paradise Lost then moving on to Paradise Regained, I'm finding some of his earlier works -- like this one -- comparatively underwhelming. Milton wrote this work when he was still in his mid-20s and his magnum opus didn't come until he was nearing the end of his life (a counterexample to the theory that it is in youth that artists are at the peak of their creative powers).
As with PL and PR, this work makes use of Greek mythology and (to a lesser extent) the Bible, and it has some beautiful passages ("[H]e that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts/Benighted walks under the midday Sun;/Himself is his own dungeon"; "Peace brother, be not over-exquisite/To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;/For grant they may be so, while they rest unknown,/What need a man forestall his date of grief,/And run to what he would most avoid?/Or if they be but false alarms of Fear,/How bitter is such self-delusion?"), making it shine above other works of the early Milton, but it's neo-Platonism, promoting Chastity among the chiefest of Virtues, is a bit dated. And while probably among the young Milton's best efforts, it just doesn't come close to touching the greatness of Paradise Lost.
As with PL and PR, this work makes use of Greek mythology and (to a lesser extent) the Bible, and it has some beautiful passages ("[H]e that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts/Benighted walks under the midday Sun;/Himself is his own dungeon"; "Peace brother, be not over-exquisite/To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;/For grant they may be so, while they rest unknown,/What need a man forestall his date of grief,/And run to what he would most avoid?/Or if they be but false alarms of Fear,/How bitter is such self-delusion?"), making it shine above other works of the early Milton, but it's neo-Platonism, promoting Chastity among the chiefest of Virtues, is a bit dated. And while probably among the young Milton's best efforts, it just doesn't come close to touching the greatness of Paradise Lost.
January 2, 2019
Milton’s always a delight to read, even at his moralistic. “Comus” or “A Masque” is at once one of his most moralizing and also one of his most delightful and lavish poetic works. The central conceit is the stance of Chastity, in the form of the Lady, against the seducer Comus, representative of the fleshly passions and of the bacchic.
Comus, as we learn, is the son of Circe and Bacchus. According to Wikipedia, “He is a son and a cup-bearer of the god Dionysus. Comus represents anarchy and chaos. His mythology occurs in the later times of antiquity. During his festivals in Ancient Greece, men and women exchanged clothes. He was depicted as a young man on the point of unconsciousness from drink. He had a wreath of flowers on his head and carried a torch that was in the process of being dropped. Unlike the purely carnal Pan or purely intoxicated Dionysos, Comus was a god of excess.”
Put this ancient deity, mix up early modern and ancient and classical discourse on chastity and passion and sex, and have it all conjured up by the mind of a preternatural genius who turns borrowing into originality — and you get “A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle,” or, as it’s popularity called, “Comus”
It’s fascinating to me to think about how Comus appears to me in light of having read of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. This early poem looks so forward to those later three masterpieces: the theme of inner light, virtue, deception, response to temptation, elevation that could be deeply precarious, the sense of being constantly on the alert, the power of virtue but also the power of evil, and more. Comus is an early prototype of the Satan-as-seducer and Satan-as-deceiver we see in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. The son of the deities of passion, Circe the sensual witch-goddess and Bacchus the god of drink, Comus represents the principle of excess, yet he is also a clever human who picks up cues and works with them in order to work with his foul purposes.
Samuel Johnson and other critics often say that Milton, compared to Shakespeare, has a want of human interest. Yes, Milton does deal with elevated beings rather than “realist” Leo Blooms, But Milton is so great a poet that even in these elevated beings and fictions there are real emotional, human truths. Eve and Adam are first woman and first man, yet they are freshly conceived and feel what real people might feel. Comus was probably seen in real life, as was Milton’s Samson, or Milton’s Lady. Even Satan, Milton’s greatest character created, has recognizable emotions, drives, and thoughts. So I have never quite felt the “want of human interest” that others feel.
And I’ve been struck by how Comus riffs off The Odyssey, even having explicit references to Scylla, Charybdis, the Sirens, and the episode where Hermès gave the moly plant to Ulysses. And Comus is a bit like Odysseus, who disguises himself and who flirts with a pure lady. And Comus takes after his mother Circe, who transforms the men by way of wine into bestial creatures. It’s amazing how reading The Odyssey again opened my eyes to see some cunning parallels between Homer’s epic and Milton’s masque. More on this when I finish reading the poem.
