Miltons Comus | Page 4

actors spoke their parts, singing and dancing were introduced, and the composition of masks for royal and other courtly patrons became an occupation worthy of a poet. They were frequently combined with other forms of amusement, all of which were, in the case of the Court, placed under the management of a Master of Revels, whose official title was Magister Jocorum, Revellorum et _Mascorum_; in the first printed English tragedy, _Gorboduc_ (1565), each act opens with what is called a dumb-show or mask. But the more elaborate form of the Mask soon grew to be an entertainment complete in itself, and the demand for such became so great in the time of James I. and Charles I. that the history of these reigns might almost be traced in the succession of masks then written. Ben Jonson, who thoroughly established the Mask in English literature, wrote many Court Masks, and made them a vehicle less for the display of 'painting and carpentry' than for the expression of the intellectual and social life of his time. His masks are excelled only by _Comus_, and possess in a high degree that 'Doric delicacy' in their songs and odes which Sir Henry Wotton found so ravishing in Milton's mask. Jonson, in his lifetime, declared that, next himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could write a mask; and apart from the compositions of these writers and of William Browne (_Inner Temple Masque_), there are few specimens worthy to be named along with Jonson's until we come to Milton's _Arcades_. Other mask-writers were Middleton, Dekker, Shirley, Carew, and Davenant; and it is interesting to note that in Carew's _Coelum Brittanicum_ (1633-4), for which Lawes composed the music, the two boys who afterwards acted in _Comus_ had juvenile parts. It has been pointed out that the popularity of the Mask in Milton's youth received a stimulus from the Puritan hatred of the theatre which found expression at that time, and drove non-Puritans to welcome the Mask as a protest against that spirit which saw nothing but evil in every form of dramatic entertainment. Milton, who enjoyed the theatre--both "Jonson's learned sock" and what "ennobled hath the buskined stage"--was led, through his friendship with the musician Lawes, to compose a mask to celebrate the entry of the Earl of Bridgewater upon his office of "Lord President of the Council in the Principality of Wales and the Marches of the same." He had already written, also at the request of Lawes, a mask, or portion of a mask, called _Arcades_, and the success of this may have stimulated him to higher effort. The result was _Comus_, in which the Mask reached its highest level, and after which it practically faded out of our literature.
Milton's two masks, _Arcades_ and _Comus_, were written for members of the same noble family, the former in honour of the Countess Dowager of Derby, and the latter in honour of John, first Earl of Bridgewater, who was both her stepson and son-in-law. This two-fold relation arose from the fact that the Earl was the son of Viscount Brackley, the Countess's second husband, and had himself married Lady Frances Stanley, a daughter of the Countess by her first husband, the fifth Earl of Derby. Amongst the children of the Earl of Bridgewater were three who took important parts in the representation of _Comus_--Alice, the youngest daughter, then about fourteen years of age, who appeared as _The Lady_; John, Viscount Brackley, who took the part of the _Elder Brother_, and Thomas Egerton, who appeared as the _Second Brother_. We do not know who acted the parts of _Comus_ and _Sabrina_, but the part of the _Attendant Spirit_ was taken by Henry Lawes, "gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and one of His Majesty's private musicians." The Earl's children were his pupils, and the mask was naturally produced under his direction. Milton's friendship with Lawes is shown by the sonnet which the poet addressed to the musician:
Harry, whose tuneful and well measur'd song?First taught our English music how to span?Words with just note and accent, not to scan?With Midas' ears, committing short and long;?Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,?With praise enough for Envy to look wan;?To after age thou shalt be writ the man,?That with smooth air could'st humour best our tongue.?Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing?To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire,?That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn, or story.?Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher?Than his Casella, who he woo'd to sing,?Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.
We must remember also that it was to Lawes that Milton's _Comus_ owed its first publication, and, as we see from the dedication prefixed to the text, that he was justly proud of his share in its first representation.
Such were the persons