Comus - John Milton

Written by John Milton

Sometime in the 17C, after a series of political, social, commercial, and above all intellectual revolutions, men became acutely conscious their mental universe had altered ‘as if the discharge of an arquebus had scattered the ghosts and fairies’.

Ascendant was a disenchanting rationalism, and passing away was a world possessed by magical and religious forces.

The two most significant expressions of the world we have lost are A Midsummer Night’s Dream and John Milton’s Masque of Comus, both written when their authors were at a similar stage of their poetic careers. (Comus further, is striking for its Shakespearian reminiscences)

A masque is a genre located somewhere between drama and that type of opera that has been disparaged as ‘an exotic and irrational entertainment’. Besides drama there is song, dance and spectacle. The general theme typically is Reason’s control of the passions and the containment of misrule. As an ideal image of the State, it culminates in the form of a vision inviting wonder.

The most notable masques of the age were those written by Carew and Shirley for festive occasions at the court of Charles the First. As produced by Inigo Jones these were magnificent, extravagant, ephemeral and unreal, and cost about as much as a small war. Historians describe the Whitehall masques as the golden sunset of the English Renaissance, usually with the implication that royal culture was becoming decadent, and that, on the eve of revolution, the court was out of touch with the country. Milton’s conscious intention was to achieve a seriousness and purpose that was the antithesis of royalist spectacle.

The plot of Comus is slight, the dramaturgy stiff and static and the puritan prating on virtue not to contemporary taste. Fortunately the author is a great genius and we have some of the the richest and most magical poetry in English. (Knock me on the head about ‘Shakespeare’s extraordinary expressive freedom’ , but isn’t the verse in Comus as good as that of A Midsummer Nights Dream?)

The very first bars of Henry Lawes music promise something grave and chaste. But Milton is Milton and the ‘baddie’ gets the best poetry, and, it is even possible to argue, the best arguments. Puritan psychology is schizoid and John Milton a representative instance. At about the time he was writing Comus he was also writing, in the manner of Ovid, and in the decent obscurity of a dead language, Elegia Quinta, a poem on the coming of Spring, which, as you read it, turns into erotic riot (the panting Earth voluptuously baring her breasts etc etc)

This is PLP 1024-5, LPs released in August 1968 by Argo and read by Barbara Jefford, Ian Holm, William Squire, Tony Church, Margaret Rawlings and Gary Watson. This was part of a project by the British Council to record classic English verse using the best verse speakers of the day. An ideal performance with excellent sound from LPs with fairly quiet surfaces. Highly recommended.

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Argo-Comus.jpg 4.11 MBs
Cityofwords2009 .htm 87.79 KBs
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Comus-02.flac 20.25 MBs
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Comus-04.flac 8.35 MBs
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Comus-10.flac 34.34 MBs
Comus-text.pdf 115.29 KBs
Comus.exc.AnthonyQuayle..flac 12.02 MBs
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ComusLecture1.Rogers.mp3 23.41 MBs
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John-milton.jpg 85.85 KBs
MusicforComus.bbc.2008.mp3 54.4 MBs
StephenOrgel-TheCaseforComus.pdf 866.07 KBs
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