Comus by John Milton

PRIMARY SOURCE: Comus (perf. 1634)
Context

• Publication: Probably written in 1632, and presented in 1634 at Ludlow Castle on Michelmas to John Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater and newly named Lord President of Wales. Printed in 1637 by Augustus Matthewes for Humphrey Robinson. EEBO link.
• Scholarship: Scholars have read Comus as masque, and as such, one of many courtly dramas. Some critics believe that Milton included too few songs for Comus to qualify as a masque, but rather, as an ethical debate. As such, Comus fits into Milton's broader interest in Providential history and clear-cut ethical choices. But more importantly, Milton saw his own work as a masque and probably meant to reclaim the debauched courtly masque form for Protestant, and therefore virtuous, purposes.
• Why I'm reading it: The Canon, the masque.

Content

• Form: Mixed meter with songs; mostly blank verse. Three scenes. Four songs.
• Genre: Masque, ethical debate.
• Conceit: Ovidian transformation imbued with Protestant themes. The Attendant Spirit is on earth to show the audience godly virtue in the lives of the children of Neptune who are lost in the treacherous woods. In those woods live Comus, son of Bacchus and Circe, who turns travelers into animals with his magic wine. A Lady and her two brothers become lost in the woods on their way to visit father Neptune. While the brothers look for food, the Lady sings to Echo for their guidance. In the disguise of a village boy, Comus leads her away. The brothers dispute whether the Lady is safe or not as she has no guardian but her own chastity. Comus traps the Lady in an enchanted chair and tries to force her to drink a magical cup. The lady refuses, shows her right reason by arguing with Comus, and counters Comus' argument for natural indulgence by appealing to reason and higher nature. The brothers meet the Attendant Spirit in the form of a shepherd, who leads them to defeat Comus. All chase away Comus while the Lady is bound to her chair. The Spirit sings a conjure to Neptune and Triton for Sabrina, the water nymph. Sabrina sees and loves the Lady's virtue and frees her from the chair. The children are united with the parents in a celebration of the beauty and virtue of young people.
• Other notes: 
• This version of temperance is slightly complicated by Paradise Lost, since Adam is supposed to follow this method on the advice of Raphael, but falls anyway. PL seems to recognize that personal temperance is inadequate even before the fall--thus necessitating Christian transcendence.
• Milton, or at least Comus, seems to distinguish ethical virtue from aesthetic virtue when Comus says, "When once her eye / Hath met the vertue of this Magick dust, / I shall appear som harmles Villager" (165). Eyes, then, are subject to intemperate vision that the rational will can temper.

(NB: written with notes.)
Archer, Stanley. "Comus." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-4.Literary Reference Center. Web. 31 Jan. 2013.