The treatment of chastity is worthy of note; the drama of the poem hinges on this. On the one hand, borrowing from the classical conceptions of chastity but also from Christian discourse, chastity is presented as this pure and strong thing that gives inner strength and allows you to access higher spiritual realities, and gives you freedom. But it’s also quite vulnerable; for chastity can be threatened by the simplest and the greatest of things; bodily lust is thus depicted as the most brutish and animalizing thing. And when chastity is coupled with beauty, the vulnerability and danger is increased exponentially. That’s how the Elder Brother eloquently conjures an image of chastity.
Considering this, is there not a real problem with valuing chastity as the sign of a woman’s worth? Or denigrating the body compared to the spirit? I would think that, judging from Milton’s Paradise Lost and his monist metaphysics, that he matured to an understanding where the pleasures of the body are themselves links to higher spiritual realities. Adam and Eve’s sexual enjoyment must have had some boldness to its conception in its day, and maybe even in our own day (and Milton’s poetry always confounds expectations and conceptions even as it creates them). But the early Milton was highly interested, nay, probably obsessed with chastity.
Comus and the Lady speak against one another, and the masque turns into a poem of argument and debate. Milton borrows partly from Greek tragedy, which also uses argument and back-and-forth between characters quite a bit. (The clearest example I can think of at the moment is Euripides’ Medea, where the sophistic Jason of the Argo is placed in opposition to the wronged Medea).
Milton perfects that argumentation poetry in Paradise Regained, a work which bears quite a bit of similarity in theme and tone to Comus. While the former is a spare brief epic that achieves an austere music, and the latter a lush and heavily mythic masque, both deal with seductively powerful but self-enslaved seducers of evil and sensuality who are outwitted by virtuous, self-possessed, grave, and internally free persons who are blessed for their stances. Milton, masculinist though he was, ended up giving the Lady a classical virtue that gives her a form of agency. In this she mirrors the Son.
But alas, Comus’ argument against chastity does have an appeal, if not exactly a point. And to place the entirety of worth on chastity bespeaks to something potentially neurotic and repressive about the poem’s moral valuation of Chastity and Virginity. The reference to Cupid and Psyche, which involves marital sexual union and childbirth, does adapt a viewpoint where chastity can coexist with sexuality, and the Lady herself advocates temperance with Nature’s delights rather than unmitigated mortification of the flesh. But a hardness and rigor is still felt in the Lady’s arguments, and I think Milton is a true poet because he does not quite discount them, but he works with them. And I know he is great because he makes me think, feel, and even be triggered at times. This is true of Paradise Lost, his greater masterpiece, but also of the austere Paradise Regained and the masque Comus, which seem to me to present Milton at perhaps his most counterintuitive.
Comus, as we learn, is the son of Circe and Bacchus. According to Wikipedia, “He is a son and a cup-bearer of the god Dionysus. Comus represents anarchy and chaos. His mythology occurs in the later times of antiquity. During his festivals in Ancient Greece, men and women exchanged clothes. He was depicted as a young man on the point of unconsciousness from drink. He had a wreath of flowers on his head and carried a torch that was in the process of being dropped. Unlike the purely carnal Pan or purely intoxicated Dionysos, Comus was a god of excess.”
Put this ancient deity, mix up early modern and ancient and classical discourse on chastity and passion and sex, and have it all conjured up by the mind of a preternatural genius who turns borrowing into originality — and you get “A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle,” or, as it’s popularity called, “Comus”
It’s fascinating to me to think about how Comus appears to me in light of having read of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. This early poem looks so forward to those later three masterpieces: the theme of inner light, virtue, deception, response to temptation, elevation that could be deeply precarious, the sense of being constantly on the alert, the power of virtue but also the power of evil, and more. Comus is an early prototype of the Satan-as-seducer and Satan-as-deceiver we see in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. The son of the deities of passion, Circe the sensual witch-goddess and Bacchus the god of drink, Comus represents the principle of excess, yet he is also a clever human who picks up cues and works with them in order to work with his foul purposes.
Samuel Johnson and other critics often say that Milton, compared to Shakespeare, has a want of human interest. Yes, Milton does deal with elevated beings rather than “realist” Leo Blooms, But Milton is so great a poet that even in these elevated beings and fictions there are real emotional, human truths. Eve and Adam are first woman and first man, yet they are freshly conceived and feel what real people might feel. Comus was probably seen in real life, as was Milton’s Samson, or Milton’s Lady. Even Satan, Milton’s greatest character created, has recognizable emotions, drives, and thoughts. So I have never quite felt the “want of human interest” that others feel.
And I’ve been struck by how Comus riffs off The Odyssey, even having explicit references to Scylla, Charybdis, the Sirens, and the episode where Hermès gave the moly plant to Ulysses. And Comus is a bit like Odysseus, who disguises himself and who flirts with a pure lady. And Comus takes after his mother Circe, who transforms the men by way of wine into bestial creatures. It’s amazing how reading The Odyssey again opened my eyes to see some cunning parallels between Homer’s epic and Milton’s masque. More on this when I finish reading the poem.
