John Milton - Comus, A Masque - Argo

The Star that bids the Shepherd fold,
Now the top of Heav'n doth hold,
And the gilded Car of Day,
His glowing Axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantick stream,
And the slope Sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky Pole,
Pacing toward the other gole
Of his Chamber in the East.
Mean while welcom Joy, and Feast,
Midnight shout, and revelry,
Tipsie dance and Jollity.
Braid your Locks with rosie Twine
Dropping odours, dropping Wine.
Rigor now is gone to bed,
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sowre Severity,
With their grave Saws in slumber ly.
We that are of purer fire
Imitate the Starry Quire,
Who in their nightly watchfull Sphears,
Lead in swift round the Months and Years.
The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove
Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move,
And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves,
Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves;
By dimpled Brook, and Fountain brim,
The Wood-Nymphs deckt with Daisies trim,
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove,
Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love.
Com let us our rights begin,
Tis onely day-light that makes Sin,
Which these dun shades will ne're report.
Hail Goddesse of Nocturnal sport
Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame
Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame
That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom
Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom,
And makes one blot of all the ayr,
Stay thy cloudy Ebon chair,
Wherin thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend
Us thy vow'd Priests, till utmost end
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
Ere the blabbing Eastern scout,
The nice Morn on th' Indian steep
From her cabin'd loop hole peep,
And to the tel-tale Sun discry
Our conceal'd Solemnity.
Com, knit hands, and beat the ground,
In a light fantastick round.

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 of opera disparaged as 'an exotic and irrational entertainment'. Besides drama there is song, dance and spectacle. The general theme typically is the containment of misrule, and Reason's control of the passions. 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' if you want, but isn't the verse in Comus of the same quality as that of a MND?)

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 time. An ideal performance with excellent sound from LPs with fairly quiet surfaces. Highly recommended.

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