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Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild,
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But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high-embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light: There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voic'd quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstacies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
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Comus was written some time between this and the following September. Singular coincidences frequently linked Milton's fate with the north-west Midlands, from which his grandmother's family and his brother-in-law and his third wife sprung, whither the latter retired, where his friend Diodati lived, and his friend King died, and where now the greatest of his early works was to be represented in the time-hallowed precincts of Ludlow Castle, where it was performed on Michaelmas night, in 1634. If, as we should like to think, he was himself present, the scene must have enriched his memory and his mind. The castle--in which Prince Arthur had spent with his Spanish bride the six months of life which alone remained to him, in which eighteen years before the performance Charles the First had been installed Prince of Wales with extraordinary magnificence, and which, curiously enough, was to be the residence of the Cavalier poet, Butler--would be a place of resort for English tourists, if it adorned any country but their own. The dismantled keep is still an imposing object, lowering from a steep hill around whose base the curving Teme alternately boils and gushes with tumultuous speed. The scene within must have realized the lines in the
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Allegro
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Pomp, and feast, and revelry, Mask and antique pageantry, Where throngs of knights and barons bold, In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence.
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Old Wives' Tale, and the
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Comus of Erycius Puteanus; but there is little morality in the former production and little fancy in the latter. The peculiar blending of the highest morality with the noblest imagination is as much Milton's own as the incomparable diction.
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I, wrote Sir Henry Wootton on receiving a copy of the anonymous edition printed by Lawes in 1637,
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Although not openly acknowledged by the author, says Lawes in his apology for printing prefixed to the poem,
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The publication is anonymous, and bears no mark of Milton's participation except a motto, which none but the author could have selected, intimating a fear that publication is premature. The title is simply
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A Maske presented at Ludlow Castle, nor did the piece receive the name of
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Comus
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Paradise Lost, is the dependence of his activity upon promptings from without.
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Comus