The treatment of chastity is worthy of note; the drama of the poem hinges on this. On the one hand, borrowing from the classical conceptions of chastity but also from Christian discourse, chastity is presented as this pure and strong thing that gives inner strength and allows you to access higher spiritual realities, and gives you freedom. But it’s also quite vulnerable; for chastity can be threatened by the simplest and the greatest of things; bodily lust is thus depicted as the most brutish and animalizing thing. And when chastity is coupled with beauty, the vulnerability and danger is increased exponentially. That’s how the Elder Brother eloquently conjures an image of chastity.
Considering this, is there not a real problem with valuing chastity as the sign of a woman’s worth? Or denigrating the body compared to the spirit? I would think that, judging from Milton’s Paradise Lost and his monist metaphysics, that he matured to an understanding where the pleasures of the body are themselves links to higher spiritual realities. Adam and Eve’s sexual enjoyment must have had some boldness to its conception in its day, and maybe even in our own day (and Milton’s poetry always confounds expectations and conceptions even as it creates them). But the early Milton was highly interested, nay, probably obsessed with chastity.
Comus and the Lady speak against one another, and the masque turns into a poem of argument and debate. Milton borrows partly from Greek tragedy, which also uses argument and back-and-forth between characters quite a bit. (The clearest example I can think of at the moment is Euripides’ Medea, where the sophistic Jason of the Argo is placed in opposition to the wronged Medea).
Milton perfects that argumentation poetry in Paradise Regained, a work which bears quite a bit of similarity in theme and tone to Comus. While the former is a spare brief epic that achieves an austere music, and the latter a lush and heavily mythic masque, both deal with seductively powerful but self-enslaved seducers of evil and sensuality who are outwitted by virtuous, self-possessed, grave, and internally free persons who are blessed for their stances. Milton, masculinist though he was, ended up giving the Lady a classical virtue that gives her a form of agency. In this she mirrors the Son.
But alas, Comus’ argument against chastity does have an appeal, if not exactly a point. And to place the entirety of worth on chastity bespeaks to something potentially neurotic and repressive about the poem’s moral valuation of Chastity and Virginity. The reference to Cupid and Psyche, which involves marital sexual union and childbirth, does adapt a viewpoint where chastity can coexist with sexuality, and the Lady herself advocates temperance with Nature’s delights rather than unmitigated mortification of the flesh. But a hardness and rigor is still felt in the Lady’s arguments, and I think Milton is a true poet because he does not quite discount them, but he works with them. And I know he is great because he makes me think, feel, and even be triggered at times. This is true of Paradise Lost, his greater masterpiece, but also of the austere Paradise Regained and the masque Comus, which seem to me to present Milton at perhaps his most counterintuitive.
April 20, 2026
fun, weird lil read from milton. i love a good masque, what can i say?
June 23, 2025
čista i elokventna devica prodefiluje kroz omađijane tabloe novovekovne britanske ikonografije (ovidijanska mitologija + trojansko-arturijanski mitski narativ + engleski folklor i rustična pastorala + oklopljena protestantska čistoća i sveta misija), teološki se pismeno raspravi sa komusom — sinom dionisa i kirke koji orgija i baca mađije u velškoj šumi — koji je drži okamenjenu kao spenserovski čarobnjak, te ostavši imuna na njegov šarm uz pomoć dobrih duhova izlazi iz šume neoskvrnjena
dominiraju slike čednosti i čistoće usavršene u engleskoj renesansi – uključujući i u slavu elizabete – pa je cela maska u znaku renesansne dijane, meseca, belog svetla, vatreno čuvanog anđeoskog devojaštva, s neba poslatih čistih duhova, prave (protestantske) vere, vrline neugasive i usred najcrnjeg mraka, itd. neke slike su neočekivano potentne i magnetizovane, kao npr. kad okamenjenu junakinju iz usijane začarane stolice oslobađa rečna nimfa dodirom svojih "chaste palms moist and cold". usto ima i čistog camp-a kao i uvek kad milton piša po klerikalizmu: komus opisuje obrede u čast hekate koje izvodi sa svojim bestijalnim kružokom kao "our canon laws"
kao i sve miltonovo, beskrajno zahvalna za povlačenje poveznica i traženje sličnosti, pozajmica i razlika u raznoraznim pravcima: odiseja, eneida, metamorfoze, neoplatoničari, vilinska kraljica, san letnje noći, bura, niz jakobinskih maski, goblin market rosetijeve, itd. takođe bi bilo greota ne propratiti ovo čitanjem ingenioznog poglavlja iz paljinih seksualnih personi o spenseru (koje super osvetljava i njegov uticaj na miltona)
