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Comus:
Some Final Thoughts |
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Comus: Some
Final Thoughts
After detailed analysis, it's great to double
back to the Pentad and see what we've found out
about Milton's Ludlow Mask. (And, no doubt, this
is only a beginning.)
(That's what heuristic means: to find out--or at
least to get started.)
1. Act
a courtly masque--a form of occasional
entertainment typically geared mostly toward
its own visual and musical elements. Plot
usually allegorical, but thin,
ephemeral.
This mask, Milton felt, was worth including in
his published works of 1645--a "book,"
in other words, worth reading, worth thinking
about, worth saving past the
masque's occasion (1634).
Nearest equivalent, perhaps, a Sondheim
musical--often about really serious things
(e.g. Assassins! or, for that matter, even
Into
the Woods).
Risks: trivializing the subject (Jesus Christ,
Superstar?) or failing at the genre.
Milton clearly at work, as he will be next with
pastoral elegy and later with epic:
taking up a genre only to explode it into
something vastly bigger.
On this "bigger level" we can see A Mask
as much
more: among other things
(1) a meditation on the meaning of virginity and
chastity in a world where
people in fact are violated--raped, sodomized,
and forced to participate
in orgies;
(2) a brief for victims' rights--even if the
victim is seriously tempted by
the assault (Evil into the mind of man may come and go and leave
no
spot or taint of guilt behind, so unapproved):
we are called only to "stand,"
and if we do that, just that, we can return home
triumphant;
(3) a mediation on the right uses and views of
nature and all of her bounties,
whether sexual or material--and a plea both for
sensitivity to Mother Earth
("good cateress") and for at least some degree
of economic democracy (to
the extent that Lady Alice Egerton actually
gives voice to some arguments of
the really radical groups working during
Milton's time--e.g. Levelers, Diggers,
and Quakers);
(4) a meditation on the right uses of music and
song, of beauty and sensuality
(which ends up not presenting a "stoic"
argument--although the Lady, like Milton
himself perhaps, gets pilloried as a "budge
doctor of the stoic fur"--but rather
a sense that what we all seek is beauty and
enchantment. The only question is
what kind of enchantment do we seek--the mere
"curious taste" which brings satiety
and
self-loathing, or that kind that augers "waking
bliss"?);
(5) a serious argument for the kind of Christian
neo-platonism (from Plato's
Symposium) that the typical masque used as mere
pretext for spectacle.
Finally, the work can be read as Milton's first
serious meditation on gender--as noted
recently by William Shullenberger ("Girl Power" and "Into
the Woods") and Stella
Revard
(Coma and "Gendering Virtue")--which can be
defined as feminist even in a postmodern
sense.
2. Scene
a banquet hall in the Earl of Bridgewater's
family home in Wales;
the dark wood of testing, of potential error, of
moral and natural threat to the integrity of
both body and mind;
the "tapestried hall" of both Comus and of the
Earl of Bridgewater--which can either be
the seat of true courtesy, justice, and
hospitality or a sink of corruption and evil
(as was Lord Castlehaven's)--suggesting the
republican ideal of meritocracy.
3. Agents
The Attendant Spirit--Mr. Music (Henry Lawes);
the ideal shepherd (pastor); platonic
angel from the "starry sphere of Jove," and thus
guardian of chaste love (the
highest good).
Comus--not quite Satan, but every aspect
(attractive and disturbing) of the temptation
to misuse the earth and its gifts to the
ultimate enchainment and death of both body
and mind; the lie that freedom and license are
identical and that only quantity matters
(although tragically even he knows better: all
that exists, Milton suggests, partakes to some
extent in the good). Certainly he is the
forerunner of Milton's Satan.
The Lady--Lady Alice Egerton, aged fifteen,
accomplished and beautiful; the well-ordered
soul; the true wayfaring (though truly tested
and even tempted) soul and body, who
maintains her virginity even if raped (only to
Comus is virginity just a coin, a marketable
physical thing), her chastity even if tempted;
her freedom, and thus her
ultimate capacity for love. Perhaps she is
Milton himself, perhaps all of us. Certainly she
is
the forerunner of Milton's Christ--and of the
character Eve, Adam, and Samson could be, but
tragically fail to be.
Sabrina--Chastity triumphant and immortal; grace
aiding virtue when virtue has reached its
mortal limit and stood firm.
The Lady's Brothers--human beings in extremis,
as well as the uses and limits of "divine
philosophy" in the actual world. (Milton more an
empiricist than a rationalist.)
Parents and Courtiers (as themselves)--faced
with serious ethical matter in a courtly
entertainment. To applaud or not?
4. Agency
We may have to reconstruct (and we may deeply
miss) the emotional appeal of music and scenery.
But we hear the lady speak more clearly than we
might sitting in a hall, over wine and after
dinner. We are able to consider her arguments
and see the non-throw-away quality of the text
and ideas.
5. Purpose
What has Milton achieved with this work?
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