Comus
For For readers of the masque and of Milton's early thought; a drama of a Lady's virtue tested by the enchanter Comus.
Length About 7,800 words, under an hour.
John Milton's A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, now commonly called Comus, was written for the installation of John Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater, as Lord President of Wales, and performed on Michaelmas night, 29 September 1634, at Ludlow Castle. Henry Lawes, the family's music master, composed the score and played the Attendant Spirit; the three leading roles were taken by the Earl's own children, Lady Alice Egerton and her brothers John and Thomas. The occasion was a court entertainment, but Milton, then twenty-five, used the form for something more serious than flattery. It was first printed anonymously in 1637, with a dedicatory letter from Lawes, and Milton acknowledged it under his own name in his 1645 Poems.
The plot is simple. A Lady, separated from her brothers in a dark wood, is met by the enchanter Comus, son of Bacchus and Circe, who disguises himself as a friendly shepherd and leads her to his palace. There he offers her a cup that transforms its drinkers into beasts, and he argues that nature's abundance is wasted by restraint. The Lady refuses, though she is held immobile in an enchanted chair. Her brothers, guided by the Attendant Spirit, drive Comus off, but they cannot free her, and she is released only when the river nymph Sabrina is invoked. At its center is a long debate between the two. Comus makes a seductive case for indulgence, and the Lady answers that virtue, though it may be bound in body, cannot be corrupted in mind. Milton's claim is that chastity is an active, rational discipline of the whole person, not mere abstention, and that the trial of temptation is where virtue is proved. The argument anticipates the passage in Areopagitica on a virtue that is exercised and tested rather than cloistered. The poem also holds together two things readers often separate: a Christian-Platonic confidence that the soul's integrity cannot finally be taken, and an honest admission that the good need help beyond their own resolve, which the masque dramatizes through grace arriving in the figure of Sabrina.
The work has endured as one of the finest English statements of moral and spiritual formation through temptation, written in verse of remarkable fluency and range, from sung lyrics to extended blank-verse argument. It repays reading as a young Milton's first major treatment of themes he would carry into Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, including the testing of the virtuous mind and the relation of freedom to restraint.
Who should read this: readers who want to see how a Protestant poet of the seventeenth century thought about temptation, purity, and the cultivation of an inner life, and who are willing to read dramatic verse slowly and aloud. It suits those who enjoy poetry as a vehicle for moral argument. It is not for readers seeking a devotional text with direct pastoral application, nor for those impatient with allegory, classical allusion, and the conventions of courtly entertainment.
Editions
External off-site sources
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- OTHER A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (Project Gutenberg) PDEd. H. C. Beeching · 1900The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by H. C. Beeching (Oxford, 1900), as a free Project Gutenberg e-text: all the English and Italian poems in one file, with the old spelling kept; this work is one section of it.
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E.M1ZYHS.BReport - OTHER A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (Project Gutenberg)Ed. William BellComus edited by William Bell, a Victorian school edition: the masque with Bell's introduction and notes, as a free Project Gutenberg e-text.Easier than the work: The editor's notes explain the allusions and hard words.
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E.GQ43PY.FReport - OTHER A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (Dartmouth Milton Reading Room (ed. Thomas H. Luxon))Ed. Thomas H. LuxonRead free online at the Dartmouth Milton Reading Room, edited by Thomas H. Luxon, with notes linked from the text. Copyrighted by Dartmouth and offered for personal reading, so it is a link only.
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E.FPRR5A.CReport - PDF A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (Internet Archive (Poems of Mr. John Milton, London: Humphrey Moseley, 1645)) PD1645Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1645), the first collection of his poems; this work is printed in it. A page scan of the Boston Public Library copy.Harder than the work: Seventeenth-century printing: long s, the spelling of the day and a rough text layer.
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E.EDP1D8.JReport - PDF A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (Internet Archive (Works, Pickering 1851, Poems vol. 1)) PDEd. John Mitford (ed.) · 1851The Works of John Milton in Verse and Prose, edited by John Mitford (London: William Pickering, 1851), Poems, vol. 1, printed from the original editions; this work is one part of the volume. A page scan.
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E.MM0SFY.2Report - 🎧 AUDIO A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (LibriVox)2026Part of LibriVox's free recording of The Complete Poems of John Milton (2026), read by volunteers; nearly eighteen hours in all, this work one section of it. Listen online or download.
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E.EPQE0D.PReport - PDF A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (Internet Archive (A Maske presented at Ludlow Castle, 1637; EEBO microfilm)) PD1637The first printing of the masque, A Maske presented at Ludlow Castle (London: Humphrey Robinson, 1637), published without Milton's name and with Henry Lawes's dedication. A page scan from the Early English Books microfilm.Harder than the work: Seventeenth-century printing read from microfilm: long s, old spelling, and the scan is hard to read in places.
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E.KM7ZJ4.HReport - PDF A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (Internet Archive (Comus, facsimile of the 1637 edition, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1903)) PD1903A facsimile of the first printing of 1637 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1903), with a short introductory note: the masque as its first readers had it, in clear reproduction. A page scan of the University of Toronto copy.Harder than the work: A facsimile of the 1637 printing: long s and the spelling of the day.
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E.GEMBKX.8Report
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