dominiraju slike čednosti i čistoće usavršene u engleskoj renesansi – uključujući i u slavu elizabete – pa je cela maska u znaku renesansne dijane, meseca, belog svetla, vatreno čuvanog anđeoskog devojaštva, s neba poslatih čistih duhova, prave (protestantske) vere, vrline neugasive i usred najcrnjeg mraka, itd. neke slike su neočekivano potentne i magnetizovane, kao npr. kad okamenjenu junakinju iz usijane začarane stolice oslobađa rečna nimfa dodirom svojih "chaste palms moist and cold". usto ima i čistog camp-a kao i uvek kad milton piša po klerikalizmu: komus opisuje obrede u čast hekate koje izvodi sa svojim bestijalnim kružokom kao "our canon laws"
kao i sve miltonovo, beskrajno zahvalna za povlačenje poveznica i traženje sličnosti, pozajmica i razlika u raznoraznim pravcima: odiseja, eneida, metamorfoze, neoplatoničari, vilinska kraljica, san letnje noći, bura, niz jakobinskih maski, goblin market rosetijeve, itd. takođe bi bilo greota ne propratiti ovo čitanjem ingenioznog poglavlja iz paljinih seksualnih personi o spenseru (koje super osvetljava i njegov uticaj na miltona)
November 22, 2022
4 stars cause I’m a Milton stan and this still hits xoxo
March 11, 2021
Come, Lady, while Heaven lends us grace,
Let us fly this cursed place,
Lest the sorcerer us entice
With some other new device.
With these words we're taken to the nub of John Milton's masque, which is that a wicked magician has entrapped a maiden, and that rescue may be at hand if nothing further awful happens. This is the stuff of fairytales, and we may expect a happy-ever-after ending, but this isn't necessarily a given: after all it's from the Stuart period, when nearly every bit of art had a political dimension, as it had been in the Tudor era.
And we may consider the audience of this intended narrative, the Earl of Bridgewater, lately ensconced in a castle on the Welsh borders where he might oversee a people possibly still uppity about being absorbed into English culture through new laws and a new official language. How would Milton bestride the fence between his Puritan leanings and the royalist sponsor it was written for?
This critical edition of the text has a certain historical value, it being more than a century old, but it still has much to say of worth, I think. Still, the play's the thing, as another playwright wrote; and whomsoever's conscience is caught it retains a certain curiosity for its poetry and for its concession to the masque genre with, admittedly, a rather sober frivolity.
So, Milton's Comus is a masque, a curious piece of theatre to our modern sensibilities. In some ways masques are total theatre: there's a story acted out, there are also fantastic costumes, music, dances, songs, along with visual and sound effects. Yet also there is high-flown language, and classical allusions, and frequent instances of what we'd now call virtue signalling (which may seem the whole point). And Comus has all this in abundance.
What's the story? Comus is a sorcerer, the son of Bacchus and Circe, who has inherited his father's debauched nature as well his mother's skill for transforming humans into beasts. His name is from the Greek word for revelry which is one of the roots of our word 'comedy'. When a Lady from Ludlow gets separated from her two brothers in a wood Comus tries to persuade her to swallow a potion, to no avail for she is virtuous beyond her years; her distraught brothers fortunately meet a spirit in the form of the shepherd Thyrsis who gives them a botanical charm to protect them from Comus's wand.
However, when they rush forward to thwart the sorcerer's design they fail to seize his wand, and so it is left for Thyrsis to invoke Sabrina, the nymph of the River Severn which flows past Ludlow Castle, to lift the stasis that keeps the Lady to her seat: she affirms that it's "my office best to help ensnarèd chastity." The Lady and her brothers are restored to their parents in the Castle and we are left with a dance, a song, and a moral from Milton in the guise of Thyrsis:
Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue: she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.
This is a rare example of the use of trochaic tetrameter in Comus which, along with rhyming couplets is left to songs and scenes of a pastoral nature. Mostly, however, the masque consists of blank verse in iambic pentameter, as when the bespelled Lady says of Comus
I had not thought to have unlocked my lips
In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler
Would think to charm my judgement, as mine eyes,
Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb.
Such phrases as this suits its lofty subject and its characters, since the siblings being originally acted by the sons and daughter of the Lord-Lieutenant of Wales and the Borders, namely Lord Brackley, Thomas Egerton and Lady Alice Egerton. The one and only performance took place at Ludlow Castle in the Marches, on Michaelmas Eve in 1634.
As a drama Comus is as static as the Lady's forced entrapment in her seat, and for this reason some critics consider this as belonging with Milton's other poems of around the same period, at a time when the phoney war preceding the English Civil War was ratcheting up. However, though Milton couldn't help moralising (he even added improving lines to later printed editions) the fairytale framework underlying the flowery diction shines through, with jeopardy and villainy, as in any fantasy script, moving the narrative forward to its eventual resolution. In the skilled hands of a professional company Comus might even work as a modern musical, with or without the original music by Henry Lawes.
I first read this some years ago as I thought it might be a counterpart to Shakespeare's The Tempest – both have a magician centre stage, there is a young heroine in both and the action of both takes place in an enchanted locale (one an island, the other a "wild wood"). But any resemblance is superficial: Prospero is benign, Comus malign; Miranda is rather more than an innocent pawn but the Lady is both steadfast in her virtue and determinedly assertive in the face of Comus's importuning; and Prospero's Isle "full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not" is the obverse of Comus's "adventurous glade", described in the stage directions:
COMUS enters, with a charming-rod in his hand, his glass in the other; with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel glistering: they come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands.
In his introduction to this edition Arthur Verity suggests a parentage for this tale of sister lost in a wood, trapped by a sorcerer and rescued by brothers, namely George Peele's Old Wives' Tales, the name Comus borrowed from a masque by Ben Johnson, and further details from a Dutch play called Comus written by a Puteanus. My mind went straight away, however, to the Scottish fairytale of Childe Rowland and his sister Burd Helen which, with its similar storyline involving the King of Elfland, hints at a traditional tale lost in the mists of time.
A final word about this edition is in order. Verity's 1909 volume went through several printings before and after the First World War, attesting to its usefulness; forty pages of introduction plus notes, glossary, appendix, other critiques and an index means the student can fully immerse themself into the poem, its background and its import; and its small format means the reader can easily carry it about in order to increase their familiarity, as I have been doing.
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January 21, 2026First longer read for my Milton class—class discussion and the historical background made me enjoy it a lot more than initially, but I wasn’t wowed by the narrative and definitely appreciate some of the pieces that discussed the same topics later in the long 18th century more.
February 5, 2018
A sister and two brothers enter a dark and menacing wood on the way to see their father. A trickster god lurks in the shadows; his animalistic victims dance raucously in his wake. An angel watches the children, having vowed to protect them. The siblings get separated. What will happen?
Key issue: chastity.
Key issue: chastity.
October 4, 2020
This is one of those fun works where I could write a plausible essay about how it showcases Milton's deep misogyny and another equally plausible essay about proto-feminist subtext
June 15, 2021
What hath night to do with sleep?
May 9, 2024
TL;DR:
Two brothers and a sister get separated in the woods at night. The brothers are understandably worried that the sister might be off having some creepy forest sex. Meanwhile, the sister meets a horny sorcerer but isn't interested in fucking him. He's about to serve her a date rape potion when the brothers rescue her with the help of some woodland spirits. Nobody fucks and there is much rejoicing. Hooray virginity!
Two brothers and a sister get separated in the woods at night. The brothers are understandably worried that the sister might be off having some creepy forest sex. Meanwhile, the sister meets a horny sorcerer but isn't interested in fucking him. He's about to serve her a date rape potion when the brothers rescue her with the help of some woodland spirits. Nobody fucks and there is much rejoicing. Hooray virginity!
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March 24, 2026I LOVE PASTORAL POETRY
New favorite Milton
New favorite Milton
February 19, 2024
The only thing separating this masque with a modern-day BookTok book is that here the Lady preserves her chastity whereas a BookTok book would've descended into only smut with no plot.
July 17, 2025
You want a copy with the 1921 Arthur Rackham illustrations.
Comus, or Komos, is a minor Greek god who's only attested quite late (e.g. the 3rd century AD Imagines of Philostratus, describing works of art), the personification of revels. In this 1634 masque (play), revelry is opposed to chastity. A virgin simply called "the Lady" (originally played by Alice Egerton, the 1st Earl of Bridgewater's 15-year-old daughter) gets lost in the woods. Comus, a wizard/necromancer who Milton makes Dionysus' son by Circe, chains her to a chair and tries to convince her to drink from the cup of sexual pleasure. She has two brothers (originally played by Alice Egerton's brothers) who got separated from her in the woods, and they rush in with swords to save her from Comus, but the sorcerer escapes the swords. The Lady is still enchanted to the chair, so the Spirit that helped the brothers in the woods summons a nymph named Sabrina to free her.
This was only Milton's second published poem, after a paean to Shakespeare included in the Second Folio.
Masques were considered a lower, more ephemeral genre of play than comedies and tragedies, because they were written to be meaningful to a noble or royal patron on an occasion: I mentioned that the Earl of Bridgewater's three children acted in this one, and Charles I and Henrietta Maria themselves were fond of acting. Milton would of course become a militant Puritan who served in Cromwell's Commonwealth government, and much literary criticism has turned on whether he was trying to redeem genres with debauched, ungodly associations. The failure of the siblings to defeat the horny wizard on their own, the author instead bringing in the Classical Deus ex Machina Sabrina, has been suggested to represent the doctrine of Grace. If so, this is not Calvinist Irresistible Grace acting on a depraved will, but Deus strengthening human will when it wills something good (assuming here that you agree with Milton that chastity is good).
As perhaps the English language's second-greatest poet, Milton drew strong word-pictures, here as dialogue rather than narrative verses like his mature Paradise Lost. In Rackham's illustrations, he as often chose to paint what a character is saying as the actual action. This was a technique he pioneered in his 1908 illustrations for A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it makes reading a play an aesthetic experience you can't simply replace by watching a performance. I strongly recommend the Rackham editions of both these plays.
Comus, or Komos, is a minor Greek god who's only attested quite late (e.g. the 3rd century AD Imagines of Philostratus, describing works of art), the personification of revels. In this 1634 masque (play), revelry is opposed to chastity. A virgin simply called "the Lady" (originally played by Alice Egerton, the 1st Earl of Bridgewater's 15-year-old daughter) gets lost in the woods. Comus, a wizard/necromancer who Milton makes Dionysus' son by Circe, chains her to a chair and tries to convince her to drink from the cup of sexual pleasure. She has two brothers (originally played by Alice Egerton's brothers) who got separated from her in the woods, and they rush in with swords to save her from Comus, but the sorcerer escapes the swords. The Lady is still enchanted to the chair, so the Spirit that helped the brothers in the woods summons a nymph named Sabrina to free her.
This was only Milton's second published poem, after a paean to Shakespeare included in the Second Folio.
Masques were considered a lower, more ephemeral genre of play than comedies and tragedies, because they were written to be meaningful to a noble or royal patron on an occasion: I mentioned that the Earl of Bridgewater's three children acted in this one, and Charles I and Henrietta Maria themselves were fond of acting. Milton would of course become a militant Puritan who served in Cromwell's Commonwealth government, and much literary criticism has turned on whether he was trying to redeem genres with debauched, ungodly associations. The failure of the siblings to defeat the horny wizard on their own, the author instead bringing in the Classical Deus ex Machina Sabrina, has been suggested to represent the doctrine of Grace. If so, this is not Calvinist Irresistible Grace acting on a depraved will, but Deus strengthening human will when it wills something good (assuming here that you agree with Milton that chastity is good).
As perhaps the English language's second-greatest poet, Milton drew strong word-pictures, here as dialogue rather than narrative verses like his mature Paradise Lost. In Rackham's illustrations, he as often chose to paint what a character is saying as the actual action. This was a technique he pioneered in his 1908 illustrations for A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it makes reading a play an aesthetic experience you can't simply replace by watching a performance. I strongly recommend the Rackham editions of both these plays.
December 9, 2018
Read for a course on Milton in a different edition. Not an enjoyable work in the traditional sense, particularly not in terms of drama, but turned out to be a useful and interesting work to discuss.
Milton's presentation of women in this masque is of particular interest, as there are only two females in play devoted to the concept of chastity. First is The Lady, and the other is the river spirit Sabrina. Both have control over their own faculties, and are paragons of chastity, but there is something strange in these women being so strongly portrayed in a play so indebted to a patriarchal value such as chastity. The men in the play are often blundering, and don't have as much power. Even Comus feels that he has been ravished by The Lady's voice, leading to an unusual state where the reader is meant to ask, who is being raped? Comus of course attempts to reassert his power over the Lady, but the fact that he is so rattled by her power above and beyond the simple feminine wiles is fascinating, and I feel an unresolved issue within the text.
Milton's presentation of women in this masque is of particular interest, as there are only two females in play devoted to the concept of chastity. First is The Lady, and the other is the river spirit Sabrina. Both have control over their own faculties, and are paragons of chastity, but there is something strange in these women being so strongly portrayed in a play so indebted to a patriarchal value such as chastity. The men in the play are often blundering, and don't have as much power. Even Comus feels that he has been ravished by The Lady's voice, leading to an unusual state where the reader is meant to ask, who is being raped? Comus of course attempts to reassert his power over the Lady, but the fact that he is so rattled by her power above and beyond the simple feminine wiles is fascinating, and I feel an unresolved issue within the text.
January 29, 2024
I don't care what anyone says, this is a banger. This is probably the best thing I've ever read by Milton, no joke. It's absurdly funny and the characters are so sassy for no reason. Here are some of my favorite lines:
"Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric" (line 790).
"Why should you be so cruel to yourself/and to those dainty limbs which Nature lent/ for gentle usage, and soft delicacy?" (679-681). Like?? Hearing a 17th century male manipulator talk is so funny. Like okay? Carpe diem, I guess...
"Do you believe me yet, or shall I call/ Antiquity from the old schools of Greece/to testify" (lines 439-440).
"How bitter is such self-delusion!" (line 365). BRO REALLY SAID YOU'RE DELUSIONAL.
"He that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts/benighted walks under the midday sun; / himself is his own dungeon" (lines 381-384). This actually made my jaw DROP. Imagine if he lived in 2024? He would be shaking at some of the discord messages I've been sent.
Anyway, this was so funny. I want to see this turned into a slapstick comedy so badly.
"Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric" (line 790).
"Why should you be so cruel to yourself/and to those dainty limbs which Nature lent/ for gentle usage, and soft delicacy?" (679-681). Like?? Hearing a 17th century male manipulator talk is so funny. Like okay? Carpe diem, I guess...
"Do you believe me yet, or shall I call/ Antiquity from the old schools of Greece/to testify" (lines 439-440).
"How bitter is such self-delusion!" (line 365). BRO REALLY SAID YOU'RE DELUSIONAL.
"He that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts/benighted walks under the midday sun; / himself is his own dungeon" (lines 381-384). This actually made my jaw DROP. Imagine if he lived in 2024? He would be shaking at some of the discord messages I've been sent.
Anyway, this was so funny. I want to see this turned into a slapstick comedy so badly.
October 22, 2019
Girl and brothers get lost in the woods. Comus, a debauched man, stumbles upon the girl and tries to seduce her. She resists him by means of “right reason.”
Notable lines:
“Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
ANd disinherit chaos” (334).
A brother makes the suggestion that his sister’s virtue is not in danger while she maintains “the constant mood of her calm thoughts” (371).
Milton rejects the hermeneutics of suspicion:
“Yet where an equall poise of hope and fear
Does arbitrate th’event, my nature is
That I incline to hope, rather then fear,
And gladly banish squint suspicion” (410ff).
Conclusion: The original problem is quite interesting: can virtue and right reason withstand sexual temptation? That’s not the solution, though. The solution is appealing to a fairy spirit who can come up with some herb and free the Lady. Milton’s conclusion doesn’t follow from his problem.
Notable lines:
“Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
ANd disinherit chaos” (334).
A brother makes the suggestion that his sister’s virtue is not in danger while she maintains “the constant mood of her calm thoughts” (371).
Milton rejects the hermeneutics of suspicion:
“Yet where an equall poise of hope and fear
Does arbitrate th’event, my nature is
That I incline to hope, rather then fear,
And gladly banish squint suspicion” (410ff).
Conclusion: The original problem is quite interesting: can virtue and right reason withstand sexual temptation? That’s not the solution, though. The solution is appealing to a fairy spirit who can come up with some herb and free the Lady. Milton’s conclusion doesn’t follow from his problem.
September 2, 2023
…when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Embodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loath to leave the body that it loved,
And linked itself by carnal sensualty
To a degenerate and degraded state.
Love virtue, she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heav'n itself would stoop to her.
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Embodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loath to leave the body that it loved,
And linked itself by carnal sensualty
To a degenerate and degraded state.
Love virtue, she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heav'n itself would stoop to her.
August 13, 2024
I love John Milton’s knowledge on Greek/Roman mythology. He loves it so much that he has used its characters in his almost every poems. He was also a good Christian as he always praise religious specifications like chastity and virginity. As a fan of Greek mythology and also a believer in Jesus Christ, I really love his point of view in the good and the evil, also the mixture of Christian morality and Greek universe of magics, lust, eager, love, wrath and charms. Of course Christianity always wins against Greek gods, because Jesus Christ is our king and he’s also Greek God’s King and he’s also Roman emperors King. God Bless John Milton and any other believer in Jesus Christ ✝️☦️
July 20, 2026
It was special to find out Milton’s ‘Comus, A Mask’ was first presented at Ludlow Castle, Herefordshire in 1634! It feels so special to be around literary history in the shire! Here are some of my favourite quotes (it’s interesting that we can see some of his famous Miltonian chiaroscuro in his earlier work!):
‘To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty’ (97)
‘What hath night to do with sleep? / Night hath better sweets to prove…’ (122-123)
‘And envious darkness, ere they could return, / Had stole them from me: else, O thievish Night, / Why shouldn’t thou, but for some felonious end, / In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars/ That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps / With everlasting oil to give due light / To the misled and lonely traveller?’ (194-200)
‘Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?’ (221-222)
‘Virtue could see to do what Virtue would / By her own radiant light, though sun and moon / Were in the flat sea sunk.’ (373-375)
‘He that has light within his own clear breast / May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day; / But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts / Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; / Himself is his own dungeon.’ (381-384)
’Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp / Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, / Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave, / As loath to leave the body that it loved, / And linked itself by carnal sensuality / To a degenerate and degraded state.’ (470-475)
‘Oh night and shades, / How are ye joined with hell in triple knot…’ (580-581)
‘Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind / With all thy charms, although this corporal rind / Thou hast immanacled while heaven sees good.’ (663-665)
‘Beauty is Nature’s coin; must not be hoarded, / But must be current; and the good thereof / Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, / Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself.’ (739-742)
‘I hate when vice can bolt her arguments / And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.’ (760-761)
‘And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake, / Till all thy magic structures, reared so high, / Were shattered into heaps o’er thy false head’ (797-799)
‘To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty’ (97)
‘What hath night to do with sleep? / Night hath better sweets to prove…’ (122-123)
‘And envious darkness, ere they could return, / Had stole them from me: else, O thievish Night, / Why shouldn’t thou, but for some felonious end, / In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars/ That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps / With everlasting oil to give due light / To the misled and lonely traveller?’ (194-200)
‘Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?’ (221-222)
‘Virtue could see to do what Virtue would / By her own radiant light, though sun and moon / Were in the flat sea sunk.’ (373-375)
‘He that has light within his own clear breast / May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day; / But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts / Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; / Himself is his own dungeon.’ (381-384)
’Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp / Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, / Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave, / As loath to leave the body that it loved, / And linked itself by carnal sensuality / To a degenerate and degraded state.’ (470-475)
‘Oh night and shades, / How are ye joined with hell in triple knot…’ (580-581)
‘Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind / With all thy charms, although this corporal rind / Thou hast immanacled while heaven sees good.’ (663-665)
‘Beauty is Nature’s coin; must not be hoarded, / But must be current; and the good thereof / Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, / Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself.’ (739-742)
‘I hate when vice can bolt her arguments / And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.’ (760-761)
‘And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake, / Till all thy magic structures, reared so high, / Were shattered into heaps o’er thy false head’ (797-799)
September 7, 2023
An enjoyable read full of Milton's beautiful poetry, although one that does not necessarily stand out for other masques of the period and which obviously pales in comparison to his later poetic work. It was also really interesting comparing this to other theatrical works from the English Renaissance and the critical interpretations of the play, particularly those concerning the central female protagonist, are fascinating. Interesting read :)
July 3, 2026
Mortals that would follow me,
Love virtue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than they sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.
It's almost like a prelude to Paradise Lost with its portrayal of a suave tempter trying to corrupt a virtuous Lady. Rather interesting to see as an evolution of The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's more fantastical plays.
Love virtue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than they sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.
It's almost like a prelude to Paradise Lost with its portrayal of a suave tempter trying to corrupt a virtuous Lady. Rather interesting to see as an evolution of The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's more fantastical plays.
August 5, 2019
The mischievous Comus is definitely a less sophisticated version of Milton's Satan. There's a scene where he argues the pros of vice with a woman he's attempting to seduce and that feels very Satanic. Going chronologically, this is the moment when you kind of sit up and think, "Oh, yeah, this guy's good; this guy's going to be great."
May 15, 2018
I liked this more than Paradise Lost. I don't think it's as good as A Midsummernight's Dream or other plays its compared to, but it surprised me by fitting easily within a more progressive interpretation.
April 1, 2020
I read this in a college course on Milton and have loved it ever since. Something about the battle of wills between the Lady and Comus is so compelling, as is the imagery and magical (but sinister) atmosphere.
April 10, 2024
a compelling story that comments on human behavior, the human condition, and challenges the honor of a woman. I absolutely adore the arc that the Lady goes through. my personal favorite of Milton’s work.
August 23, 2017
Also Milton (probably): How many time can I use the word "virgin" in this masque?
December 21, 2020
still don't get the virtue hype...
October 21, 2021
Like a bizarre Socratic dialogue between a pervert and a puritan. Not great theater but interesting on that alone